Health
Remembering Dr. Jane Goodall
In this poignant episode of Climate One, host Greg Dalton reflects on the life and legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall, a pioneering conservationist who passed away on October 1st. The episode revisits a heart...
Remembering Dr. Jane Goodall
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This is Climate One, I'm Greg Dalton.
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On October 1st, the world lost a true icon.
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Jane Goodall was a tireless advocate for conservation, education, and community engagement.
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She inspired generations of young people to follow in her footsteps.
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As a young woman, Jane Goodall immersed herself in the study of primates and emerged with
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discoveries that challenged and changed what we know about our closest animal relatives.
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Later in life, she became a powerful voice for climate action to protect ourselves and
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the non-human world.
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She traveled constantly and died peacefully in her sleep in Los Angeles.
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Naturally, she was on a speaking tour.
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She didn't like to travel that much, but she thought it was necessary to spread her gospel.
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I had the great pleasure of speaking with Jane Goodall on climate one twice, both times
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in front of a live audience in San Francisco.
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In 2017, we celebrated her 83rd birthday, complete with a chimpanzee cake.
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It amazed me how young people were enthralled by her and how her quiet yet irreverent personality
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moved audiences.
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In honor of her passing, we're revisiting my conversation with her last year at the Sydney
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Goldstein Theatre in San Francisco.
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I always feel connected, you know, when I come up to give a talk.
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I sort of open my heart up so that the talks I give are basically the same, but they're
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different depending on who I'm talking to.
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And that can only happen if you kind of open yourself to the feeling in the room.
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Hmm, okay.
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And you do this all the time you were in Miami recently in Atlanta, speaking to thousands
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of people.
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How do you keep recharged doing that all the time?
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Because I care about the future because I care passionately about the environment and
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wild animals, biodiversity, because I've got grandchildren and probably at least two
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of them will soon have their own children because I care about children.
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But most of all, it's the future of this planet.
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And do we want to be the one species who comes onto the planet and destroys it?
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Right.
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In almost a couple of generations where the only species that kind of destroys our own
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home with this intellectual brain that we think is so clever, if we're so clever, why
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are we destroying our own home?
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Because we've lost the connection between the clever brain and the human heart, which
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is love and compassion.
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The divide between the haves and the have-noughts is getting wider and wider.
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And the few people who have unsustainable lifestyles are doing a tremendous amount to
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destroy the environment.
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But then on the other hand, so is poverty.
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Poverty isn't talked about enough, but the really poor people in the rural areas, they
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destroy the planet simply to survive, cutting down the trees, to make money from charcoal
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or timber in Africa, or to make more land to grow food for their growing families.
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And in the urban areas, they buy the cheapest junk food because it's all they can afford.
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They can't afford us.
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We can, to ask, where did it come from?
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How was it made?
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Did it harm the environment?
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Was it cruel to animals like factory farms?
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Is it cheap because of unfair wages?
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They have to buy the cheapest to survive.
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You write and talk a lot about hope.
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You have a hope cast that I've listened to.
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It's very good.
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And I have a complicated relationship with the word hope.
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And you wrote a book about it.
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You wrote that hope is misunderstood.
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It is often seen as passive.
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So what is hope?
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Is it a feeling?
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Is it a skill?
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And how do you access it?
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Well, to me, if we lose hope, we're doomed because of people.
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If everybody loses hope, particularly young people, what's the point of doing anything?
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If you don't hope that what you do will make a difference.
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Drink and be married tomorrow.
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We die.
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Yes, tomorrow we die.
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And then the wealthy who don't really care because they only care about the moment will
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carry on as they are doing.
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But people come to me and they say, well, I'm really depressed.
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What can I do?
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I'm just one person, the world's in a mess.
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And I say, stop thinking that you can change the world.
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Think about where you are in your own community.
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What do you care about there?
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Can you try and do something about that?
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Maybe you care about letter.
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Maybe you care about people in the street, homelessness, whatever you care about.
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See if you can find something to do about that problem.
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And then you'll find you can succeed and that'll make you feel good and you want to
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do more.
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And then you can understand around the world, there's other people just like you doing
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what you're doing.
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And then you get a feeling of, yes, we can.
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Bill McKibben recently wrote about a very positive story about a quiet silent solar
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revolution in Africa where distributed solar is being deployed.
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It's not showing up in government statistics and it's reaching people who need it the
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most because they have unreliable energy.
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They can't afford it.
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And it's really happening.
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What are some positive stories that you've seen recently?
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Well, it's amazing.
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I mean, I do travel all over the world just about and everywhere and just about every culture.
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There are people, more and more people passionate about the environment.
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I think that's one very positive bit of news that more and more people understand, more
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and more people want to do something about the climate.
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Well, I've got this youth program and the youth are in this program.
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They're passionate about making the world better and they care and they act.
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It's all about taking action.
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There's about 1,500 groups in cross mainland China, for example.
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So this understanding of what we're doing to the planet is growing and that in itself
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is good news.
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In 1960, Gombi National Park where I studied the chimps was part of the great equatorial
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forest belt.
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And by the end of the 1980s, it was a tiny island of forest all around Wabahils.
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The people were cutting down the forest to survive.
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And that's when it hit me that we need to help these people find a way of making a living
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without destroying the environment.
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And we started this program to carry.
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And it's very holistic.
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It includes not just restoring fertility to overused farmland without chemicals and growing
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more food on that newly restored land, but scholarships to give girls a chance of secondary
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education because they are the mothers affecting their children.
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Microcredit, which I feel is tremendously important so that poor villagers can take out a tiny
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loan to start their own small environmentally sustainable business.
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And then when they pay back, it's over 90% that do pay back in Otakori program, they're
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proud.
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It's mine.
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I did it.
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So thanks to Dr. Muhammad Yunus for that.
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Yeah, right.
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The late, yeah, remember, you know, when he spoke at the Commonwealth Club, he said, you
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know, why do banks make loans to people who have money?
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They're not the ones who need money.
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You need to make loans to people who don't have money.
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And by the way, that program is in six other African countries now.
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So it's raising people out of poverty and no more bare hills.
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The trees have come back.
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Couple years ago, you co-wrote the book with Douglas Adams, the book of Hope, and you
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wrote about your four reasons for hope, one of which is the power of young people as
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well as the human spirit and the resilience of nature, which we've talked about in
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amazing human intellect.
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But let's talk about young people.
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A lot of young people are scared and they're angry.
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And there's a real mental health crisis among US youth.
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I don't know if that's international.
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So what do you say to young people who are scared and worried about what, actually, they're
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going to live in longer than you and I will?
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It's very simple.
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I tell them to join Roots and Shoots, our youth program, because I've seen, I mean, I
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don't think it's a single child and we are kindergarten through university who doesn't
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join Roots and Shoots, take an active role in it and feel hopeful about the future.
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Hundreds of them have told me, I feel completely different now.
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I feel there is hope for the future.
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The reason it's called Roots and Shoots is because if you think of a big tree, you love
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trees.
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I know you probably love trees.
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Many people are there.
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Well, think of your favorite tree.
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It probably began with a little seed and when it started to grow, there would be little
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roots and a little shoot.
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And if you picked it up, it would seem so weak and powerless and yet there's a life force,
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a magic in that seed.
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So that those little roots to reach the water can work through rocks and eventually push
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them aside and that little shoot to reach the sun can work through a brick wall and eventually
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knock it down.
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So we see the young people as the roots and their Shoots and all the problems of the
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rocks and the walls and they will break through.
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The program means that you choose yourself.
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We don't tell you what to do but as a group, you choose three projects.
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One to help people, one to help animals, one to help the environment and then you discuss
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what can we do to improve this in our community and roll up our sleeves and take action.
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Or you might want to help immigrants and you will feel great when you know that around
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the world there are other people, other young people doing the same sort of thing.
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So if young people are depressed, tell them, of course, you're depressed.
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We know that things are not good but I've lived 90 years and I've seen bad times and I've
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seen us get over them and somehow this indomitable spirit within us will get us through this along
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with this intellect which we have not used wisely.
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But we are beginning to make a difference and so important and you will agree with me is
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moving to a plant-based diet.
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And what I want to say to you, it's not just that the huge areas of land that are
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clear to grow food for them.
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It's not just that particularly cows, you know, the food goes in here and comes out the
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other end and that's methane gas and that's another vicious greenhouse gas that's affecting
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climate change.
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But just think, each one of these animals is an individual.
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We talk about cows, cows, but this is an individual cow and this is an individual pig and I just
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met a pig called a pig cassero. Not because of pig cassero.
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Pig cassero loves to paint.
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The paintings are selling for over $5,000.
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Her biggest painting sold for $25,000 and she lives in Cape Town and she watched a person who
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rescued her from a factory farm who's an artist who sat up an easel and gave pig cassero a brush
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in her mouth and she started to paint. She loves it.
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As soon as she says the bucket with paints, she comes running out and she even dips the
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brush in different colors to make her her mark. And the only thing she's really been taught
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is at the end she'll dip her snout in red paint and make her snout mark.
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It seems like the food system is so big and so powerful. Yes, okay, if I eat a plant-based diet,
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but the number of vegetarians is not growing in this country.
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It's just not. It's around 3%. It's for all the, you know,
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climatarian and alternative proteins. So how do we change such a big food system?
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Compassion and empathy for animals is changing people. There's no question.
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And the other thing which is positive, I mean, I've become a vegan because I've understood
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the horrors that go on in in dairy farming and separating young newborns from the parents.
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And the conditions that the mothers are kept in is absolutely horrible and the same with laying
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chickens. It's absolutely there in a tiny space like this and their egg drops through a wire
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bottom. And I mean, I know chickens and we have chickens in Africa. They have personalities.
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They're all different. Very different. We have a cocktail called Tyson because he attacks you
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every time you appear. But anyway, so that's one side of it. But I think probably right now,
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I don't know if you agree with me, but more powerful is the devastating effect on the environment
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and the CO2 emissions which come from the whole of agricultural farming actually.
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And then when you realize the difference when you get to permaculture and you get to agroforestry
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and everybody says you can't feed more people like that, but it actually can grow more food that way.
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And we don't need genetically modified food. And the other positive thing, you know, when I first
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became vegan, the food was revolting. I mean, it was just, you've got a wilted lettuce leaf or
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a bit of half cooked asparagus or something. But now you can't tell the difference.
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You mentioned you have a great grandchild on the way if you were young today. How would you
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approach thinking of having children? Because some young couples are saying they're not,
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they're choosing not to. For totality rates are dropping.
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Well, that would have to be an individual choice. But the answer is, you know, if you're thinking
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about having a child get involved in programs to protect the environment for your child's future.
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You're going to do it. Make the world for them.
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You believe that, you know, change happens from inside that in the climate conversation,
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there's lots of naming and shaming, right, judging people, oh, you ate a hamburger. Oh, you flew
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on an airplane. Mm, just, just, just, not so sure. I've done that and learned the hard way that
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people in my life that that doesn't work. People resent that. So how do you, if change needs to
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happen from the inside, how can you ignite that internal change? Well, you know, when I meet people
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who I think, I personally think I've got the wrong idea, you know, that they like climate
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change deniers and things like that. I have found, and I think I was always made this way,
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that it's no good pointing fingers and being angry and making them feel bad or especially in front
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of their peers, because they're not going to listen. They're going to be angry. So instead of
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battling with their head and telling them why they're wrong and why what they're doing is affecting
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this that and the other, you've got to reach the heart. And the only way I know how to reach the
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heart is by telling stories. And in order to tell a story to a powerful CEO or government official,
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you've got to know a little bit about them to find the right story. And if you find the right
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story, you may not actually know at the time that you did reach the heart, but sometimes you learn
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afterwards that that person changed because of that story. You transcend a lot of the political and
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tribal boundaries that we have in our culture today. And you also talk with not just deniers,
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because that's a really small part, less than 10% at least of America. But you do talk with
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Republicans who might have a different view, who don't might not deny climate change or not think
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it's a big deal or the markets will solve it or technology will solve it. So how do you reach
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those kinds of people, talk about your conversations with Republicans, because so few environmentalists
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talk across divides these days? Well, you know, the people in power and politics have a role to play
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in what we do to tackle climate change and all the other dark problems we face today. So many people
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are fed up with politics. And they don't care particularly about any of it. They don't even bother
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to read about the candidates. They just don't care. So they don't vote. And the more and more people
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who don't vote, then the harder it will be to vote for those people who care the most about
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your future. So vote for nature. Vote your vote matters. I mean, this is the important thing.
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Every single vote matters. And you need to register and you need to vote for the person you believe
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will be most likely to care about nature and the future of the planet.
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So Jane, I've heard you say that when you were growing up, you were encouraged by adults in your
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life to set your dreams on things that you could accomplish as a girl. The US may finally elect a
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woman president in about six weeks. We don't know.
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As an iconic woman who has done so much for women in science, what do you think about this
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particular moment? Well, all I know is that when I was very young women wouldn't have dreamed
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really of doing what women are doing today. We still have further to go, but in some countries
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it's terrible, as we know it, Afghanistan and so on. But women all around much of the world
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have a much stronger say in what goes on in their country, in their family.
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And I just was fortunate in having an amazing mother. And when I dreamed of going to Africa when
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I was 10 because I was in love with Tarzan and he went and married the wrong Jane.
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And so everybody laughed at me except my mother. She said, if you want to do something like this,
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then you got to work really hard, take advantage of every opportunity. If you don't give up,
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hopefully you find a way. And many women have said to me that encouraged me to do what I've done.
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And so, you know, women now have as much opportunity to rise to the top as men do in some countries
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like the US. Did you find a Tarzan in when you went? Well, I knew there wasn't a Tarzan.
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My imagine Tarzan, I could never have met anybody like that.
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You're 90 and you've talked about your final chapter and what's the great beyond?
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You know, our culture avoids talking about death. That death is part of
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integral part of nature, part of indigenous cultures who have sorts of rituals around it.
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So, as you look at the next decade, and I hope we sit here when you're a hundred,
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how do you think about your next chapter? Well, you know, I was asked this question once,
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in an audience much bigger than this, and this woman said something about what was my next adventure.
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And so I thought, hmm, this was about four years ago. So, I thought, what is my next adventure?
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And I thought for a moment, and I said, dying. And it was kind of deathly harsh. And then a few
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titters, and I said, well, you know, when you die, there's either nothing, it's the end,
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or there's something. And things have happened to me in my life that I feel there is something.
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And if there is, I can't think of a greater adventure than dying.
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Climate One is a production of the Commonwealth Club. Our team includes Brad Marshall and Jenny Park,
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Ariana Brosius, often Cologne, Megan Bessilia, Kusa Navidadar, and Rachel Lacey. Our theme music
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is composed by George Young. I'm Greg Dalton.