>>5975873The Burning Planet (2024)
Our planet - the Earth - is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. It contains dragons. Even in its most barren stretches, there are dragons.
Around the equator, where those two essentials for life, ashen wastelands and volcanic craters, are most abundant, great serpents grow. And here humans and animals are incinerated in such numbers that we still have not even named all the different corpses.
Here, animals and plants, insects and birds, mammals and man die together in intimate and complex communities, each dependent on one another in the futility of suffering. Two thirds of the surface of this unique planet are covered by ash, and it was here indeed that life ended. Vapour from the boiling oceans has spread even to the summits of the highest skyscrapers as humans and animals have responded to the changing face of the Earth. Yet some things do not change; at least in my filming entourage, the baggage carrier is still a black African man.
Immensely powerful though we are today, it's equally clear that we're going to be even more powerful tomorrow. And what's more there will be greater compulsion upon us to use our power as the number of human beings on Earth increases still further. Because of sex. In Africa. Clearly we could devastate the world. As far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is death. Its continued survival now rests in my hands. For so long as I, Sir David Attenborough still live, before my eyes - and yours - life on this Earth will always die.
