So cameras will follow Diaz and her pal Drew Barrymore through the jungle. And they'll be trained on the likes of Eva Mendez and — surprise! — maybe even Justin Timberlake in future installments that travel to places like Nepal, Honduras and even — gasp! — Wyoming.

"We just get to hunker down and every morning we get up and have another activity and another adventure. Yesterday we rappelled down a 75-foot waterfall and then walked to the ocean and body-surfed," Diaz said. "It's amazing."

But it's all about the message, right?

"We, human beings, need the planet. There is no other Earth. There is no place else that we can go," Diaz said, sounding more and more like a tree-huggin' celebrity dilettante. But sincere.

"If we want to have a better quality of life for a longer period of time, we need to start looking at our natural resources and understanding that we only have so much fresh water, we only have so much oil, we only have so many trees, we only have so much soil that is useful to us," Diaz said. "And if we want to be able to have the quality of life or even survive on this planet for any period of time for us, for our children, for their children, that we need to start really looking at those resources and understanding how we use them and how to better use them so that we can keep using them."

Whew!

Not that she's crazy about everything in the ecosystem, as quickly became apparent when she screamed every time a bug landed on her.

"I hate bugs," she said.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com