Science Friday - David Attenborough, China’s Moon Mission, COVID Approved In U.K. Dec 4, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

David Attenborough Observes A Natural World In Crisis If you were to make a list of celebrities of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough would most likely make the cut. You probably know him from television series such as Life on Earth, The Secret Life of Plants, Living Planet, and so many more. Now, at age 94, he’s written a new book, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and Vision for the Future, and filmed an accompanying Netflix documentary. The book and film talk about the changes to the natural world in the time he’s been alive—from overfishing, to deforestation, to climate change—and urge us to adopt a more sustainable future. David Attenborough and BBC producer and science writer Jonnie Hughes join Ira to talk about the challenges the world is facing today, and steps we can take toward sustainability. Read an excerpt of Attenborough’s new book. China’s Chang’e-5 Lander Touches Down On The Moon It was an historic week for space news. On Tuesday, China’s Chang’e-5 lander touched down on the moon’s near-side, near Mons Rumker, a mountain in the “Ocean of Storms” region. Over the course of two days, the lander collected several kilograms of lunar soil—the first samples collected in over 40 years. If all goes well, the Chang’e-5 ascension module and its cargo will reunite with the orbiter on December 6th.   Also this week, a video from the control tower of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico captured the moment its final cable snapped. The platform came crashing down on the dish, effectively ending the future—but not the legacy—of this iconic observatory. Ira and Loren Grush, senior science reporter for The Verge, pay tribute, and discuss the historic space news of the week. This Wednesday, the United Kingdom announced approval for a COVID-19 vaccine through an emergency authorization, beating out the U.S. and most other countries. The vaccine is being produced by the U.S. pharma company Pfizer and German partner BioNTech. And the first U.K. vaccinations may start as early as next week.  Nsikan Akpan of National Geographic talks about how this vaccine works and what it means for the vaccination schedule for the rest of the world.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, an update on a busy week in space news and a conversation with naturalists for David Attenborough. But first, this Wednesday, the UK announced approval for a COVID-19 vaccine through an emergency authorization, beating out the U.S. and most other countries. The vaccine is being produced by the U.S. pharma company Pfizer and German partner Bio-NTech, and the first UK vaccinations may start as early as next week. So what do we know about this vaccine? And what does it mean for the vaccination schedule for the rest of the world? C. Kanakpan is here to fill us in.

He's science editor for National Geographic based in Washington, D.C. Welcome back. Hey, Ira. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Let's talk about how the UK was able to quickly move through with this approval. So the United Kingdom conducted what's called a rolling review, which meant that they could look at Pfizer's clinical trial data at the same time that they were checking the quality of the company's manufacturing process. And so typically you would have one of those things come after the other. But by combining them and sort of doing them in overlapping time periods, they were able to really expedite the process. And it's huge. I mean, it's a it's a, it's a, it's a, It's enormous that we've had an approval this fast. What do we know about the Pfizer vaccine and how it works? Right, yeah.

So this is such a historic milestone because, you know, not only do we have an improved COVID-19 vaccine in under a year, it's a huge win for MRNA vaccines. You know, so researchers have been seeking MRNA vaccines for human use since I was listening to Ace of Base cassette tapes, you know, and going to skate nights. See, that is a while. Exactly. And going to skate nights at my roller ring. And yeah, I mean, it's wild.

You know, after 25 years of hunting, we might have not one, but two MRI vaccines in less than a year. If you include the candidate from Moderna, just on Thursday, Moderna released some data to the New England Journal of Medicine that showed that about three dozen people from one of its early trials still had a pretty robust immune response after three months. And now the British media are reporting that Pfizer doses are going to arrive like right now, like as we're speaking. And 800,000 doses could be in the country next week. Let's talk about what groups in the UK are being prioritized to receive the vaccine first. The first batch is they're going to go to what health regulators called residents in care homes

for older adults and also to the health care personnel that work in those homes. Then after that, they're saying that it'll go to people over the age of 80 and then front-line health care workers and social care workers. And then from there, the priority list continues downward for vulnerable groups through age for basically anybody who's over the age of 16. And there are reports of the vaccine is slowly trickling into the U.S. How is it going to be distributed here? It appears that each state will be making its own rules about distribution. Yeah, I mean, the CDC is going to give umbrella guidance for all of the states to follow.

You know, they're going to recommend a vaccine for everyone, and that's going to sort of dictate which vaccines will be covered by Medicare and also private health insurance. But then, yes, states are probably going to have to go it alone in terms of acquiring doses of the vaccine. I'm sure that the CDC and some other U.S. health organizations like the U.S. Health Department will try to acquire some public doses as well. But, yes, states are really going to have to work on securing their own supplies. And when might we see the first doses coming to the U.S.? Yeah, so National Geographic is actually running a story today on that very topic.

You know, it looks like the U.K.'s decision might mean that some countries fall behind in terms of being able to secure their vaccine supplies, and that would include the United States. So I spoke with a slew of vaccine experts this week that warned that the UK's decision may now trigger a domino effect where other countries start jockeying for approvals. The competition will not only, you know, reduce access for poor nations for months, potentially for years, but it will probably affect how richer countries like the United States when they can receive their vaccine doses. This is happening because in recent months, wealthier nations have pre-purchased just huge amounts of the vaccines that are being promised by the frontrunner makers. So Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca.

Some research out of Duke University has shown that, you know, of the 9.8 billion doses that vaccine makers have committed to make, three of every four have already been purchased. And more than half of those doses are dedicated to well-off countries because of these deals. at Duke University, the Global Health Innovation Center is tracking the scale of what I think can be called hoarding. It's pretty unbelievable. So the United States has already secured enough doses to vaccinate its population twice over. For the UK, it's thrice. And for Canada, you know, are typically courteous cousins to the north, they could offer five full doses to all of its 38 million citizens and have some left over.

So what does this mean for lower income countries who might not be able to bid on these vaccines? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be sort of tough for them because a lot of those countries are banking on this WHO co-led program called COVA, which is an initiative that's supposed to secure 20% of the vaccine needs for anybody who signs on to the program. And so 172 countries, including some wealthy nations, have signed on. to covex, you know, to help fund the program. But the donations are coming in really slow. So the covex program actually has only been able to secure about 10% of the available vaccine supply. And so, you know, you know, somebody at Duke told me that, you know, it could be three to four years before the whole globe is able to reach herd immunity, meaning that every single little nook in the world has about 60 to 70% coverage with, with the vaccine.

And the thing is that if there's cases anywhere that could present potential threats everywhere. I mean, that's something we've seen with measles. It's something that we used to see with smallpox. I mean, it's a really big deal. You know, a Pfizer spokesperson told us that they fully support the Kovacs program. But Duke University, their analysis showed that 95% of Pfizer's already committed supply has been purchased by high-income nations. And because Britain has this early approval, they're probably going to have first dibs at those batches, which are going to be coming out bit by bit as the manufacturing process ramps up. And there's no guarantee at the moment that Pfizer is going to hold on to the vaccine to satisfy their other deals in sort of a fair and equitable way. right you know they could just start giving out doses to the UK because it's already approved and then you know if they they sort of run out of doses before the next batch is made then it could affect you

know even when the U.S. is able to get some of its doses so I mean it's a huge issue people want to know more they should go to our website our coronavirus coverage website at National Geographic because the story is pretty wild and how will the other vaccine companies help uh out the vaccine. For example, Moderna is right behind Pfizer, right, in getting approval, FDA approval. Will that sort of ease the restrictions and the limitations? Yeah, no, so Moderna's commitments are sort of in a similar place as Pfizer. Many of them are going to high-income nations. I mean, that could be because the supply chain infrastructure in those places, you know, there's been the, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have to be kept in ultra-eastern.

cold freezers just to begin with. And so, you know, countries with more resources are going to have more of those freezers. So maybe they're just thinking, yeah, the logistics will be better for them. Well, you're seeing a couple that are sort of being promised to what's typically described as the global south, you know, a lot of low, middle income nations. And so that's the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. So about half of their supply is dedicated to high income countries right now. but the rest would go to those lower income countries. Another thing that we're kind of overlooking is that China is actually moving pretty fast with their vaccine development as well,

and they've made some commitments to lower income countries as well. Okay, Sikon, let's move on to your next story. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've heard that the timeline for quarantining people possibly exposed to COVID-19 is 14 days. It's always been two weeks. But now the CDC has revised that guideline. Tell us about that. The safest thing that anybody can do is quarantine for 14 days before they see anybody

who's high risk. But if you can't do that for whatever reason, they're now telling people to quarantine for seven days, if you're not showing symptoms, and then also get tested, right, because we know that the average person will show up on a PCR test for COVID-19 within five to six days, right? So we're pretty sure that that'll work for the average person. But then on top of that, their second recommendation is that, okay, if you don't have access to testing, and this is a really important point, if you don't have access to testing, wait 10 days, really monitor your symptoms, and then if you don't have any,

you can break quarantine without getting tested. And the reason that they recommend that is because we know that 97 to 98% of people, if they're going to show symptoms and if they're going to test positive, are going to do so around day 10 or day 11. And I think the other thing that's important to point out is that these recommendations are just for quarantine. If you catch the virus, if you're a confirmed case, your rules are completely different, and you have to isolate for a different schedule of time.

So people who are confirmed cases, like the new quarantine guidelines, weren't for you. Part of the reason is that we know, according to the science, that if we do this, if we shorten the quarantines, that we won't really lose anything. terms of preventing cases and community spread. Always good to have Sikon reporting on stuff for us. I appreciate it. Thank you. Sikon Akpan is Science Editor for National Geographic based in Washington. We're going to take a break.

And when we come back, a robotic Chinese moon explorer loaded with lunar soil is on its way back to Earth. And then when the sample was retrieved, it transferred into the ascent module, which then acted like a mini rocket that took off from the lander and then met up with the service module that was still in orbit around the moon. Yeah, details of this historic mission. After the break, stay with us. Hey there, folks. It goes without saying this has been a challenging year, no. And if there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the need for fact-based journalism and the need for science are stronger than ever. At a time when science is,

continually called into question, Science Friday remains committed to filtering out the noise and discussing the evidence supporting the science that you need to make informed decisions. You know that demand for Science Friday this year was higher than ever, but you may not know that your donations are what's keeping us running. And right now, Science Friday has a dollar-for-dollar donation match, which means that any donations will do. be doubled. So, if you have a few dollars to spare and agree that this world could use more science, please support Science Friday with a donation. Any amount makes a difference. Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash give. That's science friday.com slash give. Thank you and stay safe.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. This week, perhaps the final chapter in the saga of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was written. The NSF, which owns the radio telescope, had plans to decommission it after two support cables snapped in recent weeks, causing irrevocable damage to its dish. Tuesday came the awful sound astronomers had feared. A video from Arisibo's control tower captured the moment the final cable snapped, and the platform came crashing down on the dish. effectively ending the mission, but not the legacy of this iconic observatory. This hour will search for answers about why this had to happen,

but first we'll discuss a more positive entry into the space history books. On Tuesday, China's Chuna 5 spacecraft landed on the surface of the moon. Its mission, to collect the first samples off the lunar surface in over 40 years. The lander touched down near a mountain in the Ocean of Storms region of the Moon's near side. Over the course of two days, the lander collected two kilograms of lunar soil, and if all goes well, will reunite with its return ride to Earth this weekend. Lauren Grush, senior science reporter for The Verge, is here with the historic details. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Now, the Chinese have landed on the moon before,

right, but never to pick up the dirt and bring it home. Right. This is their third time landing on the moon. The last time they landed on the moon was back in 2019 when they actually were the first to put a robot on the far side of the moon. But this time, yes, they're actually going to bring back a sample of material so that we can study it here on Earth. So it's got a scoop or what? How does it do that? So the Changa Five spacecraft is actually four spacecraft in one. When they launched, they all journeyed to the moon together to insert themselves into lunar orbit. And the- then two spacecraft broke away a lander and an ascent module while the service module stayed in orbit. That basically has the propulsion and the solar panels on it.

The lander and the ascent module went down to the surface together with the ascent module kind of perched on the lander's head, if you will. And the lander is the one equipped with the tools to actually get the sample. The lander that they just landed on the moon has a robotic arm and on it it has mechanism. to dig and to scoop up material. And then when the sample was retrieved, it transferred into the ascent module, which then acted like a mini rocket

that took off from the lander and then met up with the service module that was still in orbit around the moon. And then together, they'll travel to Earth and eventually the fourth spacecraft, a re-entry capsule, will take the sample and return that to Earth. and its plan is to land somewhere in Inner Mongolia when it comes back down.

Pretty cool. What is this schedule for this? When can we expect the sample to come back to Earth? So it's all happening very quickly. Chango 5 launched at the end of November, and it's going to happen in less than a month because the mission is not designed to last very long on the lunar surface. They do not intend to last throughout the lunar night, which is a two-week. period when the moon is plunged into darkness and temperatures reach below minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit. So they're trying to get this all happening very quickly. And I believe we should have these samples, if all goes well, back on Earth in mid-December. What is different about these samples from those of the astronauts collected back in the 70s? So everyone's really excited

about where China has landed for this mission, this part of the moon, they believe is actually a lot younger because it's smoother. So they believe that there's been some late-stage volcanic activity on this portion of the moon. And so getting samples from this area would go a long way and telling us more about the history of the moon, how it evolved over time, and, you know, how our Earth-moon system has evolved in that time frame. Is there any concern that the Chinese won't share the data it collected with the global scientific community? I think there's always concerned, but that hasn't been the case in the past. You know, we've always gotten the data from China's previous moon missions.

They've also gotten a little bit more transparent with this mission, too. We actually had a live stream of the launch. They had a live stream of the landing, but that cut out just before it occurred. But they've been sharing a lot of updates about this mission. And so I don't think anyone should have any fears that what they collect will be guarded or secret. I think they're being a lot more open with this mission than the missions of the past. One of the great mysteries about the moon is how it was formed. We're really not quite sure of the exact process.

Do we think maybe that these samples might help give us some clues to that mystery? Yeah, absolutely. You know, any new sample, any new material that we get from the moon is just another piece of this, massive jigsaw puzzle about how the moon formed, how it came to be, and how it looks like the moon that we see in the sky. The moon is a fairly big place, and while we have gotten samples from there, each sample is different. Each part of the moon is different. And so getting samples from an area of the moon that we've never been to before is just going to be a fantastic prize for the science community. You know, I think this news caught a lot of people unawares. Did it come as a bit of a surprise?

Well, it might have come to a surprise for those who aren't following the Chinese lunar program, but for those that have been following it, this is not much of a surprise. China has been working towards these lunar missions over time, and they have a very long-term plan about how they intend to explore the moon, and what they're doing with these missions is just building incrementally upon them. For instance, with this particular mission, it's a very complex mission. They've actually sent four spacecraft. And a lot of people are taking note that it has a very similar mission profile to that

of the Apollo missions. So there's speculation of whether or not they're testing out capabilities that they'll eventually need when they put astronauts on the lunar surface. So that might be the endgame here to put people on the moon. And would it be for political bragging rights like the race with the Soviet Union and the Americans was in the 60s? or are they thinking of commerce there or setting up a moon base or something like that? I think anytime we go into space, there always is some kind of bragging rights involved.

But it's certainly more, I think, for China just building on their capabilities and pushing their abilities in space further. So I think it's a mixture of both. But they're definitely trying to explore and do a lot of important science with these lunar missions. So I think it's a combination of all the reasons we go into space, right? Politics, science, and just seeing what we're capable of. Let's talk about the American Space Program. Are we still prioritizing a lunar mission?

NASA announced plans under the Trump administration to put the first woman on the moon by 2024. How is that going? So that is still very much a priority for NASA. And I don't see that not being a priority as we change administration. but of course, you know, things always can change once we get new presidents in office. But yes, for now, NASA is still very much focused on its Artemis program. It'll just be interesting to see what kind of tweaks might happen once a new administration takes office. Big tweak might be that Elon Musk and SpaceX beats everybody there.

That's always a speculation, but, you know, I'll leave it when I see it. And there are other countries interested in lunar exploration too. I'm thinking specifically of India, which had a failure recently, but is planning a soft landing soon, right? Yeah, I think the moon is a very enticing exploration goal just because it's close, but it's not that close. So it is very challenging to get to. But a lot of the countries around the world are at the capability where they are able to reach the moon these days. And so that makes it a very great goal to reach. And like I said earlier, there's still so much to learn from the moon.

So going there does have tremendous benefit in terms of proving out spacecraft capability and also getting materials and learning and processing data that the science community really wants. As long as I have you here, and I know you cover space and related space news. There was important space news this week. And I'm talking about the Arecibo Abuse. observatory collapsing this week after slowly falling apart. Why was it allowed to sort of degrade like this over the years? Well, I think it did catch the engineers and the operators of Erecebo by surprise. It all started when a cable broke in August, and that started kind of a chain reaction of events

where they noticed that these other cables that were kind of keeping the entire observance, up and stable were actually starting to fray and then a second cable snapped in November and they did a full assessment of the structure and they found that it was actually on the verge of collapse and so the platform falling on the dish was actually not unexpected they they thought it would happen it was just a matter of when and they were hoping to demolish the structure in a safe way before that happened, but unfortunately, the collapse came before that could occur. Well, that's my point. Why demolish an iconic telescope when you, if you had paid more attention to it, you might be able to save it? I think there are going to be a lot of questions about that right now.

It's unclear, you know, what kind of maintenance was being done. You know, the Erescebo folks say that, you know, they were trying to upkeep the facility, but it really just kind of all happened really quickly at the end of this year. So there's going to be a lot of questions for them, especially as they move forward and try to clean this up. And hopefully we can get to the bottom of it. I'm hoping some white night shows up with private or foundation money and saves it and rebuild it. So that's my own, my own wish having been there and walked around the grounds and seen what a treasure it has been and the kinds of explorations it has done and the materials it has brought back.

That's, we'll see. That'll be my New Year's hope. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you so much for having me. Lauren Grush, senior science reporter for The Verge, talking about space with us. When you make a list of celebrities of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough would most likely make the cut. You know him from series such as Life on Earth and Living Planet and so many more. He was named among the 100 Greatest Britons, and now at age 94, a new book, a life on our planet, My Witness Statement and Vision for the Future, published by Grand Central Publishing, and as an extra added bonus, there's an accompanying Netflix documentary.

Sir David joins me, along with Science Writer and Director Johnny Hughes, co-author of the book, co-director of the documentary. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sir David, you've been observing the natural world for 94 years now and chronicling its changes. Give us an idea of what are some of the most important changes that you have seen.

Well, of course, if you really want to look at planetary change, you have to generalize. It's very dangerous just to look at one particular place and say, there you are. That's the result of global warming or whatever. But there was one moment. I was absolutely sure that what I was seeing was global warming. And that was a dead coral reef, bleached white, because of the rising temperatures. and it was a reef which I happened to know I've been swimming on in previous years

so I knew how glorious it was and then you go over the side of the boat and look around and there's nothing but white coral and no fish or very few fish that was death in the ocean and that was the first time that I could really honestly say that I knew a global warming had come

Of course, intellectually, I mean, one would have been perfectly well aware of the other things, because you look at graphs and you look at statistics and you look at maps and you know. But that was it in a very vivid and uncompromising way. I know we're talking about the climate crisis and that is certainly an indication of it. But you say that the climate is only part of a crisis that we're facing. Well, of course, it started awareness of it, started as far as I was concerned, back in the sixes and the 70s, I suppose, when one was becoming aware of the loss of species, that the numbers of animals in Africa had been diminishing since the 19th century, and now some of them were disappearing altogether, or at least from where one was watching, they weren't there anymore. I suppose that was the first time that you began to start thinking about the fact that humanity had already exterminated dodoes and things of that and that kind, which you thought was a historical accident. And then suddenly we began to realize that species loss was only one small aspect of it. And then you suddenly began to learn statistics about the warming of the oceans and the warming of the climate and carbon dioxide and so on.

And suddenly you realize this was not, or at least suddenly the public at large realized this wasn't just naturalists getting concerned because they never saw an animal in which they happened to be particularly fond. It wasn't a quirky thing. It wasn't a specialist thing. It was a global thing. And that's a profound realization. Yeah, I'll bet it was. Johnny Hughes in the book, you talk about the classic demonstration of bacteria in a petri dish growing. slowly until they've worked out the challenges of how to best exploit the resources there,

and then rapidly expanding. Has humanity solved its challenges too well, do you think? Well, certainly some of them. And yeah, I think, you know, it is apt. It might be a little bit to clean a parallel, but we've certainly overcome a lot of the challenges we've faced in terms of our existence and how. You know, we've managed to massively increase and improve our ability to produce food for ourselves and keep ourselves safe and operate in different environments. And it's led to a point where, well, just like the bacteria, in fact, in the pet tradition, the lab, we become unrestricted and are able to not only multiply, but also consume more each of us individually. And that's been the trend. And I guess what we're

seen in the latter of the 20th century, the graphs, as David referred to, it does matter what you look at, whether you look at extent of deforestation or food production yields or amount of fishing or consumption of fossil fuels, the graph shoots up. It goes, well, exponential in most cases, and that's very similar to the growth of bacteria. When they crack how to live on a particular food source, and of course that carries on until they get to the edge of the petri dish. and I guess what we're seeing now with the collapse of planetary systems is that the planet is our petri dish, and we've got to the edge of it. We have to take a break.

We'll be back with more of Sir David Attenborough and Johnny Hughes in a moment. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. In case you're just joining us, we're talking with Sir David Attenborough and science writer Johnny Hughes about their new book and Netflix documentary, A Life of a Life of a Life. on our planet. Sir David, in the book, you interspers some moments from your own career as a broadcaster, like the story of your encounter with the guerrillas Diane Fosse was studying. Tell us about that, please. That was for a series called Life on Earth, which you referred to, and I wanted to

make the point about the opposable thumb and the fact that the opposable forefinger and thumb, which gave you a grip, which you had to do if you were a primate clamming around in trees and trying to pluck fruit and leaves, how that could equally well be used for holding tools. And once you could hold tools, where you could hold a pen and so on. So that was the hinge moment when the pathway to humanity was clear. And I thought, well, we must think of an ape that we could do that. And I thought we'd do it with chimpanzees. But the producer concerned said, no, we could do it with chimps all very well,

but gorillas, very few people have seen them in film, filmed in the wild. And I heard of this extraordinary American scientist who had habituated some. And I said, she'll never allow us to come there. No, you wouldn't want, if you were a scientist, you wouldn't want anyone. But he wrote, and she welcomed us. And so we were able to do what we wanted to do because she had habituated. though she was very ill at the time and couldn't come with us. And I crawled into a position whereby I had got a gorilla behind me or some distance behind me.

And they were doing what I wanted them to do with the opposable thumb. And we were doing fine. And I had just positioned myself to speak. And suddenly I felt a hand come on the top of my head. and a big heavy hand and then a huge back finger came along opened my mouth pushed my finger

and pushed my lower jaw down and looked inside my mouth and this was an immense female gorilla and all thoughts of the opposable thumb disappeared rather quickly and I actually I mean I was in paradise really I mean it was delirium

I mean it was an extraordinary privilege and not for one micro second was I concerned about safety because she was clearly, clearly, amiable, gentle, merely interested to see me. And I sort of lay back and she investigated my face and one thing another. And then I felt a weight on my feet. And there were her little babies, two of them. And they started undoing my shoes.

And I couldn't talk about the opposable thumb then either. Eventually, they crawled away. And how long it was, I don't know. I really don't know. But I would think it was five, ten minutes. But it was in paradise. And I was so emotionally exhausted as a consequence of it. I simply couldn't go on and talk anything else.

that I crawled back to the crew. And they had actually laid off filming because they didn't know how much film they got on the machine at the time, on the camera. And so they'd only got about, I don't know, a couple of minutes of what was, I think, about at least 10. But it was a moment of profound importance in my life privately.

But it also, of course, a huge sensation when it was shown on television. I mean, it's a commonplace now, but it wasn't then. You have been to so many places and seen so many things. Are there ones that stand out to you like this one, another one, more than all the rest? That's the one, really. That is the one.

But there are lots of others. I mean, you go to the Galapagos. Well, hundreds of thousands of people go to Galapagos, but each of us, I think, who go there, find it absolutely breathtaking that you can sit alongside birds that are not in the least frightened of you sitting in nesting birds and they just I mean it's it's heaven for a filmmaker because they just sit there let you film but also I mean swimming with marine iguanas is an extraordinary sensation and with seals or sea lions on with those Galapagos tameness is also an unforgettable experience.

I was interested in the beginning of your film, where you open up in a desolate school in Chernobyl. That must have been really scary. Yes, and no. No? Yes and no, because, I mean, it wasn't deserted. I mean, there were a lot of green things there. There weren't a lot of birds, I have to say,

and nor were there a lot of insects. but I didn't hear them. But the really evocative things was walking through the buildings and in the school, for example, seeing kids' notebooks on the floor just where they had left them. I mean, they came in and they said,

everybody leave within hours. And so the place is all sorts of things lying around. I mean, there's a playground there with a roundabout. and just rusting away and blowing in the wind. And it's very creepy from that point of view. You end your film on a very cautiously hopeful note. You show us your vision of how we've lost diversity of species on the planet. You talk about how we are headed in global warming to perhaps catastrophic end,

yet you end on a very cautiously hopeful note. Why is that? Well, because I think it's the case. I think both Johnny and I think that this is really the case that we can get out of this. We're not going to get out of it back to standards of the 1920s or anything, but we can escape disaster if we act. And that's why COP, which is coming up at the end of the next year here in Britain, is so important. And it's almost our last chance, it seems to me, that we're going to be able to get back into some kind of stability and prevent the disasters, which we show clearly in the film and the book. Johnny, do you agree with that?

I know as a writer and producer, you must have had some idea about where you were going to end the book and the film. Yeah, I do agree. I think the possibility is there. And just as we were talking about earlier, human beings, we can solve problems when we're faced with them. That's the thing we do do. We can change the world. That's what got us into this mess is we have this power and ability to change the entire planet. So we can turn all of that capability to get us out of this problem as well.

We uniquely perhaps have this ability to assess our surroundings and forecast the future. And I guess that's what David and I were trying to do in the book and in the film is to give what science now predicts is going to be the future if we don't change. And it's terrifying enough for sure to stimulate a different kind of reaction in us. And I think the signs are there that we're seeing that, that awareness is now rippling out. And we're all of a sudden understanding the scale of what's going on. and we have the solutions. So we just need to put them in place. Sir David, so much of humanity gauges its success by growth. I recall a phrase from the 60s that I've always brought with me. And it went something like growth for the sake of growth

is the philosophy of a cancer cell. Is it time we look to different measures of success and can we be successful in looking for that measure? We have to. The other old joke is, of course, that we live in finite circumstances or the world is finite. Anyone thinks you can have infinite growth in the finite circumstances is either mad or an economist. And that's true. And we have to have a different form to our economics. We cannot go on expanding infinitely. We cannot go on consuming. finite resources of the earth. The space on the face of the earth is finite. You can't go on going, increasing your numbers and consuming the rest of the world. And as you say, growth has been at the bedrock of economic theory and political practice for a long, long time. That's now got to change. You are very hopeful, as I said before, and as you pointed out at the end of your film, and you actually show concrete ways that we might change our habits.

You show how we might be able to grow food indoors in different places of the world. Are those things actually adaptable to other countries, do you think? Well, we must all react in different ways, mustn't we? I mean, it is absolutely clear that we can't all eat red meat in the way that we have been doing in the West. for a very long time. We cannot go on doing that. There isn't the space. I'm hopeless at remembering statistics,

and Johnny is much better than I am. Do you know, Johnny, can you think offhand? Yeah, sure. There's lots of different studies out there, but they're really big, reliable studies, the UN, the IPBES, and the Lancet did one as well. So there are statistics such as we currently use

an area the size of both North America, and South America globally to raise livestock. That's literally fields with cows in them, for example, but also the feed that we have to grow to overwinter them. It's a huge amount of space. And statistics show that if we all turned plant-based or vegetarian, we would need something like 40% of the land that we need currently to raise the food that we eat.

So it's a significant reduction in space. And the interesting thing is that certainly in Britain, I think the number of people who have either reduced or stopped eating red meat has been growing and growing and growing. I certainly haven't eaten red meat for a long time. I eat fish and I've eaten fowl. And actually, at a point, I think you can justify eating on ecological grounds, you could justify eating pork. but beef, I've not eaten it for a long time. And I didn't do it with a kind of intellectual, cold, intellectual thought and said, right, I'm going to do it from the 1st of January or whatever. I just find that I'm not eating, my diet has changed.

And that's, I think an awful lot of people are finding that. An awful lot of people in the world, of course, away from the Western countries, don't eat meat at all or at least very small the amount of meat. So it's a Western habit to eat as much meat as we do, red meat as we do. Do you see this giving up of red meat as something that is highly doable by people and might be the single biggest thing that they themselves can do? It is one of the things that can. I mean, there are lots of small things we can do. People ask me, I say, yeah, what do you can do?

It was not stop waste, stop wasting things, stop wasting gas, stop wasting electricity, not wasting paper, stop wasting plastic and dumping it in the sea, and stop wasting food. And if we all were actually more economical in what we did and didn't go in for excessive waste or even the display of excessive waste, which has been the characteristic of Western civilization for some time, we would be better off and we're living within our means. At the moment, we are not living within our means as far as the world is concerned. I'm Ira Plato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Johnny, what do you think?

Yeah, I just think that all of us in the West, we can think about where our money goes with more care and concern. So we're all banking with a bank, and many of us have pensions. And if you look at the way finance, works, pension funds have an enormous share of the capital on earth. Therefore, if we choose banks and pension funds and insurance funds, etc., and investments that have an ethical side to them so that they will claim not to invest in, say, fossil fuel extraction or not to invest in businesses where there's deforestation attached or overfishing attached, that makes a huge difference.

And we're seeing that already that the customers of today are being more discerning about where their money sits. And it will have a very quick effect on the market and the landscape of finance. And that has a very speedy effect on the real world as well. At age 94, do you have any thoughts of retirement? Or do you think that the global crisis is so bad that you need to continue to talk about it? I can't pretend that I'm that kind of driven person. It seems to me that if you get to whatever age you are and you can still put two words together and still walk about and still, I hope, put two thoughts together, then you should do so

because life's so much more interesting when you do that, rather than just sitting back and saying, well, that's the end. I never enjoyed work anyway. I had a marvelous, fantastic, extraordinarily lucky life and doing wonderful things. been able to see amazing things. And to be able to write about them and think about them and experience them is a huge privilege. So why would I stop in order to just to sit in the corner and trittle my thumbs? Johnny Hughes, you have worked with Sir David. What do you like most about him?

I would have got it. My freedom with chocolate. Well, I would say that, I mean, he's been a hero of ice since I was a kid, so, you know, it's difficult to ask that question. But in terms of working with him, I think, you know, the energy that David does for work and for getting something to the highest standards are incredible. And, you know, David will be very happy to continue working during a working day when we're filming or writing way beyond the time. I've become exhausted. So that's a hugely admirable ability, I think. Well, I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us. We have unfortunately run out of time. It was a great discussion. I'd like to thank my guest this hour, naturalist explorer and broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough,

and science writer and director John Hughes, co-author of the book, A Life on Our Planet, my witness statement and a vision for the future, published by Grand Central Publishing, and co-director of the documentary of the same name, now streaming on Netflix. I highly recommend this film. It's really terrific. I want to thank both of you for taking time to stay up late and join us today. Thank you. Many thanks. Charles Berkwurst is our director. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, and Kathleen Davis. B.J. Leederman composed our theme music. If you any part of the program, or we'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts, or ask your

smart speaker to play Science Friday. And on the Science Friday Voxpop app, there was a lot of science news this year. We want to know what 2020 science stories captivated you the most. Tell us your favorite stories on Vox Pop and get a chance to be part of our show in the weeks ahead. That's on the Science Friday Voxpop app wherever you get your apps. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.