Chris Packham: ‘We’re precipitating an extermination rather than an extinction event’

Wild nature broadcaster Chris PakhamThe kinship with the world of nature began before he could even speak. Being a small child in the small garden of his parents in Southampton, Great Britain, he was fascinated by tadpoles, snails and God's cows. Soon his bedroom was filled with banks and tanks, and then the garden was packed with buildings. His obsessive interests expanded from moths and beginners, turning on foxes and emptys.

Packham is partly part of being autism. He says that this formed his acute ability to concentrate and find patterns – and his need to hide from stunning social interactions. On the screen and beyond, Pakham is not afraid to express his opinion. He is AVa supporter of environmental problems and animal rightsWith campaign In an effort to put an end to shooting and industrial agriculture. This did not bring him a shortage of enemies. In 2019, dead crows and fox remained on his gate, along with the threat of death; A couple of years later, Land Rover was blown up near his house.

But these attacks only made Packham more decisive, trying to convince other people that we already have a decision to save the world of nature. New scientist He talked with him about his last campaign to stop advertising and sponsorship of fossil fuel in the UK, his upcoming series about evolution and how we can achieve a sustainable future on Earth.

Thomas Lyuton: When I watch bi -b. Spring watchIt is clear that you have a deep connection with the world of nature. Does autism help you form this compound?

Chris Pakham: I think that they pulled me to study the world of nature from my ability to see things very quickly and remember them. It was always easier for me to identify behavior or find out the patterns of anatomy, physiology, or what, whatever it may be. This curiosity for the world of nature seemed to be there almost by nature. My father was an engineer -the Morsky infantry, and my mother was a legal secretary, so interest did not arise from them, but they certainly helped to rekindle him.

I was an avid collector of living animals in childhood. In my bedroom there were always things in banks and tanks. But when I got about 12 years old, my father bought me binoculars. From this moment, I became less interested in holding animals and more interested in them in watching them in the wild.

I had an obsessive interest in natural history, and this would be ricot from one species or group of species to another. I believe that now we call this “focused interest”, but I will adhere to obsession. The more you can focus on a single task or goal, the easier it is to exclude distracting factors. And then you tend to get to the point that you are trying to understand. This is what excites your curiosity.

These are incredible abilities. To be a neurodivergate, of course, will also be complicated. How would you encourage others that are autistic or who has other forms of neurodijections to think about how they experience the world?

It is about focusing on the capabilities and attributes that you can have, and not just on problems and difficulties and how it will bring you. When I was a child, I thought that I was attracted to the forest for all the things that I wanted to see or catch at that time. But in fact, I found comfort and a break there, because my peers did not judge me. I felt very comfortable there.

I found that I could completely immerse myself in experience. Many people can identify the tree by its shape, or by its leaves, or by drawing on the bark. But I can identify the trees by the sound that rain makes on their leaves if I sit under them with my eyes closed. This is not a huge skill. Anyone could find out. But this is the degree that I want to interact with nature.

You devoted most of your life to the protection of nature. Why do you think you are faced with a negative reaction to this activity?

Like many other people, I ask a significant part of the population to convey my opinion and habits a little faster than to feel comfortable. People, as we know, are wonderful animals. We are smart, adapted, creative, creative, innovative. We are magnificent in many respects – but we are not very good in changing our mind.

But at the moment it is very clear that if we do not change our minds and, therefore, our practice, we will be in even deeper troubles than we are already there. I'm trying [point out] What are opportunities to solve these problems. Let's take them as long as there is an opportunity to do good and find positive results. Social of society is reluctant to do this. And a tiny minority is repelled by an aggressive and cruel way.

What makes you go in front of this violence?

I really don't care. I am a very decisive person. I can’t refuse a course of action if I think this is the right course of actions. I never took a fight because I thought I could win. I always chose my battles because I thought that they were the right battles to choose at that time. Victory is not about the intersection of the line or the receipt of the medal; Victory is not to give up.

At the moment, this is what you know, people of my approach – activists, participants in the campaign, protesters – should adhere to those close to their hearts. It is very difficult at the moment. It is very, very difficult.

How?

You know that we are haunted through an unfair legal system in terms of public protest in the UK. IF We want to protest today, we simply do not know where we are standing. We do not know whether we will arrest us for wearing a T -shirt, holding a poster or banner. We are against the terrible things that take place in the United States and other parts, when it comes to the refusal of environmental protection, legislation and, indeed, environmental sciences.

Ultimately, I still think that we are a wonderful look. We have tools, technologies and ability to make sure that we can adapt to the problems that we have already generated. We just have no one where we have to pull them wide enough and quickly enough to change the situation. So, I should help in this.

Recently you launched a petition about the termination of advertising and sponsorship of fossil fuel in the UK. Is this the main obstacle to the climate change?

Well, in the UK, the company's fuel companies do not actually spend too much money on advertising in a grandiose scheme of things, but they spend it very purposefully: they are aimed at people who make decisions, politicians and others. People are manipulated by a mistake.

But what we are increasingly seeing are billions of pounds in sports sponsorship [by fossil fuel companies]This field subconsciously goes to people's lives, and they believe that these companies are doing something profitable. This normalizes their business.

Their business is no longer the right to be normal. This destroys our planet. There is no ambiguity in this. We need to stop them so that they can fill their dirty linen in public thanks to such sponsorship.

I mean that the idea that the British cycling is sponsored by Shell, like a bad joke. A bicycle bicycle, what we do is great, what fights with carbon emissions. As it is, I must say, the continuing adoption of the sponsorship of fossils in some of our state institutions, such as the Museum of Science and the British Museum, should not be allowed.

What does a stable future look like?

Obviously, it is very difficult to study the crystal ball, given the achievements in the field of technology, and now the very quick achievements that we see in the climate failure. But I think that we need a change in thinking. Firstly, everyone continues economic growth. But growth occurs due to consumption, and we live on the final planet. Thus, it is completely clear that we cannot continue to grow if we use all these resources in an unstable way.

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I ask a significant part of the population to convey my opinion and habits
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People must rethink what they want from life. Is this consumption really makes us happy? What awards do we get from life? Regardless of whether you walk through the forest, regardless of whether you are interested in art, singing, dancing or something else that it excites you in life, this should not be due to the accumulation of a bunch of things.

What other shifts in thinking are needed? What do you think, people should think about not having children in the framework Sustainable population?

We must be very careful when we talk about overpopulation. Obviously, the more people on the planet, the more it is consumed. The question is, of course, who consumes it? And in many parts of the world where populations grow fastest, this is not the place where consumption is the largest.

If everyone on Earth consumed resources at the same speed as people in the USA, then we will need about five lands to satisfy this demand. We can only consume from the poverty of the resources of other people in the world that underestimate the available resources of the world. I believe very hard that when it comes to the decision of the climate breakdown, we must move to a much greater extent equality.

One of the most embarrassing things at the police climate is that the leaders do not agree to significantly subsidize the poorest countries in the world, which most suffer from climate breakdown. This is such a common greed that is a handicap.

On the other hand, you finish shooting the BBC series about Evolution, which will be released next year. Evolution occurs over countless generations, billions of years. What can people learn from this deep point of view about their place in nature?

Well, first, how lucky we are to be here. Mutations occur unpredictably. And the fact that they meet in a place where they can actually succeed is quite strange. I mean that the chances of developing human life are infinitely small. And very often evolution comes down to accident.

Secondly, evolution gives us views on the damage caused to people, causes a world of nature. We look at a number of events of mass extinction in the series, and they are not always catastrophic. You know, the meteorite takes out all dinosaurs, which was a disaster for dinosaurs, but, hey, we, mammals, perfectly spent the time later. All those niches that were previously inaccessible, mammals developed to fill them.

So, at the moment we are accelerating the extermination, not the extinction event, since it is we who control it – and we need to make our language correctly. But no matter what we do with the planet, life perseverance will mean that it will survive, and, you know, it will be beautiful, maybe even more beautifully everywhere.

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