Renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has just finished the Australian leg of her Rewind the Future conversation series.
Throughout May, Goodall took to the stage in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, and Brisbane to inform crowds in their thousands about her life, the plight of chimpanzees, and her hopes for the future.
Goodall is best known for her work studying and living with chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her scientific studies revolutionized the relationship between humans and animals and the collective knowledge about primate behavior.
In the mid-1980s, however, Goodall shifted away from her work as a scientist to become a conservation activist.
Now, as a United Nations Messenger of Peace and Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, Goodall travels the world preaching the importance of curbing deforestation, reducing poverty, and fighting climate change.
Goodall has also long been a passionate Global Citizen. In 2017, she spoke to 60,000 people at the Global Citizen Festival in New York about climate change action. She further offered up free tickets as part of Global Citizen’s rewards program for a handful of global citizens to attend the tour in cities across Australia.
In honor of Goodall, and for those who weren’t able to see her Australian shows, we’ve recapped the most powerful quotes and moments from the tour below.
On the power of young people:
I work so hard with young people because they get it. They are changing the world.
Young people are the leaders of the future.
On hope for the future:
Nature is so resilient, places we have destroyed can be given another chance. You have many such areas in Australia.
People get depressed and do nothing. If you don’t have hope, it’s all doom and gloom.
On the potential of individual action:
We’ve got this one beautiful blue and green planet, and we have to get together and do something to protect it before it’s too late. We have this little window of time.
Think about the consequences of what we do each day, of what we buy, what we wear. Does it harm the environment? Does it cause animal suffering? Is it cheap because of child slave labor?
If we all start to make ethical decisions about what we buy and eat and wear, this will cumulatively lead to a better world. Before this can happen we must alleviate poverty, because very poor people cannot afford to make those choices; they have to do what they must to survive.
Every single one of us makes a difference on the planet every single day, and we have a choice to the kind of difference we make.
On the impact of social media:
For the first time in human history, we can bring people together who care about a single cause, and they can stand up and speak so that people who otherwise might have felt isolated suddenly feel empowered and strengthened.
Source: Global Citizen