Is our focus on climate change distracting us from saving the planet?

Credit to Euan Mearns who brought my attention to David Attenborough’s speech in his Energy Matters blog.

What would you say is the greatest environmental threat to our planet? If you answered “climate change”, then you’ve obviously been paying attention to the media the last ten or so years. Greenpeace would agree with you. And so, apparently, does Sir David Attenborough. British TV national treasure and naturalist superstar Attenborough appeared at COP24 3rd Dec 2018 to deliver this speech on behalf of the “People” (actually, a group of people on Twitter):

Now, I’m someone who believes that climate change is a real challenge — in fact, I spend a lot of my time campaigning for clean energy and the switch to cycling and clean transport — but I disagree with Sir David on where to place climate change on the list of problems faced by our planet. Let’s focus in on the key part in David’s speech:

Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate Change.

If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.