Why Goodall stays hopeful

Jane Goodall thinks today’s environmentalists can be too despairing, said David Marchese in The New York Times. Goodall, 87, first found fame for her paradigm-shattering work as a primatologist in the 1960s. Studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, she was the first to observe the animals eating meat and using tools. But her 44-year career as an activist may be her more important legacy, leading conservation efforts across the world and forging new eco-caretakers through her Roots & Shoots programs for young people. Goodall wants those youngsters to know that despite all the bleak headlines about climate change, there is hope for the planet. “We absolutely need to know all the doom and gloom because we are approaching a crossroads,” she says, “but traveling the world I’d see animal and plant species being rescued from the brink of extinction, people tackling what seemed impossible.” Those positive stories need more attention, Goodall says, “because they’re what gives people hope.” Without hope, “why should I bother to think about my ecological footprint if I don’t think I [can] make a difference? Why not eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?” It’s why she has no plans to retire. “I don’t know what the meaning of life is. The meaning of my life is to give people hope.”