David Attenborough, 81, to make one last film - on evolution

The almost-retirement of David Attenborough from BBC-style documentary film (he's 81) has been treated as the end of an era. In "Attenborough ends nature TV cycle, fears for future," Mike Collett-White recounts,

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Attenborough, who began his career with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1952, said the impact of global warming over the last 50 years meant that making the same programmes today would be difficult, if not impossible.

'There are some things in that series that would be very difficult to film again, they are much more difficult to find.'

He added that he did not know of a single 'major' vertebrate species that had become extinct during his career, but serious risks to plants, animals and humans lay ahead. (REUTERS April 18, 2008)
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In any event, Attenborough has one more project in view:

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'Next February is the 200th anniversay of the birth of Charles Darwin and I am making a programme about evolution.
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This will not likely be a new look at the subject, especially as Attenborough says he has already filmed a great deal of what he wants to show.

Meanwhile, an ecologist-philosopher friend, David Rice, comments,

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I honestly don't see how Attenborough can justify the moral considerability of ecosystems. He must somehow step outside of his Darwinism in order to do it. But that can't be done and his 'depression' about the future of the earth is merely an epiphenomenon of brain chemistry. Someone should tell him that...as such, I really have no idea where his moral outrage comes from...
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Well, that's something I have never figured out either.

If Darwinian evolution is true, as Attenborough doubtless wants to demonstrate, it isn't reasonable to care about what happens to species, because they all go extinct anyway.

Of course, if there really is a purpose to life - which Darwin denied - that's different. Then you wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of it. But where does Attenborough stand on that tricky subject?