The Global Misbehaviour on ‘Our Blue Planet’
The poet Thomas Gray’s famous line, “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise” could be argued to be one of the most dangerous literary phrases of our time. The mentality that there is safety in our neglect to address certain aspects of life is one that people fail to acknowledge as being vastly outdated. Specifically, society’s environmental ignorance has, for far too long, been particularly blissful.
This Winter saw the confrontingreturn of Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet’ series, appropriately and rather ironically titled ‘Blue Planet II’. The team journeyed beyond the recognitions of previous documentaries and even those of fellow scientific experts today, sparking a tidal wave of ground-breaking knowledge that flooded out of millions of television sets around the world.
Be that as it may, the very brutal truth it served to disillusion us to is that there is no second planet. There is no ‘Blue Planet’ two, three or four. As much as we are fascinated by these documentaries, their production is in direct response to our own environmental misbehaviour. The longer they continue to appear on our screens, the longer we continue to ignore their message and call for change.
Such incredible shots, seamless movements and the transfixing pace of each episode is all of a great credit to the crew but can also contribute to a distancing of their content from reality. More and more we are seeing Attenborough out in the field alongside these natural landscapes himself, as if to prove their contaminated existence. In particular, his epilogue to the last episode, sought to clarify this realism. People adopt the mind-set as though they are watching a work of fiction and whilst, these consequences seem trapped behind our screens, they are real and are happening right now.
This is selective ignorance. Many of us, as members of the colossal, premiere audience of 14.1 million viewers, cannot deny the truth we have been presented with. This includes many key figures of influence in our government. Dozens of MPs have signed a motion to acknowledge Sir David Attenborough’s contribution to this great awareness made by the documentary. Theresa May even bestowed the box set to China’s President, Xi Jinping which included a special, personal message from Sir Attenborough himself.
One should argue that there are many more people who could benefit from such a gesture, unfortunately, a great number of whom possess the most influence and power on the issue. To President Donald Trump, for example, as a famous ‘climate change denier’, the productive building of wind turbines stand only as a threat to the further blissful views from his infinite number of golf courses. By pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, so as to reassert America’s dominance as a key financial party, environmental ignorance has become Trump’s mode of economic bliss.
It doesn’t seem too coincidental to suggest that the seniority of our national and international leaders has been a contributing factor to the level of our political involvement in the environmental sector. Both Trump and May are over the age of 60 and you only have to look at the Conservative, British cabinet to see an extension of this trend. According to the BBC, the average age of those attending cabinet meetings is 50, presenting a potential explanation for our trailing efforts.
The primary pillar of sustainable development is intergenerational equality, being widely defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Hence, being led by a government who will play no physical part in the future they are shaping on our behalf carries a potential to impede this aspect. It is going to take a youthful engagement in such areas of politics, along with a recognition of the lasting responsibility of the current parliament, to ensure the sustainability of our future, global prospects.
This is where the younger generation’s idolisation of ‘Blue Planet II’ becomes so significant. More young people watched the first episode of this series than ‘X Factor’ the same evening or any episode of ‘Love Island’. You may see teenagers and young adults walking around with Attenborough tees and caps and just assume it’s a trivial fashion trend, but this is the extent to which environmental advocacy has been incorporated into youth culture.
One day, the baton will be passed over and younger generations will have to know in which direction to take it, assuming it is a smooth exchange.
Ignorance is often adopted as a protective shield from an unwanted truth. However, this is one truth that is of course unwanted, but it is not fixed. Environmentalism is a personal responsibility and the truths that it targets, if addressed, do not have to ring true anymore.
