What David Attenborough’s ‘Extinction: The Facts’ didn’t tell you

It was only a matter of time before Covid-19 got swept up into the wider narrative of humans facing impending doom thanks to our abuse of the planet. But one might have expected better of Sir David Attenborough. His latest BBC documentary, Extinction: The Facts, broadcast on Sunday night might as well have been produced by Extinction Rebellion, so determined was it to present a hysterical picture of apocalypse caused by consumerism and capitalism. Just to ram home the point, one contributor, naturalist Robert Watson, spoke of ‘many in the private sector making a huge profit at the expense of the natural world’, seemingly oblivious to the far greater rape of the environment committed by the former Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

The documentary combined some genuine tragedies, such as the imminent extinction of the northern white rhino, whose population has been reduced to just two: a reproductively-useless mother and daughter, with more dubious claims.