What the Amazon Taught Me About Your Backyard

[Music]

how would you define

home see i’ve asked this question to a

lot of people

home can be an idea it can be a place

home has been described as familiar

it’s been described as safe fun

known comfortable someone said boring

over there you’re absolutely right

boring is one of the answers you

win home has been described as a prison

i’ve heard people say home is chaos

homostatic

home is stagnant i’ve heard people say

home is overwhelming

i’ve also heard people say you know what

um

i home’s nothing really

home is personal and all of these points

are very very valid because

well it’s your story it’s all about

you your home your community your

personal

experience your personal every day

here or anywhere else on that on this

wonderful planet that we happen to live

on

i’ve been thinking about home an awful

lot recently because about a year and a

half ago

i moved to miami so i’m a florida man

now

and i have been doing more weird things

i can’t explain why

but i’ve also been thinking a lot about

how i would define home

and i would like to add one more

definition to all of these that we threw

out there and if i could add a

definition

right now at this point in my life it

would be

home might just be the place we take for

granted

you see home is every day home is the

background you generally don’t think

twice because it’s always there

do you realize what you have or do you

have to go away

to realize what you’re what you will

miss

let’s put it this way how many of you

guys know what your home

smells like

in asking this question many people

don’t you can’t pinpoint what home

smells like until

you come back from a long trip why

because we adapt

if something is constant if something is

always there if something is gradual

we adapt to those things we are the

proverbial

frogs sitting in boiling water

and this is an interesting thing it’s an

adaptation but

as we heard earlier today that very

gradual change especially in light of an

everyday climate crisis that can be

really really dangerous

i’m a scientist i’m a conservationist

and i want to give you guys a quick

little snapshot on home

planet earth we are approaching 8

billion people on our planet and well if

you’re used to a lot of people sure why

not

but let’s put it this way anybody

watched avengers recently

if thanos were to snap

what year would we be in

if thanos were to snap today and get rid

of half of humanity we’d be at 19

72. since 1972 the human population has

doubled

let’s say thanos decides to change

things up a bit and he wants to

snap twice well maybe not twice just

lower it to a third 1950

if you were born if your grandfather was

born or if your parent were

was born in 1950 the human population on

planet earth

has tripled that’s insane that is

exponential growth at its finest

and this in itself isn’t a problem but

when you start

figuring out that we’re not exactly

living sustainably

things get really concerning

unsustainable use

of energy resources is causing well some

unintended consequences yeah

a lot of my work deals with things like

that and it’s really depressing and it’s

really depressing having

to read studies that say basically we’re

the last generation that can save nature

as we know it

it’s really depressing to know that i’ve

got friends that work on top of mount

everest and hey

they found plastic i’ve got friends that

have been to the bottom of the marianas

trench guess what

also found plastic i specialize in

working in tropical jungles

and sadly currently we’re losing about

30 soccer fields every minute of

tropical forests across the globe

from my own nonprofit’s calculations is

actually closer to 31

but it’s okay we’ll make a little

difference there this is depressing

this is overwhelming i don’t want to

hear about this

because if you focus on the negative

you’ll forget about what we still have

left to fight for

one of my homes now is definitely the

amazon i’ve been working there for

almost 10 years

i truly wish i could take all of you to

it

this is a place where life is literally

exploding out of the ground

it’s as far as i’m concerned the

greatest celebration of life on our

planet

everywhere you look something’s buzzing

slithering calling

you’re taking a step and that step is on

a world of roots connecting this entire

vast ecosystem

ninety percent the size of the united

states what’s more i work at an

extra special place in the amazon i

would argue

one of the most special places on planet

earth the boiling river of the amazon

the water you see there is hot enough to

kill you and it’s a sacred place

i first heard about it as a legend

because this place didn’t exist

we’re talking about something a river

that flows hot for almost four miles

that

cloud is a steam cloud and if you fall

in most of that

bye-bye because if i who i’m

up there on top of that waterfall fall

into that 170 degree pool i’m not going

to last for very long

that pool at its widest point the

boiling river is 100 feet across

at its deepest point the boiling river

gets up to 15 feet

deep the hottest temperature i measured

check that out by the way if you go to

starbucks your starbucks coffee is only

about 130 degrees so this is

piping hot

the name of the river shania ting pisgah

literally means

boiled with the heat of the sun and you

can well pretty much see why

so i in 2011 became the first

geoscientist granted the shamanic

blessing

to study this sacred place i’ve been

working with the locals

shamans other peruvians ever since

and what’s interesting is a lot of this

has been not only studying it protecting

it but bringing this narrative to the

world

responsibly we’re at a point where we

understand a lot of the science

and this echoed earlier today the

narratives

are getting increasingly concerning and

i say this as a scientist

or to quote my shaman friends

stories have value and in the jungle to

take on their perspective

these stories have impacts in the amazon

a lot of the older shamans are concerned

that young people well

they’re globalized now they’d much

rather be dancing the

fonzies despacito instead of you know

grandma singing the song of her people

and i get

i’d probably rather be dancing than this

by the suit too no big deal but

it’s got an impact and what’s curious is

we can do both

we can see the world with both eyes and

listen with both ears

but it’s amazing because when i’m in the

jungle i was with my friend anna and we

were standing next to some trees that

were definitely bigger around this than

this red dot in fact bigger around than

some cars are long

and she was saying her dream was to go

to dubai but it’s funny i’m working with

all these amazonian students all these

youths and they could be

you know mixed blood peruvians like

myself or more traditional

native peruvians and the ultimate story

is you know what

take advantage of globalization go out

look to that horizon but remember where

your feet are planted remember where you

stand because this

can very much be hollowed ground

remember where you stand one of the most

powerful things you can do to help the

amazon is actually come visit

what i have seen really move the needle

is when amazonians

see somebody like you coming all the way

from across the planet spending money to

see something that they see

in their everyday it blows their mind

and tourist dollars obviously help a lot

again there’s tremendous power in

narratives

in my career in national geographic i’ve

had two things go viral i’m talking

about phone lines going off the hook

more emails messages across platforms

that i can possibly respond to

and that’s been the boiling river but

also

this amazing creature with a head of a

crocodile needle-like teeth

armored scales

that is in fact a gar and that is not

from the amazon that’s actually from

pretty close by to where we are now

in 2015 the trinity river flooded

the water level got kind of high and

well all of these cigar got stuck in

fences

they were about three feet long i

documented all this i did a story for

national geographic that ended up being

one of the top three most shared blog

posts

in 2015 and what was amazing to me is

that

we’re still living in the wild frontier

it’s just gone into our backyard we just

don’t notice it anymore because it’s in

our everyday

these guys swim around our ancestors did

anyway with

t-rex and velociraptor and they are

still here

you’ve just got to look for them when i

was landing yesterday

flew into dfw development erode and

there you see some texas urban wilds

it reminded me a lot of flying into the

amazon

developed areas erode pristine

amazon jungle the amazon’s not the only

place seeking deforest

that’s facing deforestation actually one

of the worst examples of it

is here in the united states and you can

see it from a satellite map if you

notice the colors of green

change everything should really be dark

green the light green is all human-made

if you zoom in

sometimes you even see a blocky pattern

that looks

like a grid oh no this might be a

problem of

you know pixels no that’s the grid

itself

explore it on google earth try to tell

me the difference of which one of these

images is from the brazilian amazon and

which one is from the united states

you’re going to have a really tough time

figuring that out

see the battle for the planet in the

battle for the planet every single

battlefield

counts and if i can summarize the last

10 years of my work

we’re facing global problems that are

getting people really depressed that

seem

overwhelming and i think now more than

ever is a time to focus on local

solutions

that hopefully we can go global with

three people that really inspire me

jane goodall greta tunberg malala

yousafzai

they all started really locally and we

often forget that

their movements now drive global change

jane goodall started gombe stream

national park

13 and a half square miles that’s

nothing greta tunberg

no one was interested she said in going

out with her so she went by herself

and malala she was an 11 year old

blogger

that’s how she started and now she’s

probably one of the strongest voices

for equality on planet earth we forget

that all global really means is the sum

of all things local

so now that i’m split between two worlds

here in the u.s

and in the amazon i find one story that

keeps coming up and that’s your backyard

matters

because if you’re that amazonian guy

that’s grown up around the boiling river

all your life

you don’t think twice that the way you

make tea is to walk down to the river

scoop up that cup

and drink it straight out of the river

that’s weird to us right

because we go we heat up our tea kettle

and well

get it from a different way these

problems are overwhelming until they go

local so do what you can

where you can and when you can

and if you do that sincerely i do think

that that step

will be enough to start the right

changes

what changes well i got two friends

actually that hopefully will start

texting each other after this talk

and you know it’ll go a little something

like this you know one thing you can do

is

a pollinator garden that’s a great way

to go native gardens

xeroscaping in your own home you don’t

need permission for that

getting involved with protest movements

volunteering building bat houses

one thing that you might take for

granted here in the amazon and some of

the places that i work with we have to

we’ll literally fight the bad guys the

mafiosos the people that literally show

up and threaten you

it might be your land but they’ll still

come and log all your trees

i lived in dallas for a very long time

and i never saw anyone

jumping over anyone else’s fences to cut

down all your trees

you got some perks that you can work

with so remember

home where ever it is boiling river

miami

dallas planet earth

wherever you are always look to that

horizon

never stop exploring always be curious

but also

don’t forget to look where you’re

standing you might find some incredible

things

thank you very much

you