On this day in vegan history · May 8, 1926
David Attenborough Is Born
The boy born in a house on a college campus in Middlesex grew up to spend a lifetime filming the natural world, then used his own name and seven decades of footage to tell people to eat less meat.
The facts
- Born
- 8 May 1926, Isleworth, Middlesex, England
- TV career began
- 1954, as host of Zoo Quest
- Key film
- David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, released on Netflix 4 October 2020
- Directors
- Alastair Fothergill, Jonnie Hughes, and Keith Scholey
David Frederick Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England. His presenting career began as host of Zoo Quest in 1954, and he spent the following decades narrating the BBC's landmark nature series, becoming the most recognizable voice attached to wildlife on television. In 2020 he released the documentary film A Life on Our Planet, which he called his "witness statement": a reckoning with the decline he had personally watched unfold, and an argument that farming and diet needed to change to leave room for the rest of life on Earth. In it, he told viewers plainly that a planet feeding billions of meat-eaters could not also hold onto its wild places.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
We must change our diet. The planet can't support billions of meat-eaters.
David Attenborough, in A Life on Our Planet (2020)
Source: Green Queen -
witness statement
David Attenborough, describing A Life on Our Planet (2020)
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
When one of the most trusted, least preachy voices in broadcasting names meat consumption as a driver of the biodiversity crisis, it moves the case for eating less of it out of activist circles and into a Netflix film watched by a mainstream global audience.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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