Interview: Speaking out for sustainability
Meet Chris Packham, the BBC wildlife presenter hailed as the next Sir David Attenborough. As a fiercely outspoken defender of biodiversity, Packham’s views sometimes pull him into the spotlight, but this devoted ambassador for nature won’t be silenced and his seemingly tireless efforts to wake the world up about the urgency of the climate crisis are nothing short of remarkable. On the day Labour U-turns on its £28 billion green investment pledge, Rosie Greenaway meets with the conservationist to discuss where society has gone wrong, his partnership with IBIS Rice, his vision for a better future and Taylor Swift’s carbon footprint.
Society knows him as the presenter of Springwatch, but it’s climate activism that governs this naturalist’s life, igniting his urgent sense of duty to ‘instigate the change we need’ in the face of ‘rapidly escalating’ impacts on the natural world. Reflecting on the state of his own garden, now halved due to flooding, Packham says there is ‘scientific evidence beyond ambiguity that extreme weather events are associated with climate breakdown’. “It’s clear that we’ve got to work far harder and more quickly.” A stable, sustainable future, he believes, can only be achieved through altered minds and practices – something hampered by public resistance and political inaction. But a ‘disappointing’ Labour U-turn on investment in renewables won’t keep this activist down; still, he fights – in the courts, in the media – for change, his comments often provoking furore. “I’m a confrontational person who needs to tell the truth. I don’t see any choice. Unfortunately we live in an age when too many people are concerned about their public profile; I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to make a difference.”
Positive impact
So why does he care so deeply? “I love life, I love the complexity and all of the ecology. I like everything that slithers, slides and crawls. I don’t want it on my conscience that I’ve allowed that life to be destroyed.” With the rapid decline of so many species, Packham fears he’s running out of time. “The graph isn’t slowing, it’s steepening.” In the UK alone, 16% of monitored species risk extinction; he points out that the formerly common hedgehog is now rarely seen in the wild. Further afield in Cambodia, the Wildlife Conservation Society has categorized the giant ibis as ‘critically endangered’ due to fewer than 200 birds remaining. In attempts to recover the species, organic brand IBIS Rice began a rainforest conservation project in Cambodia which empowers local farmers; in doing so it secured Packham as brand ambassador, drawn to the initiative because it provides a viable solution to deforestation, loss of species and poor working conditions for farmers who have been previously ‘robbed of their income’.
He asserts that in food consumption there is more to consider than mere mileage, and his personal philosophy is to spend ‘where it exacts a positive impact somewhere’. “If we went to the supermarket and didn’t eat food grown thousands of miles away we’d starve by the end of the week. Of course we’d all like to eat from the farm shop next door – it’s unrealistic. Rice is a staple all over the world. If no rice was being produced in China, Cambodia [and] India then people would go hungry. Every day when we open our fridge … the pound in our pocket can have a positive influence in another part of the world. What we need are things like IBIS Rice.”
Global stress
Mass extinction events have previously been precipitated by planetary forces and volcanism, but Packham says it is humanity which risks causing the next one – and the species we should be most concerned about is ourselves. What angers him most is inaction despite knowledge. “We have an enormous toolkit of technologies, abilities and practices that could be transformational if they were being implemented. We’ve just got to get moving.” Drawing parallels with 2020, Packham points out that it was widely known a pandemic would one day occur, yet ‘no meaningful prevention’ was put in place; within months, however, scientists delivered a sophisticated vaccine able to save millions of lives around the world – a process which usually takes a decade.
“We are literally waiting for climate breakdown and biodiversity loss to hurt enough to goad us into action. How embarrassing is that?””
“When we turn ourselves to addressing stress on our species we deal with it immediately. We stop flights, we tell people to stay indoors. If we say we’ve got to stop fossil fuel, people say ‘That’s impossible’. But it wasn’t impossible in 2020, was it? We stopped in two weeks. So it’s bullshit that they can’t act.
“We’re in an emergency. I’m looking at Chile on fire, at LA having a tsunami of rainwater. That is a global stress, so why aren’t we dealing with it in the way we dealt with [COVID]? It’s because not enough people are feeling the real pain of this catastrophe yet. We are literally waiting for climate breakdown and biodiversity loss to hurt enough to goad us into action. How embarrassing is that?”
A Swift switch?
With fans across the globe – many in the regions most negatively impacted by the climate crisis – Packham says it’s time for mega-stars such as Taylor Swift to switch their lifestyles. Following a recent injunction against a man who tracked and published all of her private jet journeys, he comments that instead of silencing the truth she should be ‘exercising her voice for good’ and viewing scrutiny as an opportunity to lead by example. “If she has to fly around the world … I’m sure she can afford first class. She has completely failed; why isn’t she standing up for the thing that is going to impact most negatively on all of her fans?”
Packham is tiring of wealth gaps and believes Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos ‘should be held to account’, calling their space exploration an ‘egotistical foible’. “They should know better and be doing far more good with their enormous wealth … its misuse is tragic. If all the money Musk has put into his space programme was spent on solar panels for people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, deforestation would stop because they wouldn’t need to cut down trees to cook their food and heat their homes.”
A vision for the future
Looking ahead, Packham paints a picture of the world he wants to see ten years from now: renewable energy; plant-based farming; the end of deforestation for beef and soya production; investment in public services which alleviate pressures on the environment; and ‘fundamental change in the structure of our political system’, including more decision-makers under the age of 40.
Packham leaves us with his favourite anecdote: “In 1969, when NASA put man on the moon, there were 600,000 people involved in that project. At Cape Canaveral, on the day that Neil Armstrong trod on the moon, the average age of the people working in mission control was 25. Because it takes balls to light the blue touchpaper on a massive rocket, it takes energy, ambition, bravery, risk-taking. Under- 25-year-olds, as a majority, put man on the moon. What are we thinking, having our nations governed by 88-year-olds? It should be mandatory for frontline politicians to retire at 50 or 60. It’s bonkers beyond belief. We need to stop just listening to young people and allow them to play a functional role in governance. That’s how you get man on the moon – one of the most remarkable things that our species has ever done.”
Five facts
• Chris Packham has a BSc in Zoology from Southampton University
• He’s a keen painter and sculptor with an interest in Renaissance art
• High on his professional bucket list is the creation of a programme about William Turner’s paintings, illustrating to an art audience how human activity has impacted the planet’s ecosystems
• Alongside his school biology teacher, he counts Green Party MP Caroline Lucas and pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong among his heroes
• He follows a home-cooked, plant-based diet and rarely buys anything processed
By Rosie Greenaway, editor