Benedict Cumberbatch’s nature show is stunning, if a little cloying

How to Live on Earth, a new nature documentary hosted by Benedict Cumberbatch, starts with bizarre footage of farmers in China tickling pear trees with giant feather dusters. Because pesticides have killed off the bees, farmers must now pollinate pear blossoms themselves. It shows how absurd and broken our relationship with nature is. We are destroying the ecosystems that we depend on. Now published to YouTube as “the world’s greatest how-to video”, the documentary aims to explore not just this problem, but also possible win-win solutions, Cumberbatch told me in an interview at a London hotel. “We’ve had people warn us of the perils of our direction of travel. This is reshaping that narrative,” says Cumberbatch. “If we start working with nature rather than against it… it’s for the betterment of ourselves.” Advertisement Producer Jonnie Hughes has worked on projects with David Attenborough including the documentary A Life on Our Planet. While the cinematography in the new documentary is stunning, it is not a masterpiece like that film was. Passing characters like an elephant guard in Chad are never developed, and lyrical descriptions of local communities living in harmony with nature felt cloying to this jaded journalist. The barrage of nature solutions in far-flung regions might confound viewers wondering how to take action. But the film raises a pragmatic question that is often shunned by environmentalists: how can a capitalist society learn to value nature’s ecosystem services rather than just its resources? In the film, we watch companies profit off gold mining on a tributary of the Amazon river, while Indigenous communities bear the cost of mercury pollution. As an alternative, the documentary discusses the idea of a natural asset company, which would allow investors to buy equity in an ecosystem. The sale of carbon or biodiversity credits, water supplies or sustainable crops could potentially generate revenue, while value would increase as the ecosystem is restored. Hughes, who once created a short biodiversity film that then-prime-minister of the UK Boris Johnson showed to the G7, is screening the documentary for Wall Street investors as part of New York Climate Week this week. To make change, environmentalists must give politicians and businesspeople a new story to tell, he says. “It’s a good story that sustainability is not about sacrifice; it’s about benefit,” says Hughes. “People start thinking, ‘Hang on, what’s this green rush going on?’” When I asked Hughes if Cumberbatch was the next Attenborough, the actor jumped in to protest that “there’s no one like Sir David”. But if you want to think about how we might start halting the biodiversity crisis that Attenborough helped reveal, How to Live on Earth is a good place to begin.