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
- 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