There’s never been a better time to be human

That’s right. People live longer, infant and child mortality has plummeted, even in the developing world, there’s been a significant reduction in world poverty and we’re more likely to have the opportunity to fulfil our potential than ever before. State sponsored slavery is over (though there’s still quite a bit of slavery about, so only 7 out of 10 there) and while in medieval times, most people never travelled more than 20 miles from where they were born, now hundreds of millions of people jet around the world to exotic locations every year.

So. There’s never been a better time to be a human being. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the polar bear, the elephant, the rhinoceros and countless other less glamorous species of both plants and animals. All this was starkly spelled out in the opening episode of David Attenborough’s new Netflix series Our Planet. Since I was born in 1951 the world’s human population has more than doubled, with dire consequences for the non-human biosphere, where the numbers of wildlife, on land, in the sea and in the air have fallen by more than 60%. Everywhere, natural habitats are being encroached upon by human settlement; places like the Serengeti, until quite recently one of the most perfect and diverse areas of wildlife anywhere on Earth, is now shrinking rapidly, jeopardising the future of that wonderful Eden-like place.

The world, David reports, has changed radically since the year of my birth. And while he doggedly insists on a cautious note of optimism about the future, I am deeply pessimistic about the world we will leave to our grandchildren. In a hundred year’s time, the rainforests will have shrunk to postage stamps, while all the ice in the Arctic will have melted, swamping low lying areas (often densely populated by poor people, as in, say, Bangladesh) while the polar bears will have died out altogether. Like David, I live in hope human beings will come to their senses and realise that if for no better reason than it will be bad for us if that happens, our lives are going to need to change. If we don’t, we’ll be living in a very tragic, sterile world before long.