Adventure Ecology

..."Not content to simply brave the Arctic Ocean, be the youngest Brit to reach both poles, and set a speed record for traversing the Greenland ice cap, de Rothschild has added a green twist: He started Adventure Ecology, an organization that shares his expeditions with kids and tweens on the Web to spread environmental activism. The idea is that they'll tell their friends, teachers, and parents. Call it trickle-up eco-nomics.""

"The stumbling block of the whole green movement is that there has been this slightly exclusive, sanctimonious air about it," de Rothschild says. "You feel intimidated. It's like, 'What are you doing?' It makes you feel guilty." His other peeve is the braver-than-thou genre of modern exploration, which he feels is counterproductive to tree-huggery. "If you're watching a documentary," he says, "and some guy is sitting in a tent and going" — he switches to a mountain-man burr — " 'I'm barely surviving here, and it's miserable,' you think: 'That looks miserable. Why the hell would I want to protect that place?"

"De Rothschild's next Adventure Ecology mission, in December, is his most ambitious yet: a four-month, 8,000-mile voyage from San Francisco to Australia in a 60-foot sailboat made of post-consumer plastic bottles. Dubbed the Plastiki (à la Thor Heyerdahl — get it?), the trip will spotlight the desecration of the oceans by trash, oil, and other unsavory man-mades."
...
"De Rothschild is savvy enough to know that his gilded pedigree — and the Sasquatch-size carbon footprint from frequent flying around the world to promote his cause — exposes him to charges of insincerity. "People will snipe," he says. "I'm not perfect by any means. My CO₂ output is more than most because of the lifestyle I lead, but it's less than it could be. But what would you rather I do? Just sit back and consume? I want to maximize my social impact and make a difference, and that's why I do what I do." He smiles. "I could very easily not."

"...De Rothschild is well aware that on a day-to-day basis he's less like Sir Edmund Hillary and more like, well, Senator Hillary. "I like to moisturize, I like fluffy pillows, and I can't do a one-armed push-up," he admits. "I'm the first person to say I'm not a hero." Plus, being close to his BlackBerry allows him to stay in the loop on his upcoming projects: a sail through the South China Sea, an expedition to Africa in '09, and an "edutainment" pilot for NBC."

Pictured above: David de Rothschild charts a course from San Francisco to Australia, wearing about a $1000 worth of rugged explorer duds...

Excerpts above are from Green Machine by Hudson Morgan.....read the whole article in Men's Vogue