The goal of each EarthEcho Expedition is to inspire and empower youth around the world with the knowledge and tools to take an active role in protecting critical natural resources in their own communities.

Growing up with my father's legacy, we never felt that we had to do anything, but we were always raised to think: What could be better than to explore the wonders of the world and share that with people? To try and make the world a better place. And I guess it stuck.

Sumatra has these lush forests and huge, amazing creatures like elephants, orangutans, and tigers. They're disappearing because of industry coming in and cutting down the forests.

We've built, drilled, and shipped indiscriminately across our oceans, with little consideration for the natural environment that is critical to the health of many of our other ocean uses, like food and recreation.

On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.

Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words 'climate change' in public again, much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction, the movement has been in a funk.

There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.

I was interested in wildlife conservation, and I chose Georgia because they supposedly had a good forestry school. I figured it might be easier to get good grades there, too, because a lot of Southern kids would come up to school in New Jersey, and they'd always be a little behind, so I figured maybe I wouldn't have to work so hard.