Dame Ellen MacArthur has given up ocean racing because it’s ‘brutally selfish’ and instead wants to concentrate on saving the planet’s resources. She told Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs yesterday that she feels mankind is destroying the planet and wants to campaign for its survival.

MacArthur, 33, whose luxury home on the Isle of Wight is fitted with solar panels, said that during a trip to South Georgia in the south Atlantic to highlight the plight of the albatross she became ‘frightened’ after carrying out research.

‘I realised that on land we don’t see things as precious anymore. We take what we want. This world that I thought as a child was the biggest, most adventurous place you could imagine, is not that big. And there’s an awful lot of us on it. And we’re not managing the resources that we have as you would on a boat because we don’t have the impression that these resources are limited.’
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