It’s the dinner party one could only dream of being invited to: President Barack Obama has sat down with natural history broadcaster Sir David Attenborough to talk about climate change.


“What are the prospects for this blue marble we live on?” the US President asked Attenborough, during a visit to the White House on the naturalist’s 89th birthday in May this year.

“If we find ways of generating and storing power from renewable resources we will make the problem with oil and coal and other carbon disappear,” came the reply from the British presenter in a televised interview which will be simulcast on both BBC1 and BBC America this Sunday.

“We’re not moving as fast as we need to,” Obama admitted, adding that there needs to be a “global solution”. “If just one country is doing the right thing and other countries are not, we’re not going to solve the problem.”

The interview is certainly a meeting of minds, with Obama telling Attenborough just how much he admires his work. “You’ve been a great educator as well as a great naturalist.”

How easy it will be to tell who’s interviewing who by the end of the programme remains to be seen.


The interview will be broadcast this Sunday at 10:30pm on BBC1

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