Are you aged between 18 and 23? Do you care passionately about the global climate crisis? Do you have an insatiable taste for adventure? If you can answer ‘yes’ to all three of those questions, then you need to know about the Future Leaders search.

In 1989, veteran polar explorer and conservationist Robert Swan became the first man to walk to both the North and South Poles. He has since founded 2041, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of renewable energy sources as the best hope for halting the chronic environmental crisis in Antarctica. And now, he’s hosting our Web TV show, in which he will explain the nature of the crisis and tell you how you could become part of the solution as a member of the team he will lead on a mission to Antarctica next year.

Nowhere else on Earth is the effect of climate change more visible than in the beautiful and fragile eco-system of Antarctica. Robert was last there in 2008, equipped by npower with a wind turbine and solar panels provided. In doing so he became the first person ever to live solely on renewable energy sources in the harshest environment on the planet. It demonstrated beyond doubt that if it could be done there, it could be done anywhere.

The Future Leaders mission needs driven young green warriors who are willing to brave the Antarctic with Robert and share their experiences upon their return, thus influencing the perceptions of their peers and accelerating the shift towards the use of renewable energy resources. Whatever walk of life you hail from, you could be among the final few who will be given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Log on to find out how.

H: Nicola Bonn, host
R: Robert Swan, polar explorer

H: Hello and welcome to the Good Causes Show, I’m Nicola Bonn. Now next month, polar explorer and conservationist Robert Swan, OBE will lead a group of ordinary members of the public on a mission to Antarctica. Swan’s team of first-time visitors are all employees of energy company NPower, which is sponsoring the two week mission. Well joining me today to talk about this quest and the reasoning behind it is polar explorer Robert Swan OBE. Welcome Robert

R: Hi

H: Of course we are live today so please send us your questions and we will tackle what we can over the course of the next 15 minutes or so. Robert, where to begin? This is just incredible! I’ve been looking at your website, and 2041 seems to be the big thing that crops up everywhere – tell me all about it

R: Well 2041 is the year – 32 years from now – where the treaty that preserves Antarctica, right now no one owns it, it’s the only place in the world we still all own, and it’s twice the size of Australia – huge ice cap at the bottom of the world, and in 2041 the treaty that protects it and stops us going down there to mess with it, stops. So my mission, long term, is to make sure that people in 32 years have the sense to leave one place in the world alone, as a continent for peace and for science. I think people a thousand years from now would be glad if we just leave one place alone

H: Yes.

R: And so that’s our long-term mission

H: Ok. Well before we continue let’s take a look at this short clip of you in Antarctica

Video Footage

“This is really the real Antarctic continent, and I’m sure after this morning you would agree, I’m sure with us, that this is not a bad place to look after forever.”

“There’s no words to describe this. Coming from a small island in the Caribbean, this is one of the best things that has ever happened to me”

H: Wow that looks absolutely incredible. So tell me, what inspired your interest?

R: Well when I was 11, I watched a film on TV, it was black and white and it was all about Antarctica, and it just pulled me in. I remember this feeling of being literally just pulled in, to this place as a kid, and then I read the stories of Scott and Shackleton and all the great explorers, I did actually find that the idea of becoming a polar explorer seemed to go down quite well with girls at parties, though there were some more motivational issues here, but to cut a long story short it was my life’s dream, and it took a long time to do it, but I eventually became the first person in history to walk both poles, north and south, and it was on those journeys that I began to realise that the environment was an issue I should dedicate my life to, more

H: That’s amazing. Now you haven’t done this all alone because I know that you have a little friend who always comes with you –

R: Absolutely

H: And your little friend is sitting with us now

R: Teddy. Teddy looks probably about as rough as I do now but teddy’s the first teddy in history, not only to walk to both poles, but actually two weeks ago was again at the south pole, not with me, but with another team that went overland to the pole. So teddy has been to the south pole twice overland and to the north pole once with me, so as I say he looks a bit rough but quite a travelled teddy and a lot of very, very young kids rate teddy a lot higher than they rate me, that’s for sure

H: Does teddy handle the hostile environment quite well then?

R: He does. Well he’s quite chilled and you know he’s just a good friend, you know he actually is a friend and always has been, and when one’s in the middle of nowhere it’s always quite a good thought that teddy’s in your pocket. Helps me anyhow

H: Oh I think he’s lovely. Well obviously you’re also doing lots of treks out there now with people joining you, and I know you’ve got the NPower one coming up very soon. Can you just tell me a bit about what it’s like getting involved, what do people go through, how do they handle the situation when out in those circumstances?

R: Well there’s two things happening this year. one is that we’re taking a fantastic team of 10 NPower employees, it’s great to see, in this really gloomy world right now, a company that’s willing to invest in their employees, all on the issue of renewable energy. NPower is an energy company and they know full well that we’re going to be using, you know, oil, coal, gas, all these things for a while, but gradually we’ve got to bring in the use of renewable energy, so this team’s coming with me, ordinary people, great people, coming to do an extraordinary thing, and they will come back from Antarctica as champions, to help the company, help inspire people on the issue of the environment, at home, to their friends, to their family, but at the same time today, we’re launching a competition, and the competition through NPower is to find 6 young people from the whole of the UK, and I’m not looking for Tarzans and Amazons, they don’t have to be Captain Scott of the Antarctic, I’m looking for guys and girls with passion to come with me to Antarctica this time next year, and the competition, you can get the competition details through Npower.com/2041, that’s where the information is. And what I’m looking for is that young people at quite a difficult time in the world, can dare to dream that they could come with me to Antarctica this time next year, win the competition, and what we’re looking for is young people with ideas, on how we can bridge this gap Nicola – there’s a simple gap in the world now, where we all know there’s a problem with the environment, but there’s a bit of a gap and a lot of people here think well what can we do? Can we really make a difference? Is it worth it? I want to bridge that gap, and the way to do that is to be inspirational

H: Yes

R: Not gloomy. So these young people, the NPower team that are going this year, are all part of coming back as champions and saying to people, especially during tough times, you might save a couple of bucks, a couple of pounds from your wallet, if you start to save energy. You know it’s not huge rocket science, but we need to narrow this gap between awareness and doing something, because we really need to do it, and what I see in Antarctica, and what they see, is where the great ice caps are really melting, it’s not something that happened yesterday, it’s not something that’s going to happen tomorrow, it’s happening now and we need to listen to that

H: And by seeing that I think they’ll want to take action, and I suppose as well these kids are the leaders of tomorrow, and they might be making decisions in 2041

R: Well it’s great you said that because if we go back a few years – go to John F Kennedy, the great American president, 1961, he says right we’re going to put somebody in the moon and bring him back in the decade – a lot of people said what? That was impossible. But you know something, 8 years later they did it, and the people in the Houston control centre on that day when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldring landed on the moon, the average age of the young people in the Houston control centre was 26 years of age

H: Yes

R: So if I can get hold of some 18 / 23 year olds now, 8, 10 years time they’ve got to be running things and we’ve got to have change

H: Well I have one for you here actually – Antonia has been in touch saying “what sort of skills do I need to have to put myself forward for this trip?”

R: Well first you’ve got to believe Antonia, wherever you are, thanks for calling in – you’ve got to believe that you could do something about this, that it doesn’t have to be all big deal, but what are your ideas, if you went, saw this story, got all this information, got a great film, got a great slide show, met lots of young people from lots of different nations, what would be your ideas when you came back to do something with it? So probably one of the main skills Antonia you probably need is the guts to stand up and give it a go, and say something, don’t, you know, if you can’t do that you need to practice doing that

H: So that comes first before physical skills -

R: Don’t need – all you have to do is be healthy

H: Right

R: You don’t have to be, as I say Scott of the Antarctic. And I’m looking for guys and girls

H: I love this. Barry’s been in touch here, he says how and what do you eat when out in those conditions?

R: Well when you’re walking to the South Pole you need a massive amount of calories, that’s when we do the big expeditions, you probably need 5200 calories a day and you’re still going to lose weight. You eat raw butter, you eat chocolate bars, you each stuff that’d probably kill you here but you need it there. When we go on our expeditions you eat pretty normal stuff but interestingly enough you’ve got to drink lots of water in Antarctica, because Antarctica is actually more of a desert than the central Sahara, so you’ve got to drink lots to stay hydrated

H: So is it pretty hot during the day and freezing at night?

R: No it’s not, it’s cold pretty much all the time, but it’s because of where it is, it’s the air is incredibly dry and a lot of people that come on my expeditions sometimes fail to drink enough fluid and they start to feel a bit grim, and then once they’ve drunk some more water or whatever they feel a lot better

H: Right well Thomas has been in touch – “how do you prepare your body before a mission to the poles?” You look very muscly!

R: Well you’ve got to – actually you’ve got to get fit and fat to walk to the pole, because you’re going to lose a huge amount of body weight. I lost 28 pounds, 30 odd pounds in body weight walking to the south pole, so you’ve got to try and carry as much weight as you can on you before you go, and then you know you’re going to lose it, but again for this mission, all you need to do is be healthy, passionate and ready to soak it all up, come back home and blast out the message, and remember we’re not going to walk to the pole on this mission, we’re just going to the edge of Antarctica. It’s still very exciting

H: Let’s talk more about this message I mean looking – 2041 very important year, but now how bad is the situation in Antarctica? What can we do to help it over here?

R: Well I think that you know it’s not what’s happening in Antarctica so much that’s the problem. The ice in Antarctica’s melting, what that means is that this will affect climate. The sea level will rise. I live on the river Thames in Greenwich, and you know something, they’ve closed the gates, the big Thames barrier more times in the last couple of years than they have in the ten years before that, because sea level is already rising, and what happens when you start to melt the poles, which we’re doing, and we allow it to continue, is that it just will create climate change, more extremes of climate, more drought, more storms, more floods, more – actually on some places more cold weather on a short term period, so we’re talking about major disruptions to our climate as it is, and some of the people listening are probably thinking well I wonder if this climate change is really something that we are causing all of it, well the answer’s no. We are in a period of the world where it is actually getting warmer naturally, we’re just happening to make it worse. So that’s the area we need to concentrate on, and we used enough resources in the world that would require 3 planets to provide that amount of resources, and we’ve only got one planet last time I checked it out. So what we’re talking about here is changing the way we view resources. View a tree – maybe it’s better alive than dead. View how we use energy – we can’t just keep using it as we are. And that all can be very negative and very grim. What I’m trying to do is to turn it into being positive, maybe saving some money and working with some great people like NPower who can actually see this. How many energy companies tell you to save energy? They do

H: Well I know, it’s brilliant

R: It’s cool, I like that

H: Talking about the little things like trees, we’ve got a question from Matthew from Colchester, “with councils chopping down trees and shrubs left, right and centre, isn’t it about time the government starts doing more to preserve our nation’s wildlife, trees and shrubs?”

R: It is and I think but again it’s not always government – it’s us. We can’t just say it’s government, it’s what we’re doing. It doesn’t cost much to plant an extra tree

H: No

R: Somewhere in your garden, right? But you’re right and what I find extraordinary about our great country is that we throw away millions and millions and millions of tonnes of wood into landfill sites. That wood could be used to produce energy cleanly, so there’s lots of those sorts of things that are happening now, where I think people are starting to think about. They’re starting to get there

H: Oh well I hope we do get there. Thank you, this has been incredibly inspiring and I hope you’re mission with NPower goes very, very well and that you find some brilliant future leaders as well. Now if you’d like further information about this the place to go is www.npower.com/2041. It’s been lovely having you, but before you go, take a look at this film clip of a previous expedition

Video Footage

“Never in all our years of coming to Antarctica has this beautiful place revealed itself, and been so kind to us. On this expedition we’ve seen the fragile nature of Antarctica, we’ve seen the harshness of Antarctica and now what’s next? All of us simply cannot leave this expedition without a real sense of urgency, all that we’ve seen, all that we’ve heard on global warming and climate change, we cannot go back and expect some magic thing to happen in the world, that somebody will come up with solutions. What we have to do is to actually do something and be committed and deliver on it.”

Marcus Ware – “I think managing energy in your home is really based on two things. The first is just using energy more efficiently, it’s about things like switching off lights, it’s about filling your kettle less, just one cup not seven. It’s about insulation, it’s looking at all the ways that recognise that energy’s scarce and actually using less of it is good for the planet and it’s good for your wallet.”

“There are numerous opportunities for business both to work in conjunction with the planet but also in conjunction with their current business plans. We’ve looked at many of the solutions to climate change and solutions to some of our energy requirements, and these solutions currently exist, they’re currently viable technologies that can be purchased today, on the market, implemented in our businesses and implemented to provide our businesses with a cost saving.”

Emily Zeigler – “One thing that I’ve really learned from this experiences is that true change comes within the power of numbers, and the power of numbers exists within communities and we can protect our environment, change the way we live, change our mindsets in the way that we go about our daily lives to truly make a difference and to truly make this world sustainable environmentally.”

“In a matter of days from now we embark on the voyage for cleaner energy, starting on the west coast of the United States of America, and that voyage will take us to engage future leaders, young people on a 4, 5 year voyage, Europe, Russia, India, China and finally the North West Passage. So that is our contribution. What will your contribution be?”