I strongly agree with George’s Monbiot’s comments regarding David Attenborough’s latest BBC series, Dynasties (Attenborough has betrayed the living world that he loves, 7 November). Why have most of his wonderful programmes been blind to the tsunami of environmental destruction we have unleashed? Some years ago I confronted Alastair Fothergill, series producer of many of Attenborough’s programmes, at a public meeting: “The Earth is in distress: why do you ignore human impacts?” His response: “Our audience does not want to be disturbed.” What about the mess that future generations will be left with?

In the 1980s I worked at Channel 4 for Fragile Earth, which broadcast some 20 environmental documentaries a year. But as soon as Michael Grade took over as CEO in 1988, he sacked the commissioning editor – advertisers did not like disturbing programmes. And so the global devastation continues largely unreported in TV documentaries.

British TV has also systematically deprived us of information about solutions to the world’s environmental problems. In some countries, major new green industries are flourishing, but viewers in Britain are being left uninformed. We need well-presented programmes helping us to make the right decisions – as consumers, as parents and as voters.

Herbert Girardet

Author and consultant; co-founder, World Future Council

• If David Attenborough is unwilling or unable to offer potential solutions to the world’s environmental crisis, perhaps the Guardian should invite those who may have solutions to offer these in a series of features with global mass-media and social-media partners. Contributors could include people who understand that population can be lowered and welfare improved by global development based on justice and greater power for women: there are many examples of this which expose the intellectual poverty of neo-Malthusians.

It could include the ideas of economists who reject conventional “growth” as the only way forward. It might tap into the “feasible utopia” ideas of red-green media and thinktanks plus the work of academics who lead the search for sustainability. NGOs and unions could have a role, and there would be space for scientists – but not the Tomorrow’s World types who promised cosy technological fixes for all our problems, passifying a bedazzled public. We must tap into the mass of talented but largely unheard folk who have ideas that begin with the understanding that “another world is possible”.

Trevor Phillips

Norwich

• The BBC has been guilty of ignoring or dumbing down important information about climate for a long time. Many other organisations that should know better are also guilty of not shouting loud enough about the consequences of global warming: there has been consistent fear among NGOs that frightening people would have adverse effects. They are all complicit in this cover-up.

Maureen Evershed

Dorridge, West Midlands

• I couldn’t agree more with George Monbiot. We are not children; we do not need to be protected from the truth because it may make us uncomfortable. Our planet is on the cusp of a downward spiral leading to monumental disaster unless we all do something very quickly. And yet the BBC appears to be more interested in audience numbers, still determined to make safe, appealing programmes with David Attenborough at the helm. He is in an almost unique position to make a powerful statement about the remaining wonders, which still exist, but will most certainly disappear in the not too distant future.

And with their disappearance our own species will surely not survive. My generation, and David Attenborough, will be long gone when what’s left of the Earth’s future population will be struggling to stay alive on a very bleak, barren and silent planet. Will they look back and be glad that we were entertained?

Carol Knight

Tisbury, Wiltshire

• I sympathise with the concern that George Monbiot expresses. I think there is a problem that people are liable to be put off by all the warnings of the disastrous consequences. It is very difficult to tread the right line between very bad predictions and reassuring us that something can be done. Avoiding single-use plastics is something people can easily aim for and feel that they are preventing a whale from being killed by plastic. I felt sad to see the recent pictures of all the plastic that one whale had ingested. Then I thought of all the creatures that will never be born because of climate change, and that is even more sad.

Janet Poliakoff

Nottingham

• Your excellent article reporting the devastating effects of humans on other animals illustrates how important it is to avoid further increasing our environmental footprint (Annihilation of wildlife a threat to civilisation, scientists warn, 30 October). A policy promoted by the Guardian, and supported by its readers, requires a huge increase in our environmental footprint: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

For example, the late David MacKay showed that in order to meet UK energy needs, solar, wind and biomass “farms’ would need to occupy 5%, 10% and 75 % of our available land area, respectively. The required offshore wind turbines would occupy an area equivalent to a 13km thick strip around the entire UK shore. Wave machines would need to stretch across the entire 500km Atlantic coastline.

Can we reduce greenhouse gas emission without increasing our footprint on this planet? Yes, by exploiting the densest form of energy: nuclear. Although feared by the public, nuclear has the best safety record of all forms of energy, and is far safer than fossil fuel. Even the most catastrophic nuclear accidents, such as the ones at Chernobyl and Fukushima, eventually caused very few deaths (43 after Chernobyl and none at Fukushima).If we want to protect other species from humans and avoid catastrophic climate change, we need to shift our focus from renewables and expand nuclear energy.

Prof Anton van der Merwe

Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford

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