Jane Goodall at Gombe. Photo credit: Hugo van Lawick, National Geographic Creative
“I have no doubt that we have the tools to make the change, but do we have the will to make the change? It seems with some of the top politicians and corrupt corporations there’s no such will. We need to reach people’s hearts. If millions, billions of people do little things it makes big change. That’s the main message of Roots and Shoots.
“Above all, I want you to think about the fact that we are part—when we’re on Planet Earth—we are part of Mother Nature. We depend on Mother Nature for clean air, for water, for food, for clothing, for everything. And as we destroy one ecosystem after another, as we create worse climate change, worse loss of diversity, we have to do everything in our power to make the world a better place for the children alive today, and for those that will follow.
“You have it in your power to make a difference. Don’t give up. There is a future for you. Do your best while you’re still on this beautiful Planet Earth.”
Netflix interview: Famous Last Words: Dr. Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall’s death last week affected me emotionally in ways that surprised me. I’ve known of her, of course, for a very long time. I heard her speak many years ago at Rutgers University and remember generally liking what I heard. But she hasn’t been someone I’ve worked with or even seen in places where I’ve been over my 22 years of activism on the deepening climate crisis.
However, watching the Netflix interview with her conducted six months ago a couple of days after she died was deeply affecting. Her decades-long dedication to the cause of preserving life on earth and fighting those—“top politicians and corrupt corporations [who are] destroying one ecosystem after another”—was unmistakable. She understood the importance of young people becoming active in large numbers, helping them do so through the Roots and Shoots program. Her deep wisdom and love for all life forms, informed by a similarly deep spirituality, shone clearly throughout. And she understood that the way social change comes about is through large numbers of people—“millions, billions”—taking action on a daily basis.
In the interview she also shared very wise words about how to interact with those who disagree with you. She spoke about the importance of not being either aggressive or overly intellectual, “from the brain,” but instead being empathetic to reach people’s hearts. She referenced how she had observed within chimpanzee societies in Africa that group leaders, always male it seemed, who became leaders because they were aggressive didn’t live as long as less aggressive, more sensitive and group-centered leaders.
It is sad to realize that Goodall will not be with us physically as we fight Trump and all the others who mis-lead through bombast, threats and environmentally and humanly destructive policies and actions. But she was very firm in the belief that after her physical death she would still be around, that her spirit, her consciousness, would not die.
My view of “life after death” is that each of us lives on—or not—in the hearts and minds of other people, based upon what we have done with our lives while on earth, what we have said and done, how we have given of our time and energies for others, how much we have lived by adherence to the principles of higher love. There is no question that Jane Goodall will live on in that way within people all over the world for a very long time, strengthening and prodding us.
Goodall didn’t pull any punches about our dire situation, but she was a fighter. Here’s how she put it in the interview:
“Even if this is the end of humanity as we know it, let’s fight to the very end. Let the children know that there is hope if they get together. It’s better to go on fighting to the end than to just give up. . . I have no doubt that we have the tools to make the change, but do we have the will to make the change?”
Ted Glick has devoted his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa, he left college in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973, he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon and worked as a national coordinator on grassroots street actions around the country, keeping the heat on Nixon until his August 1974 resignation. Since late 2003, Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a renewable energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May 2006, he began working with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and was CCAN National Campaign Coordinator until his retirement in October 2015. He is a co-founder (2014) and one of the leaders of the group Beyond Extreme Energy. He is President of the group 350NJ/Rockland, on the steering committee of the DivestNJ Coalition and on the leadership group of the Climate Reality Check network.