Passion for the planet: Jane Goodall delivers climate message for San Francisco audience
"How absurd is it that climate change has become a political thing?" Goodall said, followed by a roar of applause from over a thousand audience members Monday night at San Francisco's Sydney Goldstein Theater.
Goodall was one of two guests in a live podcast hosted by Climate One , a program of the Commonwealth Club. She was joined by Rhett Butler, journalist and founder of Mongabay , a watchdog network that reports on the exploitation and conservation of wildlands around the world.
Goodall's first and last statements were a call to vote for candidates who will work for the same three goals that her global institute has fought for since 1977 — conservation, respect for animals and the elimination of poverty. The Jane Goodall Institute , based in Washington, D.C., promotes its educational curriculum in 27 countries.
It participates in projects that give micro-credit business loans to women in developing nations and in the legal defense of animals. She is a United Nations Messenger of Peace and travels constantly to speak around the world.
"Poverty isn't talked about enough, but really poor people, they destroy the planet simply to survive by cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or to make more land to grow food for their families," said Goodall.
She is intimately familiar with the topic. These were the economic forces that destroyed much of the habitat surrounding the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, Africa, where in the 1960s she studied chimpanzee social and family life as an untrained tutor of famed anthropologist Louis Leakey. She had to educate the local population about conservation and help them change their economies.
Staring into the eyes of chimpsGoodall's work became public through documentaries by the National Geographic Society. The world watched the young, blond, blue-eyed English woman with ivory complexion walk through the jungle in shorts, sometimes barefooted.
She moved mindfully, acknowledging poisonous snakes with enough respect to gain safe passage. She climbed trees to meet the chimps eye-to-eye, viewing them as equal to humans and deserving of the same legal rights. The chimps grew to accept her into their community. She named them: Flo, David Greybeard, Goliath, Mr. McGregor.
"Staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back," she said in a 2024 National Geographic documentary.
She was one of the first scientists to discover that animals use tools, a trait formerly considered to be only human. Like a time-traveler, Africa allowed Goodall to loop back to an age before European monarchs declared nature to be nothing but a resource for building empire. That world view was on stage Monday night.
Event host Greg Dalton asked both Goodall and Butler to weigh in on a range of issues, including plastics and the environmentally destructive palm oil industry. They also discussed President Joe Biden's support for an international commitment to preserve 30% of the planet's oceans, lands and freshwater by 2030.
Mongabay's network of 900 journalists have reported extensively on these issues, which are grim. Dalton asked them both for some positive news. Butler pointed out the impact of new leadership in Brazil.
"One of the big stories is about places in Brazil where recovery has happened. They used to have a 50% deforestation rate, and it has scaled back to 23%," said Butler.
"Technology is giving us a better picture of what's happening in the world," he said, pointing out the use of satellite systems and other open-source reporting tools. "We recently wrote a very positive story about a quiet, silent solar revolution in Africa, where solar panels are being deployed, but it's not showing up in government statistics."
Roots and ShootsGoodall pointed to the expansion of one of her institute's programs called Roots and Shoots , an educational program aimed at engaging students from kindergarten through college to do local projects that address conservation, animal rights and poverty.
"There are more and more people passionate about the news, and more and more people want to do something about it," she said, describing the reason the program was named Roots and Shoots.
"If you think of a tree that starts with a seed, it has a life force and magic. For those little roots to reach the water, they work through rocks, and they push them aside.
For those shoots to reach the sun, they can work through a brick wall. We see young people as the group that will take all the problems of the world, and they will break through."
