Race For The Future

Adventurer and filmmaker, James Levelle, likes to live life on the wild side, but a near death experience hurricane chasing for the BBC brought him face to face with the deadly side of climate chaos. 

Despite the mainstream doom and gloom climate anxiety, James came up with a crazy idea…

Inspired by the next generation’s efforts to make their voices heard in the climate emergency, James set off from the UK on a 9000-mile race to document youth climate messages and deliver them in a film to the United Nations climate conference in Chile.

His challenge was to get there by any means possible… fossil fuel free.

However, sailing midway across the Atlantic Ocean James received devastating news.  The climate conference in Chile had been cancelled and moved to Madrid.

He now faced a seemingly impossible task… continue the mission to document youth climate messages in South America and find a way to deliver their voices to the UN conference in Spain.

This autumn 2022, James is setting off on a brand-new next generation championing relay race running and cycling overland and sailing the seas from Glasgow, Scotland, to Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt.  

Find out if James made it to the United Nations Climate Conference in time and what he learned from thousands of people, across sixteen countries and thousands of miles from the UK to Egypt.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: JAMES LEVELLE

James Levelle is a filmmaker and adventurer whose work in the world’s wildest places, together with his extraordinary ‘impossible’ expeditions, has earned him uncommon understanding of both the beauty and power of Nature, as well as an unshakeable faith in humankind.  James loves nothing more than entertaining others with his mad antics and sharing the inspiration he’s found out in the wild.

He hitchhiked his way 6000 miles across South America with no mobile phone, no credit card, and no cash for Discovery Channel’s 6-part series, ‘Free Ride’ (2016). He trekked through the frozen wilds of Alaska for Discovery’s hit series ‘Gold Rush Trail’ (2017) and risked life and limb chasing hurricanes for UKTV & BBC’s ‘Hurricane Man’ (2018). The following year, James sped 9000 miles from the UK to Chile… fossil fuel free… on his ‘Race for the Future’ expedition to document youth climate messages and deliver them in a film to the United Nations Climate conference.  

James has featured in The Financial Times, The Telegraph and The Times newspapers, interviews on BBC Radio, he’s had the honour of presenting the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Awards at Buckingham Palace and hosted the Royal Foundation’s ‘Generation Earthshot Prize’ at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow. His work inspiring schoolchildren and young people is paramount though he’s also massively motivated to inspire positive change in adult hearts and minds.

With his cheeky sense of humour and honest, engaging style James shares inspiring (sometimes terrifying) stories filled with pirates, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), hurricanes and human powered, zero cash, zero emission global adventures… and relates them to ‘real life’ in ways that offer helpful new perspectives on life’s problems.  Problems that can also be solved by reconsidering our relationship with Nature and remembering how ‘wild’ conjures that sense of wonder, curiosity, creativity and adventure in each of us.

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An event presented by the Royal Geographical Society – we are the UK’s learned society and professional body for geography, supporting geography and geographers across the world.

www.rgs.org

VENUE: EXETER PHOENIX

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