In the 1970s whales were being hunted near to extinction by fleets of industrial ships. So were some fish species.  When humans made a target of an animal, there was no place it could go to hide. Some photographers were showing films and photographs of whales being slaughtered.  They also played tapes of the sounds they made. People began to identify with whales even though they had been hunted relentlessly by people for centuries. People were starting to empathize with whales. How was that possible?

It was possible because the attitudes of humans to whales were changing. Many people did not like the slaughter. Sometimes the feelings for animals were merely sentimental. In other words, the concern for whales had not been earned. The feelings were often shallow. People were often quickly distracted by other concerns. But attitudes were still changing.

On the whole, in the 1970s people on earth, numbering about 4,000 million (or 4 billion) of us, had by and large “broken loose from the restrictions that govern other animals” as David Attenborough called it in his testament statement. We had considered ourselves separate and apart from the rest of life on the planet. We were the dominant species on the planet and we believed we had a divine right to dominate all other species as we saw fit without restraint. Many of us actually had divine sanction for our rule, just as whites once understood themselves to have divine sanction to own people with a different colour of skin. The insanity of both views was not visible to many people in the late 70s, but the number of people who did was quietly growing. Some people had a different attitude to nature.

By the late 1970s we had eliminated the predators who once stalked us except for a few in zoos or minute reserves. We had conquered many of the diseases that once ravished our numbers. We arranged for systems of food production and management that were marvels of industrialization. We were starting to house animals like chickens and pigs in industrial style farms where those animals were treated abominably. We broadcast chemicals into the air in a war on insects that we considered as pests interfering with out right to harvest life as we wished.

We thought we were entitled to all that by God’s law. He had given us dominion over the earth we thought and believed on the basis of ancient texts. We thought we could deal with the earth and the creatures on it as we pleased.

As David Attenborough said, “There really was nothing left to restrict us. Nothing to stop us unless we stopped ourselves. We would continue to consume the earth until we had used it up.” It was not enough to save species or even groups of species he said.

In other words, we really needed a new and different attitude to nature. We needed a more humble attitude to nature. We still do.