Celebrated naturalist Sir David Attenborough declared his support for the Global Apollo programme in an exclusive BBC Wildlife interview.
“If people can put a man on the moon in 10 years, why shouldn’t they develop a way to get a one five-hundredth part of the amount of energy that the sun sprays on the Earth every day,” said the broadcaster.
The Global Apollo programme is an initiative launched in 2015 that aims to make the cost of clean electricity lower than that from coal-fired power across the world within 10 years.
“If you got that, you would deal with the entire power requirements of the human race,” he explained.
According to Attenborough the project requires the coordination of collecting and gathering energy, transporting it and economically storing it. He added: “It means you would get energy cheaper – cheaper – than it is from oil or coal.”
The project is the brainchild of a group of UK scientists and aims to double the money being spent globally on research and development of renewable energy, energy storage and smart grids.
“Developed countries have got reserves, huge reserve budgets, so you [need to] take a tiny proportion of that and get an international committee together,” said the naturalist.
We must tackle the issue collectively because we are all in the same boat, he said.
“In 10 million years, the whole of the human population has never come together. We are all fighting for our own corner.
“And so we all have to say, OK, none of us are unique, because there is only one [problem and way out of this] now.”
