Can We Save Planet Earth? (BBC1) Hidden Treasure Houses (five):/ Most people are content to adopt a head-in-the-sand attitude to warnings of global warming and potentially catastrophic climate changes.

It's all too easy to dismiss them as the product of gloom-and-doom merchants putting forward a worst case scenario, or recall Michael Fish's famous weather faux pas and say that weather forecasters always get it wrong.

Perhaps it takes David Attenborough to make people sit up and take note that the world is changing and could change for the worst if we don't do something about it.

It wasn't a cheerful story with endlessly depressing predictions about the Amazon rainforest withering, the Arctic icecap melting, superpower hurricanes savaging the coastline and London being underwater.

Scientific investigation shows that, for the immediate future, our fate is sealed. We can probably handle changes brought about by global warming in the next decade. What happens after that is up to us. If we change our ways, we can alleviate the problem.

As one expert said, "The big challenge is to get some action on behalf of future generations". There was talk of "tipping points" - moments when carbon dioxide levels cause irreparable damage and trigger a vicious spiral. If, for instance, a forest becomes non-sustainable because of global warming then we get more carbon dioxide and more change.

We were introduced to The Carbons, an average Western family, "not bad people" but their energy consumption put them among the worst greenhouse gas polluters alive. If only they can be persuaded to mend their ways by turning down the heating thermostat a degree or two, using more energy efficient light bulbs and driving an electric car.

One statistic surprised even Attenborough. Appliances on stand-by power account for ten per cent of household electricity. All that energy just to power little lights.

"I had no idea about that," he said, echoing the view of most people I suspect.

Hidden Treasure Houses visited Goodwood in Sussex, best known for racing and motor sports but presenter James Miller revealed the splendid Regency mansion home of the Dukes of Richmond and their sons, the Earls of March.

As well as paintings and tapestries, he discovered that the green Georgian dining room he recalled from his last visit had been transformed into an Egyptian-style room. Marble walls had been found under the paint, along with all manner of Egyptian adornments.

Refreshingly, the room is not kept as a museum but used by family and guests, as evidenced by the packets of corn flakes on the table. Miller was also shown Fox Hall, where the second duke spent the night if he was out hunting two days on the trot.

After a hard day in the saddle, he didn't want to ride the two-and-a-half miles home. Nowadays, the Charlton Hunt Club holds its annual dinner in the second duke's bedroom.

I hope they turn the lights off when they leave and do their bit for global warming.