The earth is all the home I have,
The heavens my wide roof-tree. W E Aytoun, 1813-1865, Scottish lawyer & writer of ballads
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. William Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, 1807
This is the Earth. Our planet. Home to millions of different species. But only one species dominates everything. Human beings. There are nearly seven billion of us living on the Earth, and the human population in increasing by more than two people every second, two hundred thousand people every day. David Attenborough, Horizon: How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? BBC 2009
I was born in a world of just under two billion people. Today there are nearly seven billion. ibid.
We are beginning to see a levelling-off of agricultural yields. ibid.
You don’t need aggressive policies or government incentives for birth rates to fall. Everywhere in the world where women have access to education and have the freedom to run their own lives on the whole they and their partners are choosing to have smaller families than their parents did. ibid.
The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there’s a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I’ve been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species. David Attenborough, State of the Planet, BBC 2000
A hundred years ago there were one and a half billion people on Earth. Now over six billion crowd our fragile planet. But even so there are still places barely touched by humanity. This series will take you to the last wildernesses and show you the planet and its wildlife as you have never seen it before. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e1: Pole to Pole, BBC 2006
The Earth as it makes its annual journey round the sun spins on a tilted axis, and it’s this tilt that creates the seasons. ibid.
On the island of New Guinea there are forty-two different species of birds of paradise, each more bizarre than the last. ibid.
The sun rises once more over Antarctica. Now at last the Emperor penguins abandon their huddle. The males are still carrying the precious eggs that they’ve cherished throughout the Antarctic winter. With the returning sun the eggs hatch. ibid.
Most monkeys couldn’t live up here. No fruit and few insects to feed on. But chaladas are unique: they are the only monkeys in the world to live almost entirely on grass. They live in the largest assemblies formed by any monkeys; some groups are eight hundred strong, and they crop the high meadows like herds of wildebeest. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e2: Mountains
The puma: the lion of the Andes. Pumas are usually solitary and secretive ... Although the cubs are now as large of their mother they still rely on her for their food. ibid.
In the American Rockies 100,000 avalanches devastate the slopes every winter. ibid.
A grizzly bear: it seems to be an odd creature to find on these high rocky slopes ... They’re searching for a rather unusual food: moths. ibid.
All mountains everywhere are being worn down by frost, snow and ice. ibid.
Mont Blanc – the highest peak in western Europe. ibid.
The giant Baltoro glacier in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. It’s the biggest mountain glacier on Earth – forty-three miles long and over three miles wide. ibid.
A snow leopard – the rarest of Himalayan animals .... These are the first intimate images of snow leopard ever filmed in the wild. ibid.
Golden eagles patrol these cliffs in search of the weak or injured. ibid.
One inhabitant endures the bitter winters out in the open – most other bears would be sleeping underground by now but the Giant Panda can’t fatten up enough to hibernate. ibid.
The red panda – rarely seen in the wild. ibid.
On the highest summits of our planet nothing can live permanently. The highest peak of all – Mount Everest – five and a half miles above sea level and still rising. The roof of our world. Of those humans who have tried to climb it, one in ten have lost their lives. ibid.
The salmon have arrived. This is the world’s largest freshwater fish migration. Across the northern hemisphere salmon returning from the ocean to their spawning grounds battle their way for hundreds of miles upstream. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e3: Freshwater
Piranha can strip a fish to the bone in minutes. ibid.
This is our planet’s final frontier. An inner world where only the most adventurous dare to go. Beneath our feet are countless miles of cave shafts and passages. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e4: Caves
This is the biggest underground passage in the world ... It’s Deer Cave in Borneo. ibid.
The discovery of life that exists without drawing any of its energy from the sun shows us once again how complex and surprising the underground world can be. ibid.
A third of the land on our planet is desert. These great scars on the face of the Earth appear to be lifeless but surprisingly none are. In all of them life manages somehow to keep a precarious hold. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e5: Deserts
Darkness brings huge changes. In the Sahara the temperature can drop as much as thirty degrees during the night. ibid.
The Atacama in Chile: this is the driest desert in the world. Some parts may not see rain for fifty years. ibid.
Lizards are desert specialists. ibid.
Gigantic plagues several billion strong, and as much as forty miles wide. They will consume every edible thing that lies in their path. This is one of planet Earth’s greatest spectacles. It’s rarely seen on this scale and it won’t last long. ibid.
Vast numbers of chin-strapped penguins come ashore to breed. David Attenborough: Planet Earth e6: Ice Worlds
One creature is just arriving: every winter Emperor penguins leave the comfort of their ocean home and begin a remarkable journey: they head towards their breeding grounds almost a hundred miles inland. ibid.
Abandoned by the run, the males are left alone with their eggs to face the coldest, darkest winter on Earth. ibid.
The females are returning and their bellies are full with fish. As they approach, waves of excitement ripple through the huddle. Each female calls to her mate, and he, recognising her song, trumpets back. Reunited at last. ibid.
The chicks grow quickly on a diet of fish and squid. ibid.
Vast open plains: immense spaces. Eerie silence. But any feeling of emptiness is an illusion. The plains of our planet support the greatest gatherings of wildlife on Earth. At the heart of all that happens here is a single living thing: grass. This miraculous plant covers a quarter of all the lands of the Earth. Grasslands exist wherever there is a little rain but not enough to sustain the forests. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e7: Great Plains
With nothing to stand in its way the blaze consumes anything that can’t flee. ibid.
North America: this rich pasture once supported the greatest herds ever seen on our planet. There were once sixty million Bison. ibid.
Elephant grass is the tallest in the world. ibid.
The long grass plains of tropical India are home to some of the largest grass-eating mammals on our planet. And some of the smallest. ibid.
This is our planet’s hothouse: the jungle. The tropical rain forest. Forests like these occupy only 3% of the land, yet they are home to over half of the world’s species. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e8: Jungles
A male blue bird of paradise is advertising for a mate. It’s quite a performance. But he is not the only bird of paradise here keen to make an impression. There are nearly forty different kinds on the island of New Guinea. ibid.
A single hectare of rainforest may contain as many as two hundred and fifty species of tree. ibid.
Without fungi, rain forests could not exist. ibid.
80% of all insects live in jungles. ibid.
The secret of success in the competitive jungle is specialising. And this has led to the evolution of some intimate relationships between plants and animals. ibid.
Our planet’s continents are fringed with shallow seas. Rarely more than two hundred metres deep they lie on the continental shelves which may stretch sometimes for hundreds of miles before the sea floor drops into deep darker waters. All together they constitute a mere 8% of the world’s oceans, but they contain the vast majority of its marine life. David Attenborough, Planet Earth e9: Shallow Seas
Reefs are the work of polyps – tiny colonial animals like minute sea anemones. ibid.
Pygmy seahorses – the world’s smallest – less than two centimetres high. ibid.