Actor William Shatner, notable for his role as Captain James T. Kirk in “Star Trek” warned that humans were “all going to die” due to the perils of climate change.
During an interview on “Good Morning Britain” on ITV, Shatner cast blame on “stupid humans” for the climate crisis and warned that humans could face extinction. Shatner expressed hope that King Charles III, who is set to give the opening speech at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, will speak up about the climate crisis.
“He’s got to say, ‘We’re all going to die,'” Shatner said. “That’s what he should say to open up with. ‘Very quickly we’re going to die. Much sooner than we expected, we’re going to die.'”
In an exclusive GMB interview, Hollywood star William Shatner says we are on the "edge of extinction" if action is not taken in terms of climate change. pic.twitter.com/ZeCf1eECQC
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) November 29, 2023
“We’re burrowing into our own graves,” Shatner said. “I’m so unhappy that you don’t understand how imperative the situation is. We’re dying man, your children are going to have difficulty living. Do you understand that?”
When asked by Good Morning Britain’s North American correspondent Noel Phillips, about whether Shatner “seriously” believed that humans were heading in the direction of going extinct, the 92-year-old pointed out how insects are going extinct and humans don’t realize.
“Insects are going extinct,” Shatner said. “We don’t go around, ‘Oh my God, do you realize flies are going?’ Who cares? And, we stupid human beings don’t even know they existed in the first place.”
Shatner pointed to rising temperatures and several wildfires that had occurred earlier this year throughout places in North America and Europe, such as Canada, Greece, France, and Italy as examples of the climate crisis.
After traveling to space with Jeff Bezos on October 13, 2021, Shatner described his voyage as feeling “like a funeral” as he looked out into space. Shatner shares how when he stared into space, all he “saw was death” compared to Earth, which he described as “nurturing, sustaining, life.”
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered,” Shatner wrote in Variety. “The contract between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”