Some years ago, the 29-year-old British explorer David de Rothschild endured that universal male ritual of telling his father what he wanted to do with his life.
It could have been potentially awkward because 1) his father is Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, former captain of the British branch of the fabled family banking empire, and 2) David wanted to save the world rather than buy and sell it. "I started in natural medicine and for a while my dad was like, 'You're a naturist?'" de Rothschild recalls. "And I'm like, 'No, no, I'm a naturopath. Naturists get naked and run around the woods. I'm sure that's kind of fun, but, um, no.'"
Sure, with his shoulder-length hair, trustafarian beard, and faded Converse sneakers, de Rothschild could be mistaken for one of those patchouli-scented dudes praying for a Phish reunion tour. But as he explains his grand designs over breakfast at San Francisco's Clift Hotel, it's clear that exploring the globe is only the first step in his quest to improve it. 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. "What people don't know is that a lot of Western countries send their waste to Asia to be sorted out," de Rothschild says. "That's how trash ends up in our oceans. There are now practically more floating containers in our oceans than there are whales."
A few perils await the six-man crew, including treacherous weather, currents, and, of course, the possibility that the boat could split apart and become its own environmental disaster. I ask if de Rothschild is avoiding films like The Perfect Storm and Dead Calm. "When I was in Antarctica, somebody was like, 'You really must watch Touching the Void,'" he says, laughing. "I'm like, 'Why would I want to do that?' I guess it's the same with this." At least he won't have to worry about pirates on the high seas: "I think they'll take one look at our vessel and go, 'They're fucking crazy.'"
