Have you got 74 minutes to look at what’s behind the curtain? To see what the science has to show us? To look beyond the crap we are fed for the most part in our daily lives?

If you have, and like me hadn’t seen it before, watch this documentary if you can – ‘Breaking Boundaries: The Science of our Planet’. It introduces you to the nine planetary boundaries within which we need to stay as a species to thrive. Six of them are now breached.

The documentary is billed as “David Attenborough and scientist Johan Rockström examine Earth’s biodiversity collapse and how this crisis can still be averted”.

You might think the billing is an act of balancing – the bad news followed by the good news. Maybe. Except this documentary was released in June 2021 – another third of this critical decade has evaporated in the meantime. And the destructive behaviour of our species continues.

“What would we do if we had had a report tomorrow morning saying that an asteroid is on its way to earth? Well I’m sure that we would just put everything else aside and just focus in on solving the problem”. So says
Rockström a few minutes before the end.

Rather sobering then that the movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ about an asteroid on collision course with earth was released six months later.

The fossil fuel industry still doesn’t want us to look up. Only last week more news of tapping into more oil prospects for profit just as peaceful climate protesters are imprisoned. Human conflict and geopolitical instability simultaenously stoked by social media and airbrushed over by mainstream media. The months and years tick by in this crucial decade in which we need to be united as a species in rapidly reducing CO2 emissions globally; meanwhile emissions are yet to peak.

The window of opportunity to pull back from the danger zone is part of the scientists’ narrative alongside them sounding the alarm. But this can’t go on forever.

I recall the book ‘At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics, and All the Other Emergencies’ by Dougald Hine. He describes how as an environmental campaigner of 20 years one day he just ran out of things to say.

I don’t think I’ve ever more clearly understood the meaning and importance of the terms ‘Extinction Rebellion‘ or ‘Just Stop Oil‘.

Thank God I’m off to Bloodstock for a few days of metal therapy to quell my anger.

P.S. Post photo is one I took this weekend looking down on the boundary between flora and water.