David Attenborough Wants You to Go Plant-Based to Save the Planet

Sir David Attenborough is more passionate about protecting our Earth than ever before and is on a mission to save the planet. Attenborough has watched the environment deteriorate after decades of exploring it and is urging people to change their diet and go vegetarian or cut back on meat to save animals and the planet.

A Life On Our Planet is 94-year-old Attenborough's most personal and compelling documentary, which is set to hit Netflix this fall. His entire career has been spent working on shows like Planet Earth, admiring the awe-inspiring world around him and the animals that inhabit it, but over time Attenborough admits the world as he knew it has started to crumble.
"I had the most extraordinary life. It's only now I appreciate how extraordinary. The living world is a unique and spectacular marvel. Yet, the way we humans live on earth is sending it into a decline. Human needs have overrun the world," Attenborough explains in the movie trailer

Meat plays a huge role in humans overrunning the world and if factory farming continues on this path, gas emissions from our food system will account for over half of global emissions created by humans by 2050.

A Life On Our Planet isn't another documentary meant to guilt or scare you into changing your habits and behavior, rather it is meant to show you why and how to fight climate change for our planet and the animals. Attenborough said: "This film is my witness statement and my vision for the future. The story of how we came to make this our greatest mistake. How if we act now we can yet put it right. Our planet is headed for disaster. We need to learn how to work with nature rather than against it and I'm going to tell you how."

Attenborough's advice to the world is to cut back on meat or switch to a vegetarian diet and plant more forests. "We must radically reduce the way we farm. We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters." He isn't asking the world to change overnight but take steps to help the planet. Attenborough, who is a vegetarian, is not telling people they have to cut meat out completely but at least actively try to reduce their intake as much as possible. “I haven’t been a doctrinaire vegetarian or vegan, but I no longer have the same appetite for meat. Why? I’m not sure. I think subconsciously maybe it’s because of the state of the planet,” Attenborough said in an interview with Telegraph UK. 

“If we had a mostly plant-based diet we could increase the yield of the land. We have an urgent need for free land... Nature is our biggest ally,” Attenborough said to Mirror UK. WWF found 12,000 species per year could be saved if livestock production was reduced by 50% and 1.72 million square miles of land would be salvaged if people cut their annual meat consumption by 50%.

You may think one person cutting back on meat can't possibly impact climate change, but people who eat less meat are responsible for less than 10 percent of total diet-related greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Replacing meat with a plant-based alternative is the equivalent of saving the same carbon emissions as driving across the country from New York to L.A. As the number of people switching to a plant-based diet for the environment is increasing, and it seems Attenborough's documentary is coming out at the perfect time, and it is our hope that more people will cut back on their meat consumption after watching it.