Climate action cannot wait, Attenborough tells William

Prince William has turned interviewer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, quizzing TV naturalist David Attenborough.

Prince William and Sir David Attenborough at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Picture: AP

Prince William has turned interviewer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, quizzing TV naturalist David Attenborough on what he calls world leaders’ “faltering” steps to tackle environmental challenges.

“Normally I have to endure people asking me questions so it’s quite nice to be able to turn the ­tables for once,” the second in line to the British throne joked with the 92-year-old broadcaster.

Attenborough, whose natural history programs include Blue Planet II and Dynasties, said it was difficult to overstate how urgent the climate crisis had become.

“We are now so numerous, so powerful, so all-pervasive … that we can actually exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it,” Attenborough said.

He hailed the 2015 Paris climate agreement as a point where world leaders had recognised the dangers of rising temperatures but noted this had not been universal. “There have been people who have withdrawn from that,” he said.

Speaking last month on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Poland, Attenborough said ­Donald Trump was “out on a limb” in his attitude to climate change.

His advice for the leaders gathered at Davos this week was to care for the natural world and not to waste its resources, from energy to food.

“We can wreck it with ease. We can wreck it without even noticing we’re doing it. And if we wreck the natural world, in the end we wreck ourselves.”

Also at the forum, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised a wave of “disruption” in world politics, citing the US President and Brexit, but also pointing to elections in France and Malaysia.

Mr Pompeo renewed Mr Trump’s criticism of international institutions and the President’s calls for “strong borders” to protect national sovereignty.

“New winds are blowing across the world,” Mr Pompeo said, speaking by video after his trip was scuttled by the ongoing US government shutdown.

He said in recent years “voters have tuned out politicians and political alliances that they thought were not representing their interests”.

He cited Mr Trump’s 2016 election and Britain’s referendum to leave the EU, as well as more recent election triumphs by Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

More surprisingly, he pointed to the 2017 election in France of President Emmanuel Macron, a political centrist who broke out of the party system but who has been beleaguered by protests from the “yellow vest” movement that says he is out of touch.

Mr Pompeo also listed as an example of the world’s new directions last year’s electoral comeback of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad after corruption allegations against his predecessor.

Reuters, AFP