Breaking Boundaries review: David Attenborough’s Netflix documentary is a frantic wake-up call

Language: EnglishVeteran broadcaster and nature expert David Attenborough’s latest documentary Breaking Boundaries: The Science Of Our Planet is a frantic wake-up call to the fast-approaching doomsday. The end is near, appears to be the core message, conveyed effectively through scarily bleak figures and statistics – which is perhaps the only way to make us sit up and pay attention.While Attenborough plays narrator, taking the lead in the 75-minute film is Swedish scientist Professor Johan Rockström whose lifelong research lays the focus on the concept of boundaries that human civilization has already crossed, are in the process of crossing, and will soon cross if we don’t act now – from melting ice caps, to biodiversity and the climate. “Humanity has pushed earth beyond the boundaries that have kept Earth stable for 10,000 years since the dawn of civilization,” the film says, citing this as the “most important scientific discovery of our time”.More than 45 minutes of this 75-minute documentary is extremely stark, bordering on depressing. But I suppose that’s the need of the hour. The planet is moving towards destruction and it’s not even a slow death. Greenland, for instance, is losing 10,000 cubic metres of ice per second and this will only continue as the earth heats up more and more. The country that is responsible for cooling the earth’s temperatures by a vast degree, is witnessing a rapid diminishing of its ice cap that threatens to raise the sea levels around the world by seven metres. As the lens shift to another corner of the world, we see Professor Terry Hughes, one of Australia’s leading coral reef scientists, tearing up while talking about the “bleaching of reefs” which is leading to an irreversible decline of the Great Barrier Reef. “Half the reef’s corals have already died,” he says. Recalling his bleach monitoring missions across the past five years, he says, “It’s a job I hoped I would never have to do because it is actually very confronting…” barely finishing his sentence before getting emotional, before Attenborough’s voiceover utters the words “coral graveyard”.In another part of Australia, scientist Daniella Teixeira, who studies glossy black cockatoos, one of the most endangered birds of the country, has a similar emotional moment as she walks through the blackened remains of a bush-fire. “There’s nothing left”, she says as we see footage of burnt animals and dead trees. Rockström himself rues how the peak of Mount Kebnekaise is no longer the highest peak in Sweden because the glacier that makes its highest point is shrinking at the rate of half a metre every year. It’s something they learn as children in Sweden – about the country’s highest peak. The obliteration of it all is yet another scary reminder of the end of the world as we knew it. It cannot get darker than to see climate scientists breaking into tears at the results of their studies. Directed by Jonathan Clay, the film also highlights the deforestation of the Amazon rainforests, loss of biodiversity, fresh water and the need to maintain the phosphorus and nitrogen balance on the planet.[caption id="attachment_9686841" align="alignnone" width="640"]

Still from Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet. Image from Twitter[/caption]The film talks of the time in the 1990s when UK scientists went to Sweden and actually stole hundreds of short-haired bumblebee queens, which are crucial for pollinating food crops and which had been declared extinct in the UK. We are also told that we need around 3,000 litres of fresh water per person, per day, to stay alive – 2,000 litres of which are needed to grow the plants that are consumed by both humans and animals, and also for the animals (that end up on our plate) to drink. The greenhouse gases boundary was crossed way back in 1988 – the danger period had begun at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Currently concentration of carbon dioxide on earth is 415 parts per million (PPM) – beyond 450 PPM lies the tipping point. There are several such examples of tipping points conveyed through dramatic graphics of earth on fire and an army of green featureless human figures walking over shattering red, blue, yellow and green glass – the colours indicating the degree of danger we are at. This imagery in particular appears repeatedly making it slightly tedious to watch, and after a point hard to differentiate for the layman. And while these graphics state in no uncertain terms the catastrophe we are sitting on, the film lacks a deeper emotional connect with the viewers, in spite of the lamenting climate scientists.Despite the revelation of the full scale of climate emergency we are facing, the message of the documentary appears to be a positive one – it’s not too late for us to save the future of the planet. “The window is still open and that is the beauty of where we are today,” Rockström says. The word “beauty” does sound a bit ambitious after almost an hour of grim figures and harsh visuals. However, he emphasizes that disastrous trajectories have been reversed before. Rockström recalls how in the 1980s, panic over the disappearing ozone layer spurred the political leadership around the world into action, to reverse the situation. “It was indeed fantastic to witness. Scientists raised the alarm and the world acted,” Attenborough says.And that is the need of the hour in 2021 as we have just about a decade left to save ourselves from total destruction. “Covid 19 has made us understand for the first time that something that goes wrong somewhere else on the planet can suddenly hit the whole world economy,” Rockström says. It is a clear warning that not all is well with our planet, “but it’s also given us an opportunity to rebuild in a new direction”, as Attenborough puts it. The film moves fast and crams in a lot in a very short time. Very little is said about the depths of possible solutions aside from switching to more plant-based diets and reducing carbon emissions. The role of the political leadership is barely touched upon, barring a vague mention of the UN Security Council. Reversing a catastrophe is not in the hands of the individual alone; a more clear picture of what the world leaders should aim for over the next decade would have made the documentary more rounded.The alarm has been sounded for now. It remains to be seen whether or not it is heard.Breaking Boundaries: The Science Of Our Planet streams on Netflix.Rating: ***