Planet in Peril: a conversation with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

On October 23 and 24, CNN will air Planet in Peril, a two-part documentary that examines unsettling changes taking place in the global environment. Anchor Anderson Cooper, wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin, and CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, report from "hot spots" around the world, focusing on four key issues: climate change, vanishing habitats, disappearing species, and human population growth. The film's intent, Cooper recently told JS, is to "take people to the front lines and show them in a very real wag.., what is happening." Below are excerpts from our conversation with Cooper, pictured at right with children from the Kraho tribe in the Amazon rain forest.

Q. Of all the hot spots you visited, what caused you the most alarm?

A. I think visually, the deforestation that I saw in the Amazon is probably the most striking example of some of the worst hot spots. When you're flying over the Amazon, you really get to see the curls of black smoke in many different spots in this amazing sea of green trees. You can literally see them bulldozing large plots of land. And it's remarkable. You can actually smell the forest burn from the air.

Q. Could you describe some of the animals you encountered?

A. We went to Phnom Tamao Center in Cambodia, and we saw amazing elephants that had been rescued. One elephant, a baby, had gotten its foot caught in a poacher's snare, and the foot had actually come off. We [also] saw a lot of snakes in Cambodia. In fact, Jeff Corwin and I re-released snakes that had been captured. They had been saved by the police, and we re-released them back into the wild. I'm a little scared of snakes so reaching into this bag of snakes to put them back into the wild was a little bit intimidating, but it was a lot of fun.

Q. What is causing the drain on land and resources around the world?

A. There's a growing population in a lot of places, and they put a strain on resources. People need more land. And so, in a lot of countries, people are expanding into land where there were once pristine habitats, and that's a whole other burden on the ecosystem. As people expand and animals lose their habitat, that has repercussions. That's part of what we're focused on showing, what that strain looks like.

Q. Did you come upon any innovative solutions to the environmental problems we face?

A. There are a lot of different experiments going on, a lot of ways to do sustainable agriculture, for instance, that doesn't destroy the land while it's being farmed. Part of the problem is that [in the Amazon] it's just slash-and-burn deforestation. That not only destroys the forest, but the land is only usable for one or two seasons. So, there are ways to farm that can actually help the land and are more sustainable, and I think those are among the most productive [things] we saw.

Q. What is the current thinking among scientists who are climate-change skeptics?

A. Skeptics argue that this is part of a natural cycle, and that the Earth has entered cycles like this before. Then there's sort of a scientific middle ground that says, yes, this may be part of a natural cycle, but also people are contributing to it and may be speeding up the cycle.

To learn more about the documentary, go to www.cnn.com/planetinperil.