Jane Goodall's enduring message on nature gains steam in wake of COP15
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For someone who turns 89 next week, legendary ethologist Dr. Jane Goodall hasn’t lost a step. She travels 300 days a year, runs environmental and youth programs in 70 countries, and can still wield her tiny frame and soft British voice to reduce a packed room to tears and smiles at the same time.
Through the largesse of an old college buddy, I found myself in her presence in Tampa this week, watching her work her magic on a packed fundraising crowd on the roof of the Florida Aquarium.
In an interview with Callaway Climate Insights ahead of the event, Goodall said it was too soon to tell if the COP15 global biodiversity pact would be met with actual government action or follow the neglected path of the Paris climate agreement of 2016. She also praised governments such as Costa Rica for finding ways to compensate their people for restoring valuable forests and those enacting climate legislation and seeking advice from ancient methods.
“Finally, people are turning back to indigenous knowledge before it is too late and it is lost to us,” Goodall said.
She also had some fascinating things to say about AI, and the dangers of approaching tipping points in both biodiversity and climate, which I will dig into in my Zeus column next week. Her comments come amid a surge of investor money into new biodiversity funds following the COP15 agreement, and research that is putting a real cost on the destruction of nature committed in the name of economic growth.
Back at the event itself, she thrilled the crowd by saying her name in chimpanzee, giving her views on life after death, explored in her latest book, “The Book of Hope,” and sharing a ‘tot’ of her favorite whiskey, Famous Old Grouse, on stage with the largest donors at an auction of memorabilia.
That auction included a tool which she had witnessed a chimp use in the wild, which sold for $8,000. Just another night on Jane Goodall’s never-ending environmental hope tour.
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Carbon inequality and taxing luxury emissions
Studies have documented the rising challenge of carbon inequality — that is, extreme class disparities in carbon emissions both within the United States and globally, according to the authors of Taxing Luxury Emissions, a forthcoming paper in the Cornell Law Review. “These studies show an alarming divide, with the top 10% of emitters producing half of all emissions and the top 1% alone producing 17% of emissions, while the bottom 50% of the world produces only 10%. These disparities are driven by ‘luxury emissions’ produced by the carbon-intensive lifestyles of the rich, which too often include private jets, mega-SUVs, yachts, and multiple mansions.” The article builds the case for embracing efforts to parse luxury and non-luxury emissions in climate policy design and provides, the authors say, a blueprint to spark debate and discussion around how the law might appropriately account for pernicious class divisions in climate culpability. Authors: Clint Wallace, University of South Carolina School of Law’ and Shelley Welton, University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law
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Words to live by . . . .
“Here we are, arguably the most intelligent being that’s ever walked planet Earth, with this extraordinary brain, yet we’re destroying the only home we have.” — Jane Goodall.