David Attenborough’s latest film is billed as an unflinching vision of Planet Earth’s future – and what we can do to protect it. Now, ahead of the much-anticipated release of A Life on Our Planet, the veteran broadcaster has joined Instagram for the first time to help tackle the ‘communications challenge’ around climate change.
In his first video message, Attenborough said: ‘I am making this move... because, as we all know, the world is in trouble. Continents are on fire. Glaciers are melting. Coral reefs are dying… the list goes on and on.’
He added that he would use the social media platform to share videos explaining ‘what the problems are and how we can deal with them’. Within five hours of the post, Attenborough, now 94, had already gained more than a million followers.
His appearance on Instagram precedes the release of a Netflix documentary titled A Life on Our Planet in which he looks back at his career and shows how humans have devastated the planet over the same period.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though: towards the end, he also explains how, with quite a lot of concerted effort, we can reverse that trend. And with millions more potentially tuning in via the ’gram now too, perhaps we really can do it.
Read our interview with David from earlier this year.