Pushing the Limits Interview With Jane Goodall

Until the day I met Jane Goodall, I had never been in a honeymoon suite. As it turns out, the honeymoon suite at the Delta Chelsea hotel in Toronto was the only spare room available to conduct my interview with the renowned social and animal activist, the ‘chimpanzee lady’ herself. Jane is best known for conducting a decades- long study of chimpanzee life in Africa. Her research has corrected many of the conventional wisdoms about what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
   
Jane was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2004 and was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2002. Today, she tirelessly travels around the globe three hundred days a year promoting the Jane Goodall Institute and her latest initiative ‘Roots and Shoots’ which aims to “inspire youth of all ages to make a difference by becoming involved in their communities.”
   
Jane Goodall is the closest thing to a saint that the environmental movement has today. And every saint deserves a good mystery surrounding the circumstances of their birth.
   
By chance, I already had some advance intelligence about the events leading up to her birth and an unexpected glimpse into Jane’s family history. A friend’s grandfather supposedly played a role in delivering Jane into this world. The story goes: Jane’s father was off at war in Europe so my friend’s grandfather drove Jane’s pregnant mother to the hospital for the birth.
   
“Not so,” Jane said. “I was not born during World War II.” Indeed, Jane was born in 1933 and her father was home at the time. As Jane tells it, the grandfather in question insisted on transporting Jane’s pregnant mother to the hospital on the grounds that Jane’s father’s open-air Aston Marten “was not fit to drive a pregnant lady. It just would not be proper for a woman in her condition to be driving to the hospital in that car.”
   
Thus Jane’s mother went to the hospital in a fully-roofed vehicle.
   
Having cleared up that small error about where her unusual life began, we went on a journey to see where Jane wound up and what she had learned about the future of our planet.
   
I asked Jane, “If you were the kindergarten teacher for a future US President, what message would you want to get across to that child?” Jane replied that there is a delicate dance between democracy and a commitment to issues like the environment, which require long-term thinking. According to Jane, Jakaya Kikwete, the new president of Tanzania, wants to do the right things for the environment, but he’s ham-stringed by the short-term exigencies of democracy. She recalls him saying, “Jane, I want to do all these things for the environment in Tanzania, but now we’ve got this democracy and I can’t. My hands are tied due to popular opinion. The effects won’t be shown for the next 20 or 30 years.’ The electorate can’t wait that long. Jane said it is important to get a future US President to have conviction like Kikwete. “On the other hand, that is pointless unless a big enough percentage of the American public also has the same values. Otherwise that President can’t be elected.”
   
Jane then tells me about a UN Millennium Peace Summit she attended, which drew a thousand religious and spiritual leaders from a hundred countries. “It was a sight to be seen!” Everyone was dressed up in their regalia, and yet, Jane could not believe that “almost none of them addressed the environment, except for one group of indigenous people from nine countries.” The Inuit leader from Greenland told the august assemblage of clerics, “Brothers and sisters, I have a message for you from your brothers and sisters in the north. Up in the north we know every day what your people do in the south. Up in the north the ice is melting. What will it take to melt the ice of the human heart?” Jane said that moment stayed with her. “It’s the most poignant description of global warming that I can think of. What will it take to melt the ice of the human heart?”
   
Jane knows instances where the human heart has melted before and has seen the infection of goodness spread. One of Jane’s friends from UNICEF went to study in India, where he chanced upon an old man on a cold evening wearing a threadbare coat. This old man was once a wealthy businessman who decided to retire and give everything away to charity. Everything. Jane’s friend offered to get him a warmer coat if he wished it, but the old man said, “I am now getting old, and every time before I take anything, I ask myself, ‘Can I do without it?’”
   
Jane related that story to another friend, a US businessman who was contemplating buying a brand-new decked out Mercedes. He had the model and the colour all picked out and was excited. “Damn and bloody hell!” he cried after hearing Jane’s tale of conscience and consumption. The infection was spreading. Her American friend decided not to buy the car and gave the money he put aside for the car to the Jane Goodall Institute instead. 
   
The knowledge of simplicity and taking what one needs; Jane sees this mindset as a precursor to creating the sustainable economy of tomorrow.
   
I asked Jane if she had a special message for today’s youth. “Every single one of us matters,” she said. “Every single individual has a life that is a gift. And that gift can be used in ways that we choose. Every single day we make choices that make an impact on the world. We make it environmentally, we make it socially. We can choose what kind of impact we would like to make. To some extent, we can choose how we leave these footprints as we go through life. Are they going to be deep heavy ones leaving horrible scars on the planet? Or are we going to tip-toe and leave light footprints and keep the world nearly as pristine as we found it?” It is this thinking which provides the foundation for her program ‘Roots and Shoots’ which empowers youth ranging from pre-school to university students in 97 countries around the world. Jane noted that “the tools of ‘Roots and Shoots’ are knowledge and understanding. Learn the facts, but understand the whole picture. It is about rolling up your sleeves and getting out and doing something. Learning as well, but doing and acting.” At 73 years young Jane shows no signs of slowing down. She has also been known to fill convocation halls with exuberant chimpanzee calls at the beginning of a seminar.
   
As our time was nearing its end, the trappings of the honeymoon suite, the moment, and the personality of my subject overtook me: “Marry me,” I said. “I’ve had enough of that,” Jane said. Then she walked away. I should have remembered to get down on one knee.
 
The Stanley Kubrick Connection

Jane Goodall says that despite all of the terrible things we see in the world that she remains hopeful. One of the reasons for her hope is “this extraordinary brain that we have” along with the “magic” technology we have produced with this brain. In recording this interview, despite purchasing new supplies and checking the recorder multiple times, somehow it just did not record properly. Here was one of the most special people in the world and I could not make out almost any of the words on the recording. I genuinely believed that if we could fix this recording, Jane is indeed correct; we have much reason for hope.
   
First, I sought help from two local sound specialists. At each step of the process it seemed as if there was no hope. Then I was told about a sound machine that was created for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. The story goes that Kubrick shot in many difficult locations and as a result, the sound in many of the shots was terrible. Kubrick insisted that they use the original footage and approached a technology company to invent a machine that could fix the sound quality. Even this machine could not salvage my interview. Again, it seemed hopeless.
   
Then I found out there is yet another machine worth hundreds of thousands of dollars distributed by a company called HHB. This machine is what the RCMP use to edit the sounds recorded in drug deals. It is quite miraculous. I heard one recording of pounding Sean Paul beats and, with the flick of a few settings, the music was gone and you could hear a conversation of people in the room where the music had been blasting. Despite putting in hours of work, the HHB Toronto office was not satisfied. They sent the recording off to the main office in the UK where their key experts are located and they took a shot. The result? We obtained a version of the recording where we could certainly get the gist of all that was said and even make out full sentences here and there. HHB assured us that if they had the time and we had the money they could close in on any section of the tape and polish it. Unfortunately, we just don’t have that kind of money.
   
So, what are Jane’s other reasons for hope? The “courage of young people around the world” and “the indomitable human spirit.” Perhaps if we choose not to simply rely on technology to solve all of our problems and do things right the first time, maybe, just maybe, that would do the trick.

Jordy Gold is a sustainability expert and columnist for Corporate Knights. You will find his work online at www.jordygold.com