US president has opportunity to put questions to naturalist but ends up admitting action on climate change must be global and quicker

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Barack Obama was the one asking the questions in an interview with British naturalist David Attenborough that aired on Sunday in which they agreed that combating climate change would require a global effort.

Saying he had long been a “huge admirer” of Attenborough’s TV documentaries about the environment, Obama turned the tables on Attenborough in an interview taped on 8 May at the White House, which aired on the BBC and other international broadcasters.

David Attenborough and Barack Obama face-to-face in TV interview Read more

Climate change is one of Obama’s priorities for his remaining time in office, but he faces resistance from Republicans in Congress on how to deal with the issue.

Obama noted the US agreement with China in 2014 to set new limits on carbon emissions starting in 2025. The two countries are the world’s leading carbon emitters.

He told Attenborough: “We’re not moving as fast as we need to, and part of what I know from watching your programs, and all the great work you’ve done, is that these ecosystems are all interconnected.

“If just one country is doing the right thing, but other countries are not, then we’re not going to solve the problem. We’re going to have to have a global solution to this,” he said.

Attenborough agreed that “the solutions are global”.

Obama also asked the naturalist if he thought it was possible “to get a handle on these issues”.

After Attenborough stressed the value of finding ways to generate and store power from renewable resources, Obama said: “I think you’re right about that. There has got to be an economic component to this.”

Attenborough, 89, the brother of the late actor and director Richard Attenborough, has been making television documentaries for 60 years. The BBC has called him “the godfather of natural history TV”.

It came as his administration is finalising rules to curb carbon emissions from power plants. Obama has pushed world leaders to agree to new targets at a summit later this year in Paris.

Obama told Attenborough that children were “much more environmentally aware” than adults, and cited his daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, as examples. “They do not dispute, for example, the science around climate change,” Obama said.