I will never ever forget the feeling I felt as I saw the sea
and set foot on the boat for the first time.
And to that four-year-old kid,
it was the greatest sense of freedom that I could ever imagine.
I just felt, you know, from that age,
I would absolutely love one day, somehow, to sail around the world.
[In February 2005, Ellen set a new world record
for fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe.]
When you set off on those journeys,
you know, you take with you everything you need for your survival.
What you have is all you have.
You have to manage what you have
down to the last drop of diesel, the last packet of food.
It's absolutely essential, else you won't make it.
And I suddenly realized, "But why is our world any different?"
You know, we have finite resources,
available to us once in the history of humanity.
You know, metals, plastics, fertilizers.
We're digging all this stuff out of the ground, and we're using it up.
How can that work in the long-term?
Surely there was a different way we could use resources globally
that used them and not used them up.