10/02/2025
Jane Goodall changed the world, despite the endless roadblocks (men) put in her way.
Godspeed, Dr Goodall. You will be missed.
Jane Goodall, who died today, at 91, spent much of her later years travelling around the world to speak about the climate crisis. Everywhere she went, she met young people who were “angry, depressed, or just apathetic, because, they’ve told me, we have compromised their future and they feel there is nothing they can do about it,” she writes in “The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.” Amid flooding and wildfires, impassivity and eco-grief, the question she was asked most often was “Do you honestly believe there is hope for our world?” She did. Hope, she argued, is not merely “passive wishful thinking” but a “crucial survival trait.” She noted, “If you don’t have hope that your action is going to make a difference, why bother to do anything? You just become a zombie.” Revisit a Talk piece, from 2021, in which the beloved naturalist explained why, despite floods and fires and melting ice caps, she remained optimistic about planet Earth: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/puCKxb
