Jane Goodall on the Future, Aging and Conservation
In the second part of my interview with the legendary Dr. Jane Goodall, we discuss aging, veganism, zoos, aging and her wishes for the future. For part one, click here.
Marianne Schnall: Tell us more about Roots & Shoots and its work to educate and empower youth. What does it aim to do?
Jane Goodall: What it aims to do, first of all its main message is that that everyone of us makes an impact on the world every day. And so its helping individuals to understand that though they may feel their small actions dont make a difference which if it was just them, they would be right probably. But its not just them and cumulatively our small decisions, choices, actions, make a very big difference. So thats one thing. The other is that its youth driven, so its young people sitting around either on their own or at their high school or university, or sitting with the teacher if theyre children in Kindergarten or first grade, or with parents, or with older children its doesnt matter thinking about the problems around them, talking about them, and then between them choosing three projects that they feel would make things better: one for people, one for animals, and one for the environment. So, in almost any group of kids, you get those passionate about animals, you get some who want to really, really do community service for people and you have some who want to recycle or clean streams or something like that. So every child can become involved in a project which they helped to choose and about which they feel passionate.
And its working I mean, its changing l! ives. I cant begin to tell you how many lives its changing. I think this is why its growing so fast.
MS: How do we balance the needs of human beings and animals? Human beings tend to think only about our own needs and assume that everything on this planet is just here to serve us.
JG: They do. Well, its very hard, I mean, first of all thats the importance about educating people who animals really are and that they are not just automatons and they deserve an inning as much as we do. And secondly there are too many people on the planet and everyones afraid to talk about family planning, but thats interfering with peoples right to choice to have a huge family. Well, I dont think anybody has the right to a huge family. Theres already more people on the planet than our natural resources can even support, and if everybody were to have a high standard of living, we need three or four or five new planets to provide the resources. And this cannot be, so something has to change.
And I get also upset when so many people say there all sorts of problems in Africa and India where they have these big families. They dont realize that 10 children in rural Tanzania will use less natural resources in a year than one middle class American child. People dont think like that, you see.
MS: Do you see hypocrisy in how we sometimes treat domesticated animals such as our pets over wild animals? An example would be someone who pampers their pet hamster in one room, yet kills rodents in another part of their house using traps and poison.
JG: Yes, thats very true. And you get the white coated scientist who has a dog at home whos part of the family who understands ever word I say but then he goes and puts on his white coat and does unspeakable things to dogs in the name of science. Theres a real schizophrenia. Yes, we are very peculiar [laughs].
