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Alert: This article contains spoilers.
Netflix’s new documentary series, Our Planet is the most hard-hitting thing we all need to watch right now. Not just because it shows how beautiful our planet is, but also because it documents the ugly way we are ruining our planet.
The series realistically portrays melting glaciers, receding sea ice, depleting forests and many such irreparable events, that are leading us to the brink of our extinction.
But if there’s one moment of reckoning in the entire series that will stay with you long after you’ve finished watching it, it’s the last 8-10 minutes of the second episode.
Somewhere in the northeastern parts of Russia, the largest gathering of walruses come together every summer. This has become a recurrent event over the years because the sea ice, which is their original habitat has been receding north.
The scene shows hundreds of thousands of walruses gathered on a beach because they are left with no other choice to stay close to their breeding grounds.
With no space to move, or even breathe, these disturbing visuals show how these mammals are struggling to survive.
What follows is tragic footage showing walruses trying to escape the stampede and climbing the surrounding cliffs to rest.
However, in their clumsy and desperate attempts to get back to the water in search of food, these animals weighing around 1-2 tonnes, stumble from the edge of the cliff.
It’s heartbreaking to watch hundreds of walruses falling off the high cliff and being crushed to death.
People all over the internet are talking about this particular scene and how it has impacted them.
And it is the tragedy of this situation that really makes us think what our existence means to the planet.
This one scene single-handedly can move you to tears, and make you question if we humans really deserve to exist?
None of those who’ve watched this scene will be able to recover from it, until we really do something about it.
David Attenborough’s ‘Our Planet’ is a wake up call for the entire human race. It is our reckoning and a reflection of how we have changed our eco-system for worse, and for good.
And this one scene, alone, makes us wonder what have we done to a planet that isn’t just our home; but is home to a million other organisms that facilitate our survival.
If this scene doesn’t make us reconsider our actions, nothing else will.