"Wasting energy is an appalling thing."
It's in David Attenborough's Nature to Explore the Environment -- and Speak Up for It
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At 82, naturalist David Attenborough is still hard at work (up next is a TV series on evolution), and the Internet is reinvigorating his oeuvre: A clip from 1998's "The Life of Birds," featuring a lyrebird that can mimic cameras, car alarms and chainsaws, has been viewed almost 840,000 times since it was posted on YouTube last year. "The Life of Birds" is one of four Attenborough-hosted series included in a recently released 17-disc box set.
-- Marissa Newhall
A lot of people are trying to make conservation a part of everyday life. What really counts?
The main thing is to avoid waste, to recognize that waste is actually sinful, and it is a gross damage to the world's environment from all kinds of points of view. Wasting energy is an appalling thing to do, and the way that we have squandered energy -- and particularly fossil energy -- not knowing what we were doing, is a catastrophe.
Have you noticed the effects of climate change in your work over the years?
My job is to make programs about tropical rain forests, so I go to where they are, not to where they've been cut down. So I get a rosier view than others do. But I can't help but notice changes. The most obvious one is that since I've been making programs, there are three times as many people living on this planet than before.
Did you know that your lyrebird segment has become an Internet sensation?
Has it? No. . . . Well, it is mind-blowing, and it's also funny, and being funny is a great advantage. So unexpected, too, the paradox of this bird suddenly producing the sound of a motor-drive camera. But it's also tragic inasmuch as this bird is singing its own demise, and I think that thought does strike people when they watch it.
Do you have a favorite bird species?
I'm addicted to birds of paradise.
Favorite mammal?
Mountain gorillas. . . . I've been sat on by them. That's no longer acceptable, but I did it in all innocence back in 1970 and it was one of the most excellent experiences of my life.
