Sir David Attenborough reminds us about climate change during coronavirus

Sir David Attenborough has shared his fear climate change has been ‘swept’ off the front pages by the coronavirus pandemic, as he called for a renewed focus on environmental issues.

Speaking about the current health crisis the world is facing, the beloved 94-year-old broadcaster said Covid-19 has made the issue of climate change feel as if it’s a thing of ‘the distant future’.

However not all is lost as he suggested the pandemic could make nations ‘co-operate’ like never before.

See, there’s always a silver lining to these things.

Speaking on the So Hot Right Now podcast, to be released tomorrow, Sir David said: ‘The trouble is that right now the climate issue is also seen as being rather in the distant future because we’ve got the virus to think about.

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‘And so what are the papers full of? The virus. Quite right, that’s what I want to know about, too.

‘But we have to make sure that this issue, which was coming to the boil with the next COP meeting in Glasgow, has suddenly been swept off the front pages. And we’ve got to get it back there.’

Still, Sir David can only know so much and when asked whether he saw a solution to the decreased awareness of climate change, he said: ‘No, if I knew that I would be a dictator but I’m not.

‘I don’t know – we, you and me and lots of others like us have got to keep on going on about it but the clock is ticking.

‘The danger of the Arctic and the Antarctic warming is becoming greater day by day.’

Sir David went on to tell the podcast hosts, journalist Lucy Siegle and film-maker Tom Mustill, that while he didn’t know what the end outcome would be, he did hope the pandemic shows the nations of the world ‘survival depends on co-operation’.

He added: ‘If that happens, that’s going to be a first in human history.’

Praising the work of ‘remarkable’ climate activist Greta Thunberg, 17, he defended her from critics, suggesting they are not ‘particularly well informed’.

He went on: ‘And in fact if you aren’t particularly well informed about the natural world, and the minute you find that you can’t get to your work to do what you want to do, or what you need to do to earn a living, because somebody has stopped you because they are talking about an issue you don’t know about, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there will be some people as a consequence of that who will act in an outraged way.’

So far, more than 36,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the UK, and 260,000 people tested positive for the virus.