If you haven’t seen it yet, you’d better tune in: it’s less than an hour long and explains why we’re all here, right now. David Attenborough, with the pandemic already underway, explains in Extinction – The Facts the reason for all this. Basically, it’s a question of biodiversity. We have been killing off the diversity of the planet in exchange for a new sofa, and we have stuck our noses where they don’t belong. And as we have seen, as we are still seeing, we are not prepared to deal with new viruses.
More recently, Sir Attenborough, with the immense wisdom of his 95 years, summed up in one hour, how the world has changed with the lockdown confinements of recent times. Because we have locked ourselves in, because we have left the scene, we have actually given some much-needed space to nature. The results are clearly visible. The 2021 documentary, The Year Earth Changed shows curious animals in silent cities, landscapes never before seen because pollution has not previously allowed it. Humans in pause mode are synonymous with saving the planet. In short, it’s just a matter of choice and that choice still exists.
David Attenborough makes me fear for the future and also want to go back to the past. When I was a kid and Sir Attenborough appeared on television crawling amongst the vegetation of some incredible jungle, life was infinitely simpler. People lived differently. There were fewer choices – but because you don’t miss what hasn’t been invented yet, nobody was unhappy for lack of alternatives.
I don’t know when parents stopped scolding their children for leaving useless lights on. I also don’t know when kids started piling up kilos of plastic toys rescued from the kilos of plastic in which they are packed. I can’t pinpoint the moment when we started having everything from all over the world on our doorstep. I don’t remember the day when we went from being people who satisfy their simple desires to unbridled consumerists. But we certainly did. And no-one remembers the useless lights left on anymore, let alone shouting at their children to turn them off.
And then comes the future, which – science tells us – is bleak. The truth is that the future is already here and it hasn’t arrived gently. For years we’ve been hearing warnings from eccentrics worried about nature, animals and the like. They were eccentrics, but they aren’t now, not any more. But, even so, the eccentrics of yesteryear do not rule the world. And those who do run the world, the various worlds we have, want everything today and now, right now. They have not yet discovered that being sustainable can also be profitable – although there are important people in the world of finance who have already reached this conclusion.
Us: those who do not produce, but engage in the art of acquisition at the speed of light. Some have slowly woken up from their lethargic state and compensated for the crime of buying new shoes, as useless as the lights left on, by using shampoo in the shape of soap instead of in a bottle. And we even separate the rubbish, that nuisance, even though we know that afterwards nobody actually recycles anything. We feel a little better from the evils of our conscience, even if the air outside is still unbreathable.
Macau: the city that could have been everything. Many years ago – when the sky was not yet the giant exhaust pipe it has become – I interviewed an Italian architect who, in half an hour’s conversation, gave me a dozen ideas on sustainable construction. Among the innovative concepts was advice from the past that we have abandoned: caring about the common places where we all live is not eccentricity, nor does it require great science. Just common sense.
Macau: the city that could have grown in one direction, but went in the opposite direction. The city that walks slowly in tow and could have been everything, but did everything in the opposite direction. We buy too much rubbish, we make too much rubbish, we pollute the ground we walk on, the air we breathe, but everything seems to be fine. Some will even buy the shampoos in soap form and there’s always a plastic wrapper that we make sure we don’t use. But it’s not enough.
It’s not enough in Macau and it’s not enough anywhere. We humans need organisation, people in charge who know more than we do. We need companies that understand that they can save a few bucks if they spend less on packaging and much less on diesel. We need to stop sticking our noses where they don’t belong and let animals be animals. We need to teach kids again that lights are for turning off. So they can turn them on only when they need to. It’s just a matter of choice.
