Benedict Cumberbatch reads a letter of apology from a father to his children
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- Опубліковано 20 кві 2024
- In 2021, Stuart Capstick, deputy director at the Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations in Cardiff, wrote a letter to his children.
Benedict Cumberbatch joined us to read it at Letters Live in March 2024 at London's Royal Albert Hall.
Copyright: Stuart Capstick, 2019
This letter is a part of the Letters to the Earth campaign, which began in 2019, when the British public were invited to put pen to paper and write letters in response to the climate and ecological emergency. It is published in their book 'Letters to the Earth: Writing to a Planet in Crisis'.
www.letterstotheearth.com - Розваги
Benedict Cumberbatch is such a gifted and hardworking actor. I can't imagine that he had very much time to devote to preparing for this three-minute role, but from the first sentence to the very end, I absolutely believed that he was a grieving parent. The way his voice broke in the end... of course there are other actors who could have done an amazing job; but that doesn't stop me from admiring and appreciating the job that he did.
He is one of the producers of Letters Live - it is an amazing charitable event, bringing the stories of so many to all of us. So grateful for the time he and his team give to this event.
Leave Them A Flower
Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
A gift given once for eternity
I speak on behalf of the next generation
My sons and daughters, their children to come
What will you leave them for their recreation
An oil slick, a pylon, an industrial slum
You plunder and pillage, you tear and you tunnel
Trees lying toppled, roots finger the sky
Building a land for machines and computers
In the name of progress the farms have to die
Fish in the ocean polluted and poisoned
The sand on the beaches stinking and black
And you with your tankers, your banks and investments
Say, Never worry, the birds will come back
When the last flower has dropped its last petal
When the last concrete is finally laid
The moon will shine cold on a nightmarish landscape
Your gift to your children, this world that you made
Wally Whyton (1969)
Thank you for sharing this.
If we the human race wish to survive,
We all must change the error of our ways
And live our lives respectful of the clime,
Where moderation in all things prevails.
For this amazing planet where we dwell
Is soon to be consumed by Nature's wrath:
Her patience at an end, her health unwell,
She takes revenge by taking us to task.
With floods, relentless drought and hurricanes,
Tsunamis, earthquakes, storms and forest fires
She sends a warning: 'No more fossil fuels
Or Mother Earth will lose her fight to live'.
Us earthbound mortals listen and take heed:
Transfer to sun and wind and cease the greed.
Having young children of his own, I do not think Benedict is really acting as such, during this amazing "performance". I feel the words come through his own heart, because they are true.
I think the same thing, he walked off awful fast. I admire that he showed genuine feeling
One of the most convincing letter readings I've ever heard. To reassure myself I switched tabs and just listened to the audio.
I was worried about this back in the mid 1990s. Not a single politician from the mainstream parties were. Wasted decades.
Leave them a flower,
some grass and a hedgerow
A hill and a valley,
a view to the sea
These things are not yours
to destroy as you want to
A gift given once
For eternity
A song I remember vividly from primary school in the '90s... I have no words for humanity's negligence, by those with the power to effect change at least, over the decades since.
Al Gore was worried mightily about it and he still is.
Jay Inslee the current governor of Washington state was paying attention to climate in the 90s
I remember worrying about this in high school, in 1973. And being, in effect, patted on the head and told that I was young and foolish and worried about things that weren't going to happen. But then my family started recycling everything in the 1980's My Grandparents, at least, didn't see it as such a stretch, they had to do something similar in WWII, and sometimes they'd get the words mixed up, calling the piled-up cans and bottles "salvage" instead of "recycling." And I felt hope.
I remember, in the 1990's, how politicians started warning us that our children would curse us if we wrecked the economy with too much regulation, and ran up a budget deficit with too many programs for pollution reduction. And I did fear what younger generations would think of me, but I figured I had to do right by them anyway and never mind if they understood, so I kept on supporting ecological concerns though many people I knew stopped doing so.
And I remember the 90's, when I started making a lot more conscious choices for the ecology, like avoiding car travel as much as possible, buying organic food, and not purchasing synthetic fabric clothes. It concerned me that corporations now paid some researchers to claim to debunk climate change and some journalists to take what other climate scientists said and twist it to sound like they were debunking it. Because they wanted the right to pollute. But I thought I only had to worry about a few powerful rich people.
I remember, in the 2000's, when some people found political advantage in claiming that those who wanted to halt climate change really wanted to destroy America. And I saw many people close to me start to believe them. And now I not only had to worry about the rich and powerful, but average people deceived into actively mistrusting me because I still spoke of climate change. And I still looked for ways to diminish my carbon footprint, but I was running out of things within my reach as an individual.
I remember, in the 2010's, that by then climate change had completely become politically polarized. Right-wing friends who had previously loved "God's Country" (untouched nature) to their vary marrow, who considered themselves "conservationists", who looked at "blind progress for progress's sake" with a suspicious eye, now becoming convinced that anything that Democrats wanted had to be not just wrong, but evil, that America needed the right to pollute in order to remain the leader of the Free World, and that pollution-regulation was socialism in action (never mind that historically the worst polluters in the world were the Soviet Union, and that they told their own citizens that the ecology movement was western propaganda.) And I started to hear the first reports that it was too late to prevent climate change, we could now only mitigate it.
On the first day of 2020 my right-wing friends sent out mocking lists of all of the things that we eco-freaks had predicted would happen by the 20's that they said hadn't happened. What struck me is that some of them actually had--that they themselves complained about the refugees clamoring at the border and the price of food going up--but they could no longer make the cognitive connection.
And then the pandemic hit, and most of the world's population had nothing to do but sit at home and feel scared. Way too many spent that time falling down rabbit holes online while day-drinking. And now the anti-ecology fervor reached the point of mass-hysteria. The harm that everyone can see around us, caused by climate change, is now attributed to satanism and an evil conspiracy of people actively trying to wipe out most of the human race. I have watched, one by one, every single source of accurate information closed off as "corrupted" to a critical mass of people. And the crisis is upon us now.
I feel so utterly helpless!
I was worried about it in the 70s. That's why I chose not to have children. I guess the dad in the letter forgot about that.
Amazing letter, amazingly read by Benedict.
Amazing comment.
Well done, Sir. Well done. And here am I with the same thoughts and feelings. I could not express my regrets better.
My 24 year old daughter died 11 years ago. Totally unexpected. Had I know then, what I know now, I would have did everything in my power to get her out of the situation she was in. "If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to Heaven and bring you back again".
How many of us will honestly only be able to say, “I’m sorry.”
Simply the best actor of his generation ❤
Please make this go viral. Please post on all your socials.
He's great and so is the letter.
Word by word this is literally my story as father of three, taken shit for trying before them and now coping together with them while their future falls into the unknown. A more real world than mine, but so much less of what was once real behind the facades we put up against nature - while we lost it.
One thing we must remember, though, that the future always has been and allways will be unknown. We tend to cling to what we see and asume now, but everything may end up totally different. From a mother of four, living through 7 decades.
@@elsekorsbk4715 Oh yes about culture change and innovation: Everything we do have some temporary ”complete power” over using cheap energy and labor, and now robotics, is totally unpredictable what will happen on some scales!
But I am thinking about local communities and natural bounds. These are not driven by energy at all but by caring and householding. We lost almost all of that and it is clear not much is done about it in time. It is already 30 years too late, here in south Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular.
Then we must hope, that we did a good job raising these kids of ours - greetings from Denmark
@@elsekorsbk4715 Too late, they have no experience of anything but a consumer society with winners and loosers. They will not be able to cater for what is lost now and they cannot even care about what is lost: It is no lived experience for them! Somehow surviving in local communities is what we prepare for.
My feelings….
Every day….
🥺
Same here 😔. Others call it depression, I call it desperation about the state the world is in.
Have a virtual hug!
@@nikebordom 🤗
the stark, painful truth😢
This video deserves proper translations into many different languages for wider reach
Bless you Sir, I know you could be fully convincing without sincerity, but I have been around for over 6 decades and I heard truth. Blessings on Thee.
😢😢😢🥺🥺🥺👏👏👏👏👏👏Brilliant. Imho he truly believed what he was reading, or maybe it resonated in him for other reasons. But his performance was 👏👏👏👏👏
Love him ❤
So very very insightful 😞. I feel as hopeless as Stuart.
Perhaps better to follow that with some silence. It was reality.
Wow! Just wow!
Amazing Benedict.
If you agree that global warming / climate change is not only occurring but is caused by the pollution created by burning fossil fuels ( oil , coal, gas etc ) then you will support efforts to reduce that pollution.
BUT.... those efforts threaten long established polluting industries and their profits.
So, to take the pressure off of the oil , coal, gas companies, you deny that there is a problem.
No problem, no need to make any changes.
That is what motivates climate change denial.
What motivates the environmental movement?
A desire to save the planet for human habitation
Democrats know that climate change is real and that it is the result of human activity.
Republicans deny this because if it were true, they and the fossil fuel companies they represent would be forced to acknowledge their role in the problem.
We use to have 5min for each other ... now you got 3mins #HurryUP.
There was a time back in the 1970s where it was actually the fossil fuel companies discovered what the results were going to be in the environment although I was in primary school I remember learning about acid rain and how is going to change and then it seems as though the focus was shifted on to something else.
Just wow.
This is the best ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I tried, too.
Wow
Astounding and heartbreaking...
💔😢🌎
Part of why I went vegan.
Not for the first time, I am grateful to have foregone procreation. It seems woefully unethical these days.
Beautifully sad 😢
Amazing
Oof
🥲
💧
🕊
🌐
🥀
💙
💜
🔵
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🙏
Hello everyone, I'm here, I'm a big fan of the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, I admire not only his voice but his talent, I simply love him so much❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Victoria Aduku Sapio Cultured Fasa
🌍🌎🌏🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
A good start for a science fiction movie about the end of the world
It is a religion!
the sky is falling. wolf wolf. its all fun and games until its not a false alarm.... There is always a crisis and people are crisis'd out, and this one is so bad and feels impossible to do anything about. Take heart that even the worst likely wont get all of us. Theres apt to be a remnant of the meek and of the strong.
There are no fossil fuels. And in the 70's and 80's...we already were having the discussion.
Still wondering about No Fossil Fuels....ya ya might wanna go look up where "oil" and "gas" come from.
This short letter has said more than the countless just stop oil campaigns and Greta thunberg speeches.
I think the thumbnail feels a little disingenuous, because at least to me it feels like the tone of someone being passive aggressive towards their children for complaining when they 'had it so good', which made me not click on the video the first time it was recommended. I'm glad I was wrong, all of that said. Great video and great letter
You may be Dad, but you begot us, and that was the most polluting act of your life. Because we will be green too; we will order only second hand clothes via internet and have planes and vans deliver them to us from anywhere in the world. And we will do any quantity of things you cannot begin to imagine Dad! With the help of AI! Yes Dad…life will go on. Don’t worry.
Great actor, dumb letter
How vomit inducing was that?
Overacting at it's best.
Bliss, bliss, bliss.
It must be bliss to miss that huge of a point.
Tell that to your grandchildren.
How would you know? You can't even punctuate.
My daughter and her partner are actors, although not famous like Ben, and I have become very adept at distinguishing acting from genuine feelings. Believe me, he meant every word, and felt it deeply......