Easter Island provides climate change warning

In one of his most provocative speeches, an early version of his recent warning of the accelerating threat climate change poses to our civilisation, David Attenborough spoke from Easter Island, a remote outcrop in the Pacific, 3,510km west of continental Chile.

His sobering plea went largely unheeded because we imagine our durability and inventiveness will prevail and that we will overcome new climate realities.

Attenborough pressed the idea that if a society capable of producing, in the 13th century, the island’s magnificent head sculptures could disappear for some as yet unknown reason then so might we. Why might we be different?

American researchers have just published research which they say, and the findings have been challenged already, that the statues mark sites where clean, fresh water was abundant. In a country where water quality is in continual decline because we continue to pollute it this connection seems to amplify Attenborough’s warning from several years ago.

Another day, another warning...