1Listening: A life on our planet
Please read the questions first. Then watch the documentary A life on our planet by David
Attenborough. You can do that on Netflix (switch on English subtitles) or Toledo. Make notes, answer
the questions and make sure you understand what the film is about. On the exam, you are able to
give knowledgeable responses to quotes from the film.
Introduction: Chernobyl
Part 1 How did the world change in one lifetime?
1937
-World population: 2.3 billion
-Carbon in atmosphere: 280 parts per million
-Remaining wilderness: 66%
Since the last mass extinction, the temperature on earth has remained very stable – it has not
wavered up or down by one degree Celsius, thanks to what?
The rich and thriving living world around us has been key to sustaining this ability.
Phytoplankton at the ocean’s surface and immense forests straddling the north have helped
to balance the atmosphere by locking away carbon. Huge herds on the plains have kept the
grasslands rich and productive by fertilizing the soils. Mangroves and coral reefs along
thousands of miles of coasts have harbored nurseries of fish species that, when mature, then
range into open waters. A think belt of jungles around the equator has piled plant on plant to
capture as much of the sun’s energy as possible adding moisture and oxygen to the global air
currents. An the extent of the polar ice has been critical reflecting sunlight back off its white
surface, cooling the whole earth. The biodiversity of the Holocene helped to bring stability,
and the entire living world settled into a gentle, reliable rhythm. The seasons. On the tropical
plains, the dry and rainy seasons would switch every year like clockwork. In Asia, the winds
would create the monsoon on cue. In the northern regions, the temperatures would lift in
March, triggering spring and stay high until they dipped in October and brought about
autumn. The Holocene was our Garden of Eden. Its rhythm of seasons was so reliable, that it
gave our own species a unique opportunity. We invented farming.
This stable climate made for reliable seasons that gave us farming, and thus reliable food. Our
intelligence developed (ideas) and human civilisation followed.
1954
-World population: 2.7 billion
-Carbon in atmosphere: 310 parts per million
-Remaining wilderness: 64%
How would you describe this era?