By Jane Goodall.
We have a common ancestor with the chimpanzees. We brought not only the good, loving and altruistic traits from that common ancestor but also the violent, brutal and warlike traits as well. The chimpanzees like us have a dark side, and a noble side. Unlike us, they can’t sit down and discuss how they should move together to a better, closer together future. We can. We haven’t used that intellect that we’ve been gifted with; we have instead veered off into materialism.
We are seeing the results more clearly each year. In recent years we have been living through some of the darkest times, for me personally, since World War II.
The immediate danger of the last year has been from the COVID-19 pandemic. An even greater threat to our existence on the planet is climate change. Water supplies are drying up, creating the likelihood that future wars will not be fought over oil but water. If we don’t address climate change, we will have hundreds of millions of refugees from areas of the planet that will become uninhabitable, desperately seeking a place to live. Already today, these “climate refugees” are everywhere. We have had terrible, terrible fires. The effect of the hurricanes and flooding are creating unlivable conditions in many parts of the world. Brutally, future generations will end because of climate change if we don’t do something about it.
Even now, with climate change clearly on the agenda of any civilized, thinking, thoughtful, caring person, there are leaders in three countries that I know of, the US, Australia, and China, opening up coal mines, the worst pollutant of all. We are up against major powers, major forces, whether it’s weapons, the pharmaceutical companies, or the energy industries; it’s money, money, money, money. This is why so many people are depressed.
Both pandemics and climate change have been, at least in large part, a result of our absolute disrespect of the natural world, and our disrespect of the animals with whom we should be sharing this planet.
It is this disrespect — cutting down the forests, forcing animals into closer contact with people, hunting and killing them, eating them, trafficking them, selling them in the wildlife markets, creating conditions in our factory farms, which are like concentration camps for animals – that creates a perfect environment for some kind of pathogen (in the case of COVID-19 a virus), to jump from an animal to a person. This particular virus bonded with a cell in the human body, created the new disease, and happened to be very contagious.
With all of this said, it is desperately important to give a hopeful message. Because if we all lose hope, that’s the end. It’ll be the end of us. Without hope, it is hard to imagine the point of doing anything.
Addressing poverty is a valuable starting point. We’ve got to realize that right now there are 7.2 billion of us on the planet. We’re already using up finite natural resources, in some areas faster than nature can replenish them. If in 2050 the prediction is true that we’ll be closer to 10 billion, what is going to happen?
I came to that realization that alleviating poverty was the key to protecting the natural world in developing nations while flying over Africa, the little Gombe National Park where I did my research. In 1960 this little park was part of a great forest belt stretching across Africa to the West Coast. When I flew over in the early 90s, it was a little tiny island of forest, surrounded by completely bare hills, more people living there than the land could support, too poor to buy food from elsewhere. And that’s when I realized, if we don’t help these people find ways of making a livelihood without destroying the environment, we can’t even try to save the chimps or any other animals.
If you’re really poor, you probably understand perfectly well that if you clear trees on a very steep slope you’re going to get terrible erosion. People living on the land know these things. You’re going to get the streams silting up. But if you’re desperate to feed your family, and the farmland on the lower slopes is overused and infertile, you’re going to cut down the trees anyway. You’re going to fish the last fish. If you’re living in the city, the urban poor, you’re going to buy the cheapest junk food, because you have to try and survive.
At the same time, we must address the unsustainability of the lifestyles of the rest of us, those of us in the co-called developed countries. For this I have hope, gained from working with young people all over the world in our Roots and Shoots program. Young people get it. And they are becoming an effective force trying to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle in their areas.
The message that I feel I must put out, is “What can I do?” This is what people want to know. The Jane Goodall Institute is working to alleviate poverty in seven Africa countries by helping people find ways of living without cutting down the forests, with keeping girls in school with scholarships.
The other action that could be a far better allocation of the trillions of dollars being used to make the world worse and sinking us into the pits of hell, is trying to save forests, trying to plant trees.
We must find ways where people can be engaged in action. When they are engaged they feel more hopeful, knowing that they are doing something to create a better world.
It is not always light for me. Sometimes I feel weighed down. So many people say “Oh Jane, you’re giving us hope,” and I’m thinking, “I’ve got to go on doing this.” I get hope from the young people. I get hope from the resilience of nature. It’s unbelievable.
I call it a spiritual power. I feel it very strongly in the forest. It’s something that indigenous people, the Native Americans, the shamans, the gurus in India, all share — this sense, this understanding that it’s a whole, that we are part of the natural world. We rely on nature for clean air, for clean water, for food, for shelter, for shade, for regulating the climate, for regulating the rainfall. We go on destroying Mother Nature at the risk of the end of humanity.Every single day, living on this planet, we have some impact. And those of us who are not living in desperate poverty particularly have a choice as to what kind of impact we make.
We can choose to assist our brothers and sisters in the developing world, and ask our governments to do the same. We can choose to make a light ecological footprint. If we all remember that each day we do make a difference, not as an individual but collectively, then we move toward a better world for all living things.
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