Our Planet: Sir David Attenborough warns humans 'can't go on making mistakes' ahead of new Netflix series

Sir David Attenborough has warned that humans “cannot go on making mistakes” as climate change continues to threaten the planet.

The much-loved naturalist provides the voiceover for upcoming Netflix docuseries Our Planet, produced by the team behind the Blue Planet and Planet Earth, covering over 50 countries across all seven continents .

Although the series itself does not explicitly tackle climate change, Attenborough told media how global warming presents the biggest threat to humans, making particular reference to how large parts of the Earth “depend on the seas”.

“If the temperatures rise, that is a huge catastrophe for Homo sapiens. A huge proportion of human beings we depend upon seas,” he said.

“We know we cannot afford to go on making mistakes. At the moment, we are poisoning them and boiling them.”

He explained that, while he isn’t vegetarian, he eats mostly fish and that the world is “moving towards dependency” on fish.

Our Planet, produced in partnership with the WWF, reunites Attenborough with Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill. The series was filmed over 3,500 days and takes viewers to some of the world’s most beautiful habitats to warn of the dangers facing them.

Fothergill said: “I think that five years ago we’d decided to make a blue chip series dealing with the challenges to the planet but at the same time you have to be careful.

“You want people to sit down and enjoy it. Sunday night sitting down with David’s show is often an enjoyable experience for many and we had to balance the entertainment with the education. We didn’t want to wag a finger or being political but we wanted to state the facts.”

Scholey added: “This series was always designed for a global stories and the issues the planet is facing, that was the building block.

“Then we did a search to get sequences to fit that narrative. Then we set off.”

Our Planet is on Netflix, April 5. The series will feature Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayek as narrators for Spain and Latin America respectively.