Jane Goodall remains a road warrior for the planet

[Uncle Joe]

When world-famous primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall landed in Winnipeg on Thursday, she opened up her laptop and learned a devastating piece of news. National Geographic — her beloved National Geographic — had been sold to Rupert Murdoch, noted climate change denier.

(snip)

"I thought it was a joke," she tells me. "I truly thought it was a joke. This can’t be true. National Geographic, the National Geographic, being owned almost entirely by Fox News, which is filled with climate deniers and almost flat-world science. I’ve had this long, long relationship with National Geographic. It was the magazine and documentaries that brought the chimpanzees out into the living rooms of the world."

Goodall’s work with chimpanzees earned her many designations: expert, groundbreaker, glass ceiling smasher, icon. But for the past three decades, she’s also been a tireless activist. She remembers the moment she decided to leave "her perfect paradise of a life" out in the field. She was at a conference in Chicago, and was horrified by what her fellow humans were doing to the planet.

(snip)

"We have to look back in history to see how things have changed. When I was told I had to go to Cambridge and get a PhD, I hadn’t been to college — I’d been nearly two years with the chimps. When I got there, to be told that I shouldn’t have given the chimpanzees names, they should have been given numbers, and I couldn’t talk about them having personalities, problem solving abilities — absolutely not emotions. Because those were unique to us. Since that time, I really think chimpanzees have opened the door for people to think about animals in different ways. Today you can actually study animal personality and emotion. You couldn’t have studied them in my day because they didn’t exist. And then studies came in from the field about animals with complex social lives, like elephants and lions and so, gradually, people began to talk and instead of everyone laughing when there were those fighting for animal rights, people felt, ‘Well, yes, why, maybe animals should have rights.’"

(snip)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Goodall-326543091.html

There is more on the link including a video of the interview.

[Archae]

1. Not a word about her support of Jeffrey Smith. Figures.

[HuckleB]

3. Indeed. She has her own science denialist views.

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2013/03/29/anti-gmo-writers-show-profound-ignorance-of-basic-biology-and-now-jane-goodall-has-joined-their-ranks/

Ugh.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Hoping like crazy Rupert Murdoch will allow National Geographic to continue as usual,

without his editorial input. What are the chances?

He will destroy it if he meddles, and the magazine will collapse, as it should if he alters it.

The National Geographic has been an institution people have respected for generations. Maybe this clown is simply trying to buy prestige by owning controlling interests. I hope that's as far as he will go, and he will never really buy prestige. That has to be earned, as National Geographic already did, without him.

Uncle Joe, thank you for this article. Jane Goodall is a person beyond compare, beyond price, she is needed, and respected beyond words.