Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception

Book excerpt: Sir David Attenborough was one of the most trusted and admired men in the world - until early 2019, when he narrated a joint Netflix/WWF documentary called Our Planet that showed several walrus falling off a high cliff to their deaths on jagged rocks below. Hundreds were shown to have died, which Attenborough blamed on humanity's wanton use of fossil fuels. Many viewers, including children, were traumatised by the brutal images. He used this horrifying imagery to jump-start a three year campaign against human-caused global warming that included ten documentaries laden with groundless climate emergency messaging, much of it aimed at the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Attenborough's relentless climate activism included a utopian vision of global changes for society eerily similar to the one proposed by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The story told in Fallen Icon is every bit as horrifying as the falling walrus tragedy porn Attenborough and the WWF manipulated to their advantage: it is an especially egregious example of science corrupted for political objectives.