The Journal. - Is Jane Goodall Fighting a Losing Battle?

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

From the forests of Tanzania to the halls of power, Jane Goodall has spent her life fighting to protect wildlife. But as the planet warms and some governments retreat from environmentalism, is her mission slipping out of reach? Ryan Knutson interviews the renowned conservationist. Further Listening The Head of the EPA on the Future of the Agency How the U.S. Fell Behind China on Climate Diplomacy Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, leaders from around the world poured into New York City for the United Nations General Assembly. Among them was Jane Goodall, one of the world's most well-known environmentalists. Goodall is best known for her work with chimpanzees. In 1960, at just 26, she moved to what is now the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. She became one of the first scientists ever to study chimps in the world. the wild, and was the first person to observe them using tools and discovered they have complex social relationships. Her observations fundamentally changed our understanding of primates forever. Goodall went on to found the Jane Goodall Institute, which continues to study chimps,

and runs conservation and educational programs throughout the world. Today, at the age of 91, Goodall is not slowing down. She travels 300 days a year to give talks, meet with world leaders, and push for green causes. But the planet continues to warm. Forests continue to be cut down. The list of endangered species keeps getting longer. And earlier this week, President Trump called climate change a con job. Goodall has said we're living in dark times.

And earlier this week, I had a chance to ask her, does she feel like she's fighting a losing battle? Welcome to The Journal. Our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, September 26th. Coming up on the show, a conversation with Jane Goodall.

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from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com Thank you so much, Thank you, Jane, Goodall, for joining us today.

I wanted to start out by having you tell us about your special guest that you brought with us. Well, Mr. H. given to me 35, all right, those people at the back. It's given to me 35 years ago by a man who lost his eyesight in the U.S. Marines when he was 21, decided to become a magician, was told it was impossible. Children don't know he's blind. Anyway, he thought he was giving me a stuffed chimpanzee, and I made him hold a tail. He said, never mind, take him where you go. And he's been 64 countries, and he's my example of the indomitable human spirit.

also brought with me a stuffed monkey. He's not as well-traveled as yours. But this was my favorite stuffy as a boy. And I think he may have the same problem because he has a tail, which chimpanzees do not. That's right. But would you like to know what I named him? What did you name it?

Monkey. Not very creative. Well, so I wanted to talk about what is going on in our world. world right now, what you've referred to as the dark times. You've dedicated your life to conservation, saving endangered species, more recently combating climate change. But by many measures, things aren't looking so good right now. By your own estimate, the population of chimpanzees has fallen by more than half in the last century. Many experts believe we were in a sixth mass extinction event, largely as a result of human activity. The planet continues to warm. Do you feel like you're losing the

fight? Well, I think, and I'm not alone, fortunately, that we have a window of time. It's not a very big window of time when if we get together. And I'm talking about, you know, ordinary people and corporations, business leaders. And, you know, we know what we can do to slow down climate change and loss of biodiversity. We know the sort of things that are making things worse and worse, like industrial agriculture and, you know, fossil fuel burning. And people are seldom talking about it. But the effect on the climate of these terrible wars is enormous. So if we know the solutions, why aren't we solving the problems?

Because, unfortunately, there is an idea that continued economic development must come before the environment. And, you know, it's crazy because, first of all, we're on a planet with finite natural resources, growing human and livestock populations. And if it just, if we don't change the way that we do things, the way that we develop economically, then it will be too late. I mean, we will reach tipping points. One of the reasons that the world is moving in this direction is also because of politics and what governments choose to prioritize. The Trump administration is doing many things right now that run counter to your mission, expanding oil and gas drilling, cutting funding for foreign aid, cutting funding for renewable energy.

During his speech in front of the UN, this week, President Trump called climate change a con job, and the European countries are, quote, on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda. How do you react when you hear the President of the United States talking this way? Well, I find it very strange. that somebody can say climate change is a con job. When you think what's happening just in this one country alone, the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, flooding, droughts, heat waves, fires. And all of this, you know, why are we going through all of this?

It's because the climate is changing, that the planet is warming, sea levels are rising, and we're on the brink of disaster. I find it disturbing when presidents make statements like this. You got involved in the 2024 election. You created the Vote for Nature initiative to try to encourage people to vote for green candidates and candidates to support the environment. Why do you think that message lost? I don't know.

And it was, you know, it was governments around the world, really, because there were many elections last year. It lost for the reasons I've said that people are putting their their own personal economic development before thinking about future generations. And you know, if you tackle people and say, but you, let me tell a story here. I was talking to a group of CEOs in Singapore and one of them came up to me afterwards and he said, Jane, I want to promise you that for the last eight years I've been doing everything I can to make my business more sustainable and less, less head.

heavy footprint on the environment for three reasons. One, I saw the writing on the wall, that we're using up natural resources in some places faster than nature can replenish them, and sometimes nature can't. Two, consumer pressure, people are beginning to ask questions about what they buy, how was it made, did it harm the environment. But he said, what really tipped the balance for me was my little girl of eight, and she came home from school one day. She said, Daddy, they're telling me that what you're doing is hurting the planet. That's not true, is it, Daddy? Because it's my planet. It's human nature,

though, to think about your own situation and whether or not you have food on the table can provide your family before you can start thinking about how to help others. For many people, as this is the case, how do you get people to care about the environment when many people in this world and in this country, you feel like their livelihoods are at stake? Well, absolutely. So our Jane Goodall Institute method of conservation is working to alleviate poverty because that is one, you know, on the one hand, you get overconsumption, you get unsustainable lifestyles like probably everyone in this room, including me. And on the other hand, you get poverty where people, either if they're rural, destroy the environment to get some

money from timber or destroying the landscape for growing some crop just to survive. And if they're in a city, they buy the cheapest junk food, which clearly has been made in the cheapest way possible and harmed the environment. So unless you alleviate poverty and reduce our unsustainable lifestyle and have a different way of thinking about things, we differ from other animals mostly by the development of this intellect. So we are, without question, the most intellectual creatures to ever walk the planet, even though we know animals are way, way, way more intelligent than was thought. But we may be intellectual, we may have brilliant brains, but we're not intelligent,

because intelligent creatures don't destroy their only home. And unless you believe there's going to be rockets that will take us off to some other planet like Mars, which I personally don't believe, then we need to protect this planet and think about the future. But as we have these intellects, if enough people who care come together and use the intellect,

surely we can find a way. Because if we don't, that's the end of our species. Humans are not exempt from extinction. I want to, because you mentioned, someone who wants to put humans on rockets to potentially call. colonized Mars. I'm really curious to know what you think of Elon Musk. Well, okay. He's the only person who's ever attacked me on social media. Twice. And basically,

he said the second time that I was guilty of wanting genocide. And why? Because I always say one of the problems we face is, you know, a growing number of. of humans on a planet with finite natural resources. That's it. I don't say more than that. And he thinks that humanity will collapse because of population decline. He's encouraging people to have more children. Yes, I know. But he is a complicated figure in many ways because he's done a lot to further the advancement

of electric vehicles and green energy technology and battery technology. And yet he also put a great deal of his wealth behind President Donald Trump, who's now advancing many policies that run. directly counter to your mission. Yeah. And he stopped USAID. He froze it. We lost five and a half million dollars a year for the next four years for our program,

which was improving the lives of people, giving children a chance of going to school, protecting the environment. That money just gone. Which do you think has had a bigger impact, the work that he's done for electric vehicles and green energy technology or his political work? I think without any question, his political work has caused a man's harm. That's no question. Tell me more about the impact that it's had on your organization, because you did, as you mentioned, you had some funding cut.

What was cut and what will the impact of that be? Well, the impact is we've had to lay off people who are really good people. We've had to search very hard for alternative sources of funding to fill in the gaps, move towards perhaps more stable corporate partnerships that will last through the years. And also, of course, we need to build up an endowment. Are there any conflicts of interest that are coming in from the new sources of funding

that you're noticing? Well, we have to say no to some, which is tough. What ones have you had to say no to? Offering, well, somebody offered me a private shirt. I had to say no to that. You had to say no to that. Not everybody says no to that. No, but if you're ethical, you do, if you care about the environment.

And also, you know, other things like an oil company that's terribly, terribly polluting and not doing anything about it except a bit of greenwashing. And they want to give you money. Why? Because the Jane Goodell Institute has a good name and they want to be tied up with us. And we have to say no. Coming up, Jane Goodall on what she calls Jane Magic. of naturally

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bestell, in market up-holing. There are a lot of young people in the United States and throughout the world that have swung

toward the right. There was a big switch among young people toward Trump in the 2024 election, have you noticed a change among young people and where their values are? No, I'm probably not meeting those young people. Why do you...

And if I do meet them, they seem to kind of fall under a spell. Say more about what you mean. It's called Jade Magic. Oh, I see. So you think that you can change their minds I hope I can at least start to change their minds, because I've seen it happen. How do you change their minds? What do you say?

Stories, stories, children and adults. If I'm talking to somebody who, for example, is a climate change denier, I don't try and argue. That's no point. But if you can tell a story to reach the heart, like that CEO and the little girl. Mm-hmm. How do you think the message needs to change? We talked about your vote for nature campaign, but what needs to change about the message that progressives and people who care about the environment are telling in order to have more success in elections? Well, I don't know about more success in elections, but I think in general, people need to understand and that so many people don't, that what they do make sense. a difference. Each one of us, everyone in this room, everyone who listens to this, it's a podcast or whatever we're doing. It's multiple things it wants. Yes. So everybody, every day that we live,

we make an impact on the planet and we can choose what sort of impact we make. And people come to me depressed and saying, well, the world's a mess and, you know, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm just one person. But I say to them, think of your own community. What can you do there? What do you care about? Start doing something to make it better. Get other people to help you. You'll see you make a difference. That makes you feel good. Then you want to do more. Then you inspire more people. So then you dare. Think globally. How do you balance? There's obviously a tension, as we've been talking about in conservation projects, between the environment and people's economic situation.

You mentioned poverty being an important thing to fight, but how do you think about that tension when you want to do something that you think will protect a forest or animals, but also has a trade-off and that it might mean that there are then fewer jobs for people that live in that area? Well, first of all, the example we have is our method of community-led conservation

around Gombe National Park, where, by the way, the chimp research, we just celebrated our 65th anniversary of research in that area. Yes, thank you. And the reason I left Gombe in the Forest and chimps that I love was at a big conference that I actually helped put together. And by that time, when we brought the people studying chimps,

there were six other chimp study sites. And it was basically to find out about chimp behavior changing, but we had a session on conservation, and it was a shock. Forests being cut down, chimpanzee numbers dropping. So I left the conference, having gone as a scientist, as an advocate, I don't know what you want to call me, but I knew I had to do something. I had no idea what to do. So I got some money from Geographic to visit the different study sites, and while I was learning

the problems faced by chimps, like habitat. destruction, the increasing bush meat trade and so on. I was also learning about the problems facing so many African people living in and around the forest habitats of the chimps. And that's when it hit me. These people are struggling to survive. They're living in crippling poverty.

And unless we can help them find ways of making a living without cutting down trees for making money from charcoal or timber or clearing space for growing food to eat or to sell, then we can't save chimpanzees forest or anything else. So that's when we began our community-led conservation program. It began with 12 villages around the park. Now it's in 41 throughout Chimperange in Tanzania,

and people are understanding that saving the environment isn't just for wildlife, it's for their own future. You have spent a lot of time with humanity's closest relative, the chimpanzee, with whom we share a common ancestor. What do you think are the best qualities that we have, that we share with chimps, and what are the worst? Well, the best altruism, because we can be more better altruists than chimps. Chimps respond to an immediate situation of child falls in the water and the chimp jumps

in after it. But we can take altruism to a whole new level, knowing that by helping we may damage ourselves. We're seeing some of that today in the political arena, people daring to stand up, therefore losing their jobs and their livelihood. The worst, brutality, war. Chimpanzees are capable of killing, and between neighboring communities, there's a kind of primitive warfare. and one community may annihilate another. There are people who think that we are creating the next phase of evolution right now with artificial intelligence, that the computers and chatbots will be the next intelligence

species to dominate the Earth. If that is true, what do you think would be the best qualities of humanity that you hope AI inherits from us? Well, first of all, I'm glad I'm 91. I won't live to see that day. Who knows? I mean, there's new technology out there now. So, well, I would hope that these intelligent, whatever they are, robots, I don't know what they'll be, that they, that it's pushed into them.

Altruism, compassion, love, respect, wanting to help, wanting to make this a better world, understanding that, Animals are thinking, feeling, beings. Humans, you know, we should think as much of people of different religions and cultures as we do our own. And there's one big thing when it comes to relationships between humans and animals. And that's in Genesis, where it's written, man is given dominion over the birds of the air,

the fish at the sea. It's a wrong translation, and I've talked to many Hebrew scholars. It's something more like stewardship. Now, that makes a huge difference, doesn't it? Well, Jane Goodall, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's all for today. Friday, September 26th. The journey. The journey. The journey. is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Pia Gadkari, Carlos Garcia, Rachel Humphreys, Sophie Codner, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez

De La Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Piercinge, Jivica Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zemise, and me, Ryan Knudsen. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard, with help this week from Sam Bear. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Griffin Tanner, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking this week by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday. Thank you.