“The time span of a human generation, some 25 to 30 years, is a handy benchmark, long enough for real change to happen, but not so far into the future as to be meaningless to those alive now. Young children playing on a beach today will live through perhaps the most consequential time for the human species in the last 10,000 years. By the time they reach middle age, they will have witnessed whether we stall climate change or allow it to engulf us. Whether we restore the natural world or fundamentally destabilize it. Whether the ocean remains our ally or becomes our foe, as we've seen already.

 The ocean can recover. Mangroves and kelp forests can regrow. Whales can return, and dying coastal communities can flourish once again. Such is the potential for recovery that it is entirely possible. It could be but a single lost generation. We could be the outliers. The ones who unknowingly took too much and protected too little.”

Sir David Attenborough and Colin Butfield in Ocean, Earth’s Last Wilderness