many years ago a friend said to me these
words he said you haven’t lived until
you found a cause worth dying for
and I just laughed at them at the time
now a decade later I find myself
agreeing with them and I’m going to take
you on the journey that led me to this
conclusion at the heart of all this is
the concept of cause is there something
that you dedicate yourself to that is
bigger than just yourself or your family
well in my case the first cause I ever
really supported was biofuels this is a
boat we launched 2006 her name was Earth
race and she was built to promote
biofuels as an alternative to petroleum
we filled 100% biodiesel made from waste
cooking oils IRA four-year period she
became the most photographed boat on the
planet and the global port to her we
visited a hundred eighty-six cities had
a quarter of a million people walk
aboard here and in 2008 we see the new
world record for circling the globe the
project was instrumental in supporting
the biofuels industry during its infancy
now while I started this journey with
biofuels as my cause with time the
passion had waned palm oil was
increasingly being used as the principal
feedstock for biodiesel something I had
deep reservations about so in 2009 I
came back to New Zealand and thought of
a low stress nine-to-five job supporting
my family it was most appealing and yet
something in the back of my mind kept
nagging at me this race had opened my
eyes to the potential I had to make
things happen I’ve become really good at
leading teams I could go back and use
these skills to run businesses more
effectively but would it in any way make
the world a better place
probably not it might may not have money
to spend again would be successful in a
conventional sense a bigger house car
boat travel overseas all of the things
I’d covered before I could have again
and more so and yet I’d largely lost
interest and
of them what I really wanted to do and I
know it sounds corny was to make the
world a better place
and working on earth race but found how
rewarding it was to follow your dreams
and fight for something to stand up for
a cause and make a difference had become
more appealing than consumption
ownership and Tremmel perhaps the only
thing I wanted from my old life was some
more time with my girls and I reckon I
could have that while also following my
dreams in the three years that I kept
into this race I started off with
biofuels as my cause and that but as
that waned marine conservation issues
gradually got under my skin and one of
them was Japanese whaling so in 2009
when it came time for the reset I
decided to take on the Japanese whalers
we partnered with sea Shepherd painted
the boat black a few months later went
down to Antarctica chasing those naughty
Japanese what could possibly go wrong we
did our best to disrupt the er
operations they’re not generally six
2010 this happened
Japanese vessel the Shonan Maru number
two cuts us in half 800 ton versus 18
was only gonna in one way and my dream
of stopping Japanese whaling and my mind
at least was was shattered but keep in
mind we had two goals one of them was to
disrupt the whaling operations and our
ability in that little bit compromised
now but the second was to get media and
media was all over this like a rash but
sadly in Japan it was a complete
non-issue and I remember thinking we had
to find a way to take the fight to Japan
before their media would go giving it
any attention a month later and our team
made it happened three of us on a jet
ski we engineer he’s sitting on the
front me and the middle little cameraman
on the back crippling his pants bounced
along dodging icebergs up to the Shonan
Maru smack into the side and clambered
up and a wave came swept me off and in a
few minutes later Larry managed to find
me things are turning pear-shaped a bit
now second attempt and the effect
against Assad they’ve got these steel
anti boarding spikes we’re dodging these
and anyway second Tim clambered on the
side and a very similar wave came up
and it kind of out here and always
within millimeters of getting swept off
but miraculously managed to stay clean
on the side cut the net jumped aboard
crouch down and I knew we’d made a
little bit of history as most
extraordinary feeling I’ve got on the
we didn’t know it at the time but her
success was about to change the
anti-whaling narrative as expected on
daybreak the captain arrested me took me
back to Japan and for the first time
Japanese media began to baiting the
whaling issue on the day I arrived in
Tokyo eight news helicopters hovered
overhead wanting a shot of this very
evil man who’d arrived from New Zealand
47 journalists arrived in prison wanting
to interview me concurrently with us
NGOs around the world ran very clever
campaigns highlighting the dishonesty of
Japanese whaling and my farcical in an
ongoing prosecution and a number of
protests were held and the biggest of
them in Australia and eventually the
Australian government buckled now I
remember the day thus journalists turned
up to see me in prison and she held a
press release up against the glass I
start reading it and I burst into tears
Australia had announced plans to take
Japan to the International Court of
Justice over the whaling and I knew this
was what it would take to stop their
whaling four years later the world’s
highest court ruled that the whaling was
neither legal nor was it scientific and
ordered them to stop conservationists
the world over myself included or when I
had a big puss up had him had a big
hangover the next day in some ways we
made it might have been a bit premature
a couple years later the Japanese
resumed the whaling program but now it’s
only 333 whales as opposed to a thousand
they had before now I’m not claiming
sole responsibility for what I see as a
victory so many people and teams played
a part but in many ways it was my
incarceration and the loss of the boat
that galvanized people into action and
I’m super proud of the role I played and
save
whales in Antarctica back to my time in
Japan I was eventually freed but I paid
a heavy price five months and maximum
security was very difficult and I came
out a changed man and not all for the
better I’d given up a significant chunk
of my life my boat was gone and I was
broke an arriving home I gained had the
chance of a full reset and despite all
that had happened the thought of going
back to a nine-to-five I couldn’t do it
I liken it to the matrix you have a red
pill in a blue pill but the red pill is
a one-way journey once you get to work
on things you truly believe in it is so
hard to go back and simply earn a living
my cause at the stage remained marine
conservation and I was determined to
remain fighting for it
there remained a serious barrier to me
of course and that was money or lack
thereof now well as in prison prison I’d
hatched this cunning plan to solve this
funding issue while also taking our
missions upper level what I wanted to do
was to hire former military personnel
and fund it with a new TV show
hardcore men lots of money on you we
could leak Rick a lotta havoc and do a
lot of good and the TV show would give
us a platform for promoting these issues
that I found really important well
amazingly we made it happen this is the
team that I took to Central America
former members of US Marines US Navy
SEALs US Army Rangers and user1
paratrooper for good measure a hardcore
group of operatives determined to
contribute now we never won all our
battles in fact we lost a lot more than
we won and many times we failed but we
had some successes this Vista we caught
fishing illegally in a marine reserve
and Guanacaste the captain turned out to
be the president the commercial
fishermen’s association the seven shark
finning boats record in a single night
in the Cocos Island Marine Reserve a
Vietnamese boat we caught spearfishing
illegally in Palawan with over 15 tonne
of illegally taken fish much of an
endangered a banned anus same boat
operating illegally in municipal waters
we targeted cyanide fishermen dynamite
fishermen
people hunting pink dolphin for goodness
sake I don’t you can see it on the back
of there is a pink dolphin here up the
front these some guys smoking golf and
me we exposed the brutal seal clubbing
in Namibia
this is the first mission our team ever
ran we even rescued a dolphin that was
being held illegally in a tiny little
swing fool when it comes to marine
conservation my team had delivered
we arrested lots of people we exposed
lots of issues in our television show
aired and something like ninety
countries now I’d be quite happy to keep
running these marine missions for the
rest of my life but they don’t change
when I got an email from a friend with a
very innocuous title of bio mess it gets
technical here so please be with me
biomass is a total amount of mass of
something organic the biomass of humans
for example can be calculated seven
point six billion people times 69 kilos
the average mass of human five hundred
and twenty four million tons now the sea
mail was was claiming that the biomass
of land animals was in freefall wildly
and Emeril’s and she quoted some numbers
at las nubes about nevertheless decided
to do some digging here’s what we did we
added up the biomass of all of the wild
animals on land and were included
mammals birds reptiles amphibians twenty
thousand species in total next we added
up the biomass of man and as twelve
domestic animals and this is cattle
sheep dogs cats etc we then put the two
together and this is where it gets
interesting
this is what I was expecting wild
animals accounting for maybe seventy
five percent of the land animal biomass
sadly there is not what we found the
real answer was both unexpected and
appalling three percent the biomass of
twenty thousand wild animals on land is
now just three percent of the total it
continues to fall man and as twelve
domesticated animals make up the other
ninety seven the reasons for this are
complex habitat loss wildlife poaching
deforestation climate change mining
pollution so many things are impacting
our land fauna my team had been busy
running the Rena
and in many ways to rich tree wildlife
was under even greater threat so we
decided to get involved the thought of
running missions on land was most
appealing today as we’ve been beaten up
in boats so many times maritime missions
are hard work the thought of being on a
jungle we had had visions of pina
coladas sitting in hammocks and swinging
around we started running the machines
and it was swamps and mosquitos and
leeches and that the gloss of jungle
missions quickly wore off but what
didn’t wear off was mission satisfaction
we caught lots of criminals we exposed
lots of issues and we saved lots of
animals here’s a few of our successes we
splurged a number of legal logging
operations this one inseam belaying
National Park in Indonesia this one and
dangku National Park and Sumatra we
closed down to illegal gold mining
operations in Corcovado National Park we
closed down to criminal gangs smuggling
endangered wildlife this one was
smuggling endangered forest Turtles over
the Philippines to China the second one
was smuggling Pangolin what an amazing
little animal this little guy is one of
the lucky ones that we saved including
land animals also helped broaden up our
TV show and some of our most compelling
episodes came from these jungle missions
just recently I’ve been working in the
Amazon jungle on the legal pet trade
pretty much any animal in the Amazon can
now be purchased monkeys snakes Puma
Jagger it is all for sale a deer or
alive we caught the spoke recently who
just shot an endangered female red
monkey here she has been cooked up for
the man’s dinner and tied to a sapling
directly above the bubbling pot was her
baby
destined to become someone’s pet the
side of this literally broke my heart
sadly their poacher is one of thousands
pillaging the jungle for an underground
pit road like wild areas the world over
the Amazon today is under siege as it
hemorrhages its wildlife for demand and
faraway lands while I detest PO
the problem in many ways is the supply
chain that facilitates this lucrative
trade from hunter to buyer take away the
demand or disrupt the supply chain and
generally the poaching stops with us in
mind our team started from the poacher
and we began working down the supply
chain we found boats transporting
wildlife from the jungles local cities
on here you’re seeing two endangered red
monkeys being transferred
we found middlemen in fact more often
than not it was a little woman that buy
the animals and move them on low value
animals so locally is the dead or alive
high-value animals move downstream
normally alive we continued following
the supply chain and the trail led to
macabre in Brazil now if I’m smuggling
wildlife out of the Amazon this is the
port I’m going to run it through I went
there ten days ago
shortly after my arrival was attacked by
two men over the knife and I came within
inches of having my throat slit the
wound in my chest is now healed but the
vision the first guy with the knife
haunts me it’s not the first time we’ll
face the possibility of losing lives
twice that team has come under gunfire
chasing gold miners in jungles been shot
at multiple times by illegal fishing
vessels eckworth chase last one was in
the Philippines I dread the day I come
back with one of my men and a body bag
and every time I say good brought on the
daughters and hid away on campaign I
fear it might be the last time I ever
see them the reality is that our
campaigns take us the difficult places
and sees us taking on criminal gangs
that are morally bankrupt and with deep
pockets and I’m not complaining about
them I’m rather highlighting the fact
that this is the cause that my team and
I choose to fight for and we know the
risks you haven’t lived till you found a
cause worth dying for
I found my cause saving wildlife
I know that one day it may take more
life and I’m okay with that my life
today has real meaning I get to save
dolphins whales Pangolin Turtles
I run patrols and the world’s remotest
jungles I spent the last two months
going up and down the Amazon you know
getting nice wasn’t so great the rest of
it was amazing I wouldn’t swap my
existence with anyone I get to fight for
a cause and I do make the world a
fractionally a better place ask yourself
this question if you died tomorrow can
you honestly say that the world is a
better place with you having been in it
if you haven’t found your cause then I’d
suggest probably not and you are selling
yourself short I’m not saying you need
to risk your life or give up your career
I’m not saying you need to fight for
animals or give up material positions
but I am saying if you find a cause that
you believe in and you dedicate yourself
to it you will lead a richer life and
you might just make the world a better
[Applause] [Music]
words he said you haven’t lived until
you found a cause worth dying for
and I just laughed at them at the time
now a decade later I find myself
agreeing with them and I’m going to take
you on the journey that led me to this
conclusion at the heart of all this is
the concept of cause is there something
that you dedicate yourself to that is
bigger than just yourself or your family
well in my case the first cause I ever
really supported was biofuels this is a
boat we launched 2006 her name was Earth
race and she was built to promote
biofuels as an alternative to petroleum
we filled 100% biodiesel made from waste
cooking oils IRA four-year period she
became the most photographed boat on the
planet and the global port to her we
visited a hundred eighty-six cities had
a quarter of a million people walk
aboard here and in 2008 we see the new
world record for circling the globe the
project was instrumental in supporting
the biofuels industry during its infancy
now while I started this journey with
biofuels as my cause with time the
passion had waned palm oil was
increasingly being used as the principal
feedstock for biodiesel something I had
deep reservations about so in 2009 I
came back to New Zealand and thought of
a low stress nine-to-five job supporting
my family it was most appealing and yet
something in the back of my mind kept
nagging at me this race had opened my
eyes to the potential I had to make
things happen I’ve become really good at
leading teams I could go back and use
these skills to run businesses more
effectively but would it in any way make
the world a better place
probably not it might may not have money
to spend again would be successful in a
conventional sense a bigger house car
boat travel overseas all of the things
I’d covered before I could have again
and more so and yet I’d largely lost
interest and
of them what I really wanted to do and I
know it sounds corny was to make the
world a better place
and working on earth race but found how
rewarding it was to follow your dreams
and fight for something to stand up for
a cause and make a difference had become
more appealing than consumption
ownership and Tremmel perhaps the only
thing I wanted from my old life was some
more time with my girls and I reckon I
could have that while also following my
dreams in the three years that I kept
into this race I started off with
biofuels as my cause and that but as
that waned marine conservation issues
gradually got under my skin and one of
them was Japanese whaling so in 2009
when it came time for the reset I
decided to take on the Japanese whalers
we partnered with sea Shepherd painted
the boat black a few months later went
down to Antarctica chasing those naughty
Japanese what could possibly go wrong we
did our best to disrupt the er
operations they’re not generally six
2010 this happened
Japanese vessel the Shonan Maru number
two cuts us in half 800 ton versus 18
was only gonna in one way and my dream
of stopping Japanese whaling and my mind
at least was was shattered but keep in
mind we had two goals one of them was to
disrupt the whaling operations and our
ability in that little bit compromised
now but the second was to get media and
media was all over this like a rash but
sadly in Japan it was a complete
non-issue and I remember thinking we had
to find a way to take the fight to Japan
before their media would go giving it
any attention a month later and our team
made it happened three of us on a jet
ski we engineer he’s sitting on the
front me and the middle little cameraman
on the back crippling his pants bounced
along dodging icebergs up to the Shonan
Maru smack into the side and clambered
up and a wave came swept me off and in a
few minutes later Larry managed to find
me things are turning pear-shaped a bit
now second attempt and the effect
against Assad they’ve got these steel
anti boarding spikes we’re dodging these
and anyway second Tim clambered on the
side and a very similar wave came up
and it kind of out here and always
within millimeters of getting swept off
but miraculously managed to stay clean
on the side cut the net jumped aboard
crouch down and I knew we’d made a
little bit of history as most
extraordinary feeling I’ve got on the
we didn’t know it at the time but her
success was about to change the
anti-whaling narrative as expected on
daybreak the captain arrested me took me
back to Japan and for the first time
Japanese media began to baiting the
whaling issue on the day I arrived in
Tokyo eight news helicopters hovered
overhead wanting a shot of this very
evil man who’d arrived from New Zealand
47 journalists arrived in prison wanting
to interview me concurrently with us
NGOs around the world ran very clever
campaigns highlighting the dishonesty of
Japanese whaling and my farcical in an
ongoing prosecution and a number of
protests were held and the biggest of
them in Australia and eventually the
Australian government buckled now I
remember the day thus journalists turned
up to see me in prison and she held a
press release up against the glass I
start reading it and I burst into tears
Australia had announced plans to take
Japan to the International Court of
Justice over the whaling and I knew this
was what it would take to stop their
whaling four years later the world’s
highest court ruled that the whaling was
neither legal nor was it scientific and
ordered them to stop conservationists
the world over myself included or when I
had a big puss up had him had a big
hangover the next day in some ways we
made it might have been a bit premature
a couple years later the Japanese
resumed the whaling program but now it’s
only 333 whales as opposed to a thousand
they had before now I’m not claiming
sole responsibility for what I see as a
victory so many people and teams played
a part but in many ways it was my
incarceration and the loss of the boat
that galvanized people into action and
I’m super proud of the role I played and
save
whales in Antarctica back to my time in
Japan I was eventually freed but I paid
a heavy price five months and maximum
security was very difficult and I came
out a changed man and not all for the
better I’d given up a significant chunk
of my life my boat was gone and I was
broke an arriving home I gained had the
chance of a full reset and despite all
that had happened the thought of going
back to a nine-to-five I couldn’t do it
I liken it to the matrix you have a red
pill in a blue pill but the red pill is
a one-way journey once you get to work
on things you truly believe in it is so
hard to go back and simply earn a living
my cause at the stage remained marine
conservation and I was determined to
remain fighting for it
there remained a serious barrier to me
of course and that was money or lack
thereof now well as in prison prison I’d
hatched this cunning plan to solve this
funding issue while also taking our
missions upper level what I wanted to do
was to hire former military personnel
and fund it with a new TV show
hardcore men lots of money on you we
could leak Rick a lotta havoc and do a
lot of good and the TV show would give
us a platform for promoting these issues
that I found really important well
amazingly we made it happen this is the
team that I took to Central America
former members of US Marines US Navy
SEALs US Army Rangers and user1
paratrooper for good measure a hardcore
group of operatives determined to
contribute now we never won all our
battles in fact we lost a lot more than
we won and many times we failed but we
had some successes this Vista we caught
fishing illegally in a marine reserve
and Guanacaste the captain turned out to
be the president the commercial
fishermen’s association the seven shark
finning boats record in a single night
in the Cocos Island Marine Reserve a
Vietnamese boat we caught spearfishing
illegally in Palawan with over 15 tonne
of illegally taken fish much of an
endangered a banned anus same boat
operating illegally in municipal waters
we targeted cyanide fishermen dynamite
fishermen
people hunting pink dolphin for goodness
sake I don’t you can see it on the back
of there is a pink dolphin here up the
front these some guys smoking golf and
me we exposed the brutal seal clubbing
in Namibia
this is the first mission our team ever
ran we even rescued a dolphin that was
being held illegally in a tiny little
swing fool when it comes to marine
conservation my team had delivered
we arrested lots of people we exposed
lots of issues in our television show
aired and something like ninety
countries now I’d be quite happy to keep
running these marine missions for the
rest of my life but they don’t change
when I got an email from a friend with a
very innocuous title of bio mess it gets
technical here so please be with me
biomass is a total amount of mass of
something organic the biomass of humans
for example can be calculated seven
point six billion people times 69 kilos
the average mass of human five hundred
and twenty four million tons now the sea
mail was was claiming that the biomass
of land animals was in freefall wildly
and Emeril’s and she quoted some numbers
at las nubes about nevertheless decided
to do some digging here’s what we did we
added up the biomass of all of the wild
animals on land and were included
mammals birds reptiles amphibians twenty
thousand species in total next we added
up the biomass of man and as twelve
domestic animals and this is cattle
sheep dogs cats etc we then put the two
together and this is where it gets
interesting
this is what I was expecting wild
animals accounting for maybe seventy
five percent of the land animal biomass
sadly there is not what we found the
real answer was both unexpected and
appalling three percent the biomass of
twenty thousand wild animals on land is
now just three percent of the total it
continues to fall man and as twelve
domesticated animals make up the other
ninety seven the reasons for this are
complex habitat loss wildlife poaching
deforestation climate change mining
pollution so many things are impacting
our land fauna my team had been busy
running the Rena
and in many ways to rich tree wildlife
was under even greater threat so we
decided to get involved the thought of
running missions on land was most
appealing today as we’ve been beaten up
in boats so many times maritime missions
are hard work the thought of being on a
jungle we had had visions of pina
coladas sitting in hammocks and swinging
around we started running the machines
and it was swamps and mosquitos and
leeches and that the gloss of jungle
missions quickly wore off but what
didn’t wear off was mission satisfaction
we caught lots of criminals we exposed
lots of issues and we saved lots of
animals here’s a few of our successes we
splurged a number of legal logging
operations this one inseam belaying
National Park in Indonesia this one and
dangku National Park and Sumatra we
closed down to illegal gold mining
operations in Corcovado National Park we
closed down to criminal gangs smuggling
endangered wildlife this one was
smuggling endangered forest Turtles over
the Philippines to China the second one
was smuggling Pangolin what an amazing
little animal this little guy is one of
the lucky ones that we saved including
land animals also helped broaden up our
TV show and some of our most compelling
episodes came from these jungle missions
just recently I’ve been working in the
Amazon jungle on the legal pet trade
pretty much any animal in the Amazon can
now be purchased monkeys snakes Puma
Jagger it is all for sale a deer or
alive we caught the spoke recently who
just shot an endangered female red
monkey here she has been cooked up for
the man’s dinner and tied to a sapling
directly above the bubbling pot was her
baby
destined to become someone’s pet the
side of this literally broke my heart
sadly their poacher is one of thousands
pillaging the jungle for an underground
pit road like wild areas the world over
the Amazon today is under siege as it
hemorrhages its wildlife for demand and
faraway lands while I detest PO
the problem in many ways is the supply
chain that facilitates this lucrative
trade from hunter to buyer take away the
demand or disrupt the supply chain and
generally the poaching stops with us in
mind our team started from the poacher
and we began working down the supply
chain we found boats transporting
wildlife from the jungles local cities
on here you’re seeing two endangered red
monkeys being transferred
we found middlemen in fact more often
than not it was a little woman that buy
the animals and move them on low value
animals so locally is the dead or alive
high-value animals move downstream
normally alive we continued following
the supply chain and the trail led to
macabre in Brazil now if I’m smuggling
wildlife out of the Amazon this is the
port I’m going to run it through I went
there ten days ago
shortly after my arrival was attacked by
two men over the knife and I came within
inches of having my throat slit the
wound in my chest is now healed but the
vision the first guy with the knife
haunts me it’s not the first time we’ll
face the possibility of losing lives
twice that team has come under gunfire
chasing gold miners in jungles been shot
at multiple times by illegal fishing
vessels eckworth chase last one was in
the Philippines I dread the day I come
back with one of my men and a body bag
and every time I say good brought on the
daughters and hid away on campaign I
fear it might be the last time I ever
see them the reality is that our
campaigns take us the difficult places
and sees us taking on criminal gangs
that are morally bankrupt and with deep
pockets and I’m not complaining about
them I’m rather highlighting the fact
that this is the cause that my team and
I choose to fight for and we know the
risks you haven’t lived till you found a
cause worth dying for
I found my cause saving wildlife
I know that one day it may take more
life and I’m okay with that my life
today has real meaning I get to save
dolphins whales Pangolin Turtles
I run patrols and the world’s remotest
jungles I spent the last two months
going up and down the Amazon you know
getting nice wasn’t so great the rest of
it was amazing I wouldn’t swap my
existence with anyone I get to fight for
a cause and I do make the world a
fractionally a better place ask yourself
this question if you died tomorrow can
you honestly say that the world is a
better place with you having been in it
if you haven’t found your cause then I’d
suggest probably not and you are selling
yourself short I’m not saying you need
to risk your life or give up your career
I’m not saying you need to fight for
animals or give up material positions
but I am saying if you find a cause that
you believe in and you dedicate yourself
to it you will lead a richer life and
you might just make the world a better
[Applause] [Music]
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