David Mayer de Rothschild
Encyclopedia
David Mayer de Rothschild (born 1978) is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 adventurer, ecologist, and environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...

 and head of Adventure Ecology, an expedition group raising awareness about climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

. He is a member of the Rothschild family
Rothschild family
The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...

, the youngest of three children of Victoria Schott (born 1949) and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild
Evelyn Robert de Rothschild
Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild is a British financier, and a member of the Rothschild family.-Early life:The son of Anthony Gustav de Rothschild and Yvonne Cahen d'Anvers , he was named after his uncle Evelyn Achille de Rothschild who was killed in action in World War I...

 (b. 1931) of the Rothschild banking family of England
Rothschild banking family of England
The Rothschild banking family of England was founded in 1798 by Nathan Mayer von Rothschild who first settled in Manchester but then moved to London. Nathan was sent there from his home in Frankfurt by his father, Mayer Amschel Rothschild...

. His middle name "Mayer" is taken from the name of the founder of the Rothschild family banking empire
Rothschild family
The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...

, Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Mayer Amschel Rothschild was the founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty that became the most successful business family in history. In 2005, he was ranked 7th on the Forbes magazine list of "The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen Of All Time"...

.

Early life

The youngest heir to his family’s banking fortune, de Rothschild was born in 1978 in London, England. He is the younger brother of Anthony de Rothschild
Anthony James de Rothschild
Anthony James de Rothschild is Co-managing Director of Brighton based A7 music and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England....

 and Jessica de Rothschild. As a teenager, de Rothschild was a top-ranked horse jumper on Britain’s junior event team. He later gave up the sport to pursue his education, stating in an interview with The New Yorker “I realized there was more to life than spending hours and hours and hours on a horse.” After leaving Harrow School in 1996 he attended Oxford Brookes receiving a 2:1 B.Sc (Hons) in Political Science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 and Information Systems
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...

. In 2002, de Rothschild studied at the College of Naturopathic Medicine, London where he received an advanced Diploma in Natural Medicine, ND.

By age 20, de Rothschild had started his own music merchandising business and sold it. In 2001 he bought a 1,100 acre organic farm in New Zealand, and was invited to take part in a Polar expedition. This experience turned de Rothschild into an enterprising eco-adventurer.

Involvement

In 2006, de Rothschild spent over 100 days crossing the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, which saw him become one of only 42 people, and the youngest British person, to ever reach both geographical poles. He had already become one of only 14 people ever to traverse the continent of Antarctica, and was part of a team that broke the world record for the fastest ever crossing of the Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

 ice cap.

As part of Adventure Ecology’s ARTiculate series, de Rothschild led a field trip expedition to Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

 in 2007. The group spent time in the Ecuadorian rain forest, documenting the damage international oil companies had caused by drilling the vast oil reserves.

In March 2010 de Rothschild and a crew of 5 began an expedition to sail across the Pacific on a catamaran partially made from reclaimed post-consumer plastic bottles called the Plastiki
Plastiki
The Plastiki is a catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled PET plastic and waste products. The craft was built using cradle to cradle design philosophies and features many renewable energy systems, including solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, and...

. The Plastiki
Plastiki
The Plastiki is a catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled PET plastic and waste products. The craft was built using cradle to cradle design philosophies and features many renewable energy systems, including solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, and...

 successfully completed its journey to Sydney on 26 July 2010.

Accolades

David de Rothschild was awarded the accolade of "Emerging Explorer" by National Geographic, was appointed an "international ambassador" by NGO Clean Up The World
Clean Up the World
Clean Up the World is a community-based, environmental campaign that inspires and empowers communities around the globe to clean up, fix up and conserve their environment....

 and nominated as a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum.

Literary work

In 2007 de Rothschild wrote The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change—Or Live Through It (ISBN 978-1-59486-781-1), with afterword by Kevin Wall
Kevin Wall
Kevin Wall, born March 15, 1952 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is a producer, digital entrepreneur and environmentalist who creates and produces global events often viewed by a billion or more people...

, which was the official companion book to the Live Earth
Live Earth
-Background:Founded by Emmy-winning producer Kevin Wall, in partnership with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Live Earth was built upon the belief that entertainment has the power to transcend social and cultural barriers to move the world community to action...

 concert series. In 2008 he was the Consultant Editor for Earth Matters: An Encyclopedia of Ecology wrote action graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...

, The Boy The Girl the Tree with artist Simon Harrison and wrote the Foreword to True Green Kids:True Green Kids: 100 Things You Can Do to Save the Planet.

In 2008, alongside others including Zac Goldsmith
Zac Goldsmith
Frank Zacharias Robin "Zac" Goldsmith, MP is an English environmental journalist, entrepreneur and Conservative Party politician. He has been the Member of Parliament for Richmond Park since winning the seat at the 2010 general election.Goldsmith is the middle child of the late financier Sir...

, David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....

's environmental advisor, de Rothschild helped to write the commentary for the book Antarctica - The Global Warning.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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