Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Internet Wildlife Documentary · Acedra
Home
Explore
Sociology
Internet Wildlife Documentary
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
57 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:02
and now on bbc one all new nature documentary with david attenborough's wild youtubers the digital wastes of the internet are one of the most challenging environments on the planet survival here requires strength cunning and adaptation of all varieties eek out a living producing content in this foreboding landscape this particular male covers himself with makeup and elaborate costumes for reasons that naturalists are yet to fully understand with the opening of the video out of the
0:47
way he is ready to begin his display hello i'm dr otradek from the royal national institute of climatology it's very difficult being a climate scientist right now because okay fish fish are dying because of global warming right so commercial fishing industries are losing money and if you run a fish business one of the easiest ways to save money is to pay the fishermen less and make them work in dangerous conditions since all the fishing happens at sea it's hard for anyone to check but
1:22
if the crew tells anybody you're going to have a lawsuit on your hands so what do you do you've got to hire undocumented migrants to go on the boats who can't complain and can't unionize or they'll be arrested and deported some of the conditions in the commercial fishing industry basically meet the definition of modern slavery so when it comes to fish climate change border controls and labor rights aren't three separate issues it's one big problem and i really don't think we need a scientist
1:56
i think we need a priest
2:12
dearly beloved welcome to the funeral of planet earth christians offer up your prayers jews prepare to cut the black ribbon and members of the church of orthodox gamers press f to pay respects you probably already know how it's happening greenhouse gases like co2 methane and water vapor absorb and then re-emit infrared radiation normally that's no problem but if you have a lot of them in the atmosphere because you've been burning a lot of fossil fuels then that radiation hangs
2:47
around and never escapes into space so the planet gets warmer the reason that's bad is that as average global temperatures rise the warm weather makes everybody more and more horny but it's also too hot to have sex some scientists predict that if we see a rise in just two degrees celsius in average global temperatures by the end of the century we could reach a tipping point called the climatic in-cell threshold where most of planet earth becomes too hot to even jack off
3:16
and although we would see a short-term rapid growth in the vibrator industry ultimately everybody would become so frustrated and distracted that society will collapse and apparently this realization is causing some people to suffer from what's being called climate grief with swedish psychologists saying that young people are at increased risk of anxiety and depression when they learn that nothing is being done to save the future in which they're gonna have to live
3:42
greta thonberg the teenager who invented the school strike for climate movement said that she became depressed at age 11 when she learned about climate change i remember thinking that it was very strange that humans who are an animal species among others could be capable of changing the earth's climate because if we were and if it was really happening we wouldn't be talking about anything else so when i was 11 i became ill i fell into depression i stopped talking and i stopped eating
4:17
there are some philosophers who say that just like ordinary physics breaks down at light speed and we need einstein to explain things climate change is a special kind of issue that messes with our ordinary ways of thinking here's an example called the non-identity problem let's say you plan to build a power plant with a new town around it and it's going to take so long to build that nobody who is currently alive will be affected by it if you build it people will come and live in that town
4:47
some of them will meet have a couple of drinks stick on the album moon safari by air at which point it is scientifically inevitable that they will have sex and some of them will have kids and if you don't build it those people will never meet and those kids won't exist and let's say the power plant pollutes the surrounding town so in the timeline where you build it all the kids are really sick that sounds like a bad thing you probably shouldn't do it then but hang on
5:13
those kids won't ever exist if you don't build the power plant so by building it you do not actually make anybody worse off than they would otherwise have been they aren't worse off because they only exist in the bad timeline so if building the power plant is a bad thing to do which it really looks like it is then it's a bad thing that doesn't harm anyone you see this is why nobody really likes philosophy at first glance all of the famous problems sound like something an
5:46
undergraduate would corner you with in the kitchen of a party while he's trying to convince you that he's clever so you'll have sex with him actually maybe that was just me this self-deprecating joke with its allusions to sexual failure is a classic element of a youtuber's display allowing this male to move from one section of the script to another and giving the audience a moment to gather their thoughts after a quick scratch he resumes timothy morton is a philosopher of
6:18
climate change who says that it breaks our usual ways of thinking about time he says that global warming is a kind of object a very weird object that's spread out in time and space but a physical thing like buildings and teeth a hyper object we are all inside the hyper object and we can feel a little piece of it but never the whole thing at once it looms over us phasing in and out of our lives saturating everything that we do kind of like grief does or brexit morton prefers this way of
6:55
thinking because according to him what got us into this mess is thinking of the environment as something separate from ourselves something over there to be either exploited or saved he says it's weird how a lot of people enjoy learning about black holes and comets which could kill us but not so much climate change because it's easy to imagine those things as only existing on a screen that's why neil degrasse tyson is so popular he reduces the universe to a set of facts that you can use to
7:27
make yourself feel clever by imagining somebody else who didn't know them ah imagine some ignorant rube who doesn't know about stars what a loser i love science i'm following the evidence wherever it leads unless it leads to sexual misconduct allegations in which case don't look into it morton hopes that if we start thinking of climate change as an object that we are inside of then we might come to realize that society and environment are just two sides of the same coin
7:57
there's a famous story from a philosopher called gilbert ryle about a man who goes to oxford and asks to be shown the university and they show him the labs and the quads and the colleges and the place where they teach you to kick poor people so you can become prime minister and then the man says but where's the university and he's making what philosophers call a category error the university is not an extra thing it's just all of the buildings and people and what they do
8:23
and morton says when people talk about nature and the environment they're doing that you can scour the globe from a mountaintop to the marianas trench you will not find nature it's an empty category looking for something to fill it hyper objects like global warming remind us of that and we don't like it
8:51
although right wingers like the american republican party have a reputation for climate denial there's more than one way to deny it arguably a more subtle kind of denial is just saying that science is going to sort it all out because it's so enmeshed with other problems denying any of them is kind of failing to take it seriously and the left can pretty easily start straying into this british journalist aaron bastani wrote a book called fully automated luxury communism
9:18
in which he talks about technologies that he thinks are going to transform society he quotes a lot of ceos of tech companies who say yeah it's going to be great we're going to invent all sorts of new things that are going to fix all the problems like cheap solar panels and electric cars and we can fire rockets into clouds now to make it rain that's pretty cool and we can make the whole earth really shiny to reflect more sunlight google ventures give me 60 million
9:49
dollars so i can raise the albedo of planet earth by covering greenland with shaving mirrors or we could just go to mars doesn't that sound cool the temperature is intolerable and it's very hostile to human life so it'll be just like london only more hospitable bastani is very critical of so-called green capitalism's ability to solve the climate crisis but even he freely uses concepts like moore's law a myth which says that every two years technology or sometimes transistors specifically
10:19
gets half the price double the speed or half the size well that sounds great with all of that new technology on the horizon we're bound to solve the climate crisis but hang on is it every two years or is it every 18 months well it depends which ceo you ask and in any case it isn't true it's not a law at this point moore's law has been misinterpreted and bandied around so much that it's basically marketing copy for tech companies who stand to profit from you thinking
10:48
that they're gonna save the world even as their profits are driven by the same old resource extraction and worker exploitation that's killing the planet in an article for the intercept journalist natasha leonard pointed out that the far-right gunman who killed 21 people in el paso not long ago cited population control in the face of ecological collapse as one of his motivations similarly the christchurch shooter who murdered 51 people earlier this year described himself as an eco-fascist
11:21
and marin le pen leader of france's far-right front national has made nationalist arguments in environmental language remember the fish example from the start there's no solution to climate change that doesn't also involve fixing labor rights and migrant rights which pasta acknowledges and a whole bunch of other things which we'll get to despite some people being very keen to sell you solutions that don't actually involve addressing those things [Music] have you heard about these wildfires
11:55
awful apparently in california in 2018 over two million acres of land burned it's climate change isn't it it's really happening it only makes sense i suppose as things get hot forests dry out weather gets wilder you get strong winds and then all it takes is a little flame frankly i find that disturbing my god 106 people died that makes me so angry did you know that 90 of wildfires are caused by human negligence somebody leaves a campfire or a cigarette butt somewhere that they
12:33
shouldn't it's so irresponsible something must be done we'll have to change our ways i went to california once years ago beautiful place and i went back recently i was in washington dc on business i'm a traveling salesman get about all over the place decided to pop out west just for a spell to see how things have changed and my god has it changed a lot more people for one thing new people too and i don't have a problem with that although a lot of americans actually are a little bit
13:08
about people from other places not me of course i'm always perfectly lovely to them but i have some sympathy with the ones who have concerns perhaps it isn't terribly politically correct but if you aren't from somewhere originally and it isn't your home then why would you take care of it if you aren't from california and you're out unemployed rowdy drunk you might well litter or pollute or drop a cigarette and then and if you have a mass of people suddenly coming in who aren't from the area
13:52
and don't all share the same ideas then i do love the americans though something in their entrepreneurial spirit that i admire there was a wide open country fresh for discovery not a soul living there and they built a great big civilization on top of it isn't that admirable i think i'd quite like to be an american what a fantastic legacy to have been left by one's ancestors and what a pity that they're having trouble i know a lot of americans who worry that that legacy might be in danger
14:23
and clearly it is they've had a hell of a time defending it seems like every week there's somebody jumping up to criticize them some poor unfortunate bugger whinging about a few bad apples in the police or a silly socialist with a dream or backwards idealists on reservations somewhere clinging on to rocks and feathers holding out against the 21st century i mean we all agree that something must be done but some people seem determined not only to stand in the way of things but to
14:48
accelerate the problem by breeding like rabbits importing more irresponsible people taking opportunities away from the real working classes people like you and i i have every sympathy with the ones crying out no more no thank you we need only the best to help us deal with this climate crisis and if you're tired poor hungry wretched then by all means feel free to apply through the proper channels but don't expect the door to open anytime soon and if you try to come
15:14
in through the improper channels then you can expect the consequences that isn't what i think of course but you have to sympathize with those that do in times like these difficult decisions must be made and thank god some people have the will to do what must be done to secure an existence for their people and a future for their children
15:44
do you have a match in january 2016 dakota access llc announced construction of an oil pipeline that was to stretch from north dakota to illinois it was originally supposed to cut close to the predominantly white city of bismarck north dakota but was re-routed because of possible contamination to the city's water supply to go to access having had over 200 leaks from its pipelines in the previous six years so this was a very real concern the new route brought it through unseated tribal
16:21
lands and within just half a mile of the standing rock indigenous reservation putting the people there at the exact same risk the standing rock tribe refused consent of the pipeline and then mounted legal challenges protests direct action and petitions law enforcement and private military contractors hired by the oil company responded with violence footage of which went viral and standing rock became the center of a huge international protest thousands of people camped in the path
16:49
of the pipeline in communities organized and run by natives there were demonstrations and celebrity endorsements from around the world and calls for president obama to intervene directly we're going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved um in a way that i think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first americans if you were to watch a show like last week tonight you might see one episode on indigenous rights
17:20
one on police militarization and one on climate change and not realize that like with the fish thing these are actually one problem a hyper problem which at the moment has no name so i propose that we call it
17:38
writers like bestani and morton have interesting things to say about climate change but what i notice reading indigenous authors is that a lot of it has been said already at a time when many people are wondering what are we going to do if our homes flood and we have to move or what sort of communities are we going to be living in when ecological disaster strikes a lot of indigenous people are already there lower brule sue writer and professor nick estes has said that a lot
18:02
of indigenous folks are already living in a post-apocalyptic world because climate change is only possible because of colonialism a lot of my research on this has been from sources in north america but these ideas are obviously relevant the world over especially in brazil where the bolsonaro government is destroying the amazon at record rates on indigenous land big list of indigenous scholars in the doobly-doo which you should check out and i imagine that some people are going to be
18:27
thinking this is an sjw political agenda hidden inside climate change philosophy i subscribed good sir to feel good about myself for worrying about the climate not to have a partisan political agenda forced down my throat with a bunch of guilt trip hippie nonsense but my point is that a lot of that great abstract philosophy has kind of been done already morton says that we need to start thinking of ourselves as enmeshed within the environment rather than separate from it and i'm
18:58
curious how he uses a very universal sounding we there when indigenous people have been trying to do that same thing for ages despite consistent attempts to literally beat it out of them a lot of tribes already have different attitudes towards things like land in abrahamic religions sites like mecca and jerusalem are sacred at least in part because some historical event allegedly happened there like the mandalay bay luxury hotel and casino in las vegas is a sacred
19:27
site for the church of orthodox gamers because that's where sonic fox beat goichikoshida at fighterz for the evo grand final in 2018. whereas in her book as long as grass grows indigenous scholar dina julia whitaker explains that indigenous sites are sacred because people believe there's a piece of me in that land and a piece of that land in me maybe it's where my ancestors are buried or maybe it's where my tribe has gone for centuries but the point is that the land and the people are like
19:57
so they're already doing the exact kind of philosophy that morton describes and whereas people like bastani and morton and even the extinction rebellion can be a little cagey about the connection between climate change and cops indigenous water and land protectors are all too aware of it at standing rock for a while it was kind of up in the air whether the pipeline was legal or not and rather than say the president is considering it we await a decision from the courts
20:27
we're just being hands off for now the cops went in hard with chemical weapons attack dogs and riot hoses demonstrating pretty clearly that they weren't just there to enforce the law and do their jobs but to enforce a particular set of values which aligned with the interests of an oil company in 2009 there was a big climate protest here in london and ian tomlinson a 47 year old newspaper seller happened to be walking past unconnected when pc simon harwood decided to beat him with a truncheon
20:57
whereupon he died harwood already had 10 complaints against him including several for excessive force so the problem isn't just him it's that the metropolitan police hires and thereby enables people that they know have a history of violence and send them to police climate protests the police and prison service are not going to be won over by polite chats nor come out in a rush of sympathy with ecological protesters the odd individual officer may be curious or even sympathetic
21:27
but even where such sentiments are not simply a pretense offered in the service of intelligence gathering unless and until they cease to be police prison officers they will be powerless to affect any change for the better rather they will continue to be part of institutions that for their entire history have used violence intimidation trickery and sexual violence to prevent change for the better they will continue in short to be the enemy of the struggle we so desperately need
21:58
despite his attempts to lighten the mood with a callback joke about gamers this youtuber's presentation is becoming increasingly serious unless he can find a way to lighten the mood he runs the risk of losing his audience before the final and most important section of the video [Music] the opposite of climate denial might be climate despair the idea that there's nothing we can do anymore it's too late the apocalypse is coming it'll make some great content though the scholar jem bendel
22:42
wrote an infamous paper called deep adaptation in which he takes as his starting point the assumption that society is going to collapse because of climate change the paper is a little bit controversial in part because it's a little simplistic and dramatic and partly because some people said it doesn't help to spread despair but climate despair isn't the same thing as climate grief when a loved one dies yes it's very tragic but there are good and bad ways of dealing with it but i
23:12
look at the work of someone like bastani who says interesting things about the technology but sort of leaves the moral stuff to the side and the work of people like morton and extinction rebellion who try to engage with it but don't quite allow indigenous ideas to lead and i wonder where's the grief part of the awful tragedy of climate change i think is that we know the names of the people responsible darren woods ceo of exon mobile bob dudley ceo of bp jack dalrymple governor of
23:42
north dakota during standing rock these people may never face justice for what they have done and that sucks this is maybe a little spicy for mainstream youtube audiences but in his book why marx was right british theorist terry eagleton says one of the reasons uncle carl's ideas are still persuasive to so many people is that they acknowledge the tragedy of the way things are right now and fascism is persuasive to so many liberals because it also acknowledges that a lot of things just
24:14
suck and offers a very easy but wrong explanation one of the advantages of facing the overwhelming grief-like nature of climate change is that once we realize it's all one problem we have a lot more allies than we thought if you campaign for migrants freedom of movement you are fighting climate change if you support indigenous people's right to self-determination if you support your local anti-fascists and people fighting police brutality if you support demilitarization and nuclear disarmament
24:44
it's all one planet the standing rock camps were deliberately organized as spaces to try out new ways of sustainable living led by ideas from indigenous philosophy everybody in the camps got free food shelter legal advice and healthcare there were no armed police and everyone was welcome and it wasn't perfect but rather than preserving an old way of living it was an attempt to create a brand new world it's not about returning to a pre-industrial lifestyle i obviously don't want to do that and
25:18
anybody who needs menstrual products or insulin is going to be at a bit of a disadvantage if society collapses a lot of trans people might find it tough to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland without a steady supply of synthesizer music and flannel shirts and rather than just not thinking about it or hoping for a perfect technical solution seriously confronting the possibility that the world might end because of climate change is a chance to ask what were the good bits what was your
25:46
favorite bit about living in a society i really enjoyed cooking and music and theater and misusing my photography and lighting equipment to take extremely high quality nude photos what were the bits of society that you'd maybe be okay with letting go of because apocalypse doesn't actually mean the end of the world it's a greek word that means the revealing of knowledge the youtubers presentation is good and he seems satisfied with the result all that remains now is to end on a joke
26:27
that undercuts the seriousness of the previous material and leaves the audience on a positive note i've been your boy david attenborough make sure to subscribe and smash that like button you know i feel like the world got smaller i recall all of the days i've cried even if heaven doesn't take us we try but you know i think if we stick together maybe we'll become each other i know we'll [Music] and we'll be make right [Music] you know i know that your hope's
27:54
[Music]
28:06
[Music] it will be all right
28:19
[Music]
28:25
it will be all right [Music] i [Music]
28:56
i [Music] deep in the urban jungles of north america lives a predator never before captured on film using the latest in wildlife photography techniques a team from the bbc was able to obtain footage of these remarkable creatures in their natural habitat join us in this 11 part series as we reveal the lives the loves and the struggles of the kittens of cat girl manor
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat