David de Rothschild: Environmentalist, Author, Explorer, Now TV Host
ByMary Anne Potts
April 23, 2009
2 min readText by Daniel Grushkin
For Eco-Trip: The Real Cost of Living, de Rothschild investigates how everyday items can be environmentally destructive. The eight-part series premiered April 21 on the Sundance Channel.
ADVENTURE: After watching a few episodes, I’m certainly more hesitant to eat salmon, but what’s the larger goal of this series?
DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD: Simply put: If you don’t know where something comes from, don’t buy it. Our role as consumers is to ask a lot of questions, to the point of being annoying.
A: Isn’t that putting a lot of responsibility on the customer?
DDR: Yes. Being a responsible shopper means more than buying a pair of natural fiber jeans or an organic low-fat muffin—there’s a false sense of security in that. When the Greenland ice sheet slips off, organic moisturizer is going to be as useless as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
A: That’s awfully dire.
DDR: But I’m an optimist. I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t.
Read about David de Rothschild’s upcoming Plastiki Plastiki
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