Langester

The Dr. Jane Goodall gave a lecture in Edmonton yesterday entitled Reason for Hope. Dr. Jane is top notch speaker, respects the audience, humorous, and its quite clear that she has not lost the “passion” (even after this 74 year got up at 4 am to fly to here only to be delayed, bumped, cancelled and have her luggage lost). A definite pleasure to listen to and I’m sure I could spend days and days listening to her insights, stores and varies awareness programs. She has that level of unquestionable respect and integrity that few people can attain, perhaps the Mother Theresa of chimpanzee and conservation.

The lecture topic was of course conservation, but her approach is opposite of most. For example Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth which is basically a hit you of the head kind of truth, wake-up call. Where this was more of a process of realization, understanding and empowerment that anyone of us can make an impact. This is my summarization of her message: This generation is not going to save the world, its the next and future generations that will. It is our responsibility to do what we can now to start the process of stabilization with our soon to be business leader, activists and politician and to educated our children so they can begin to repair. The opposite of think globally, act locally.

As excepted she shared her life story, how a little 4 year old english girl went from discovering how a hen lays eggs to Africa observing chimpanzees (the short answer is her mother). And a good many animal stories and in listening to them one can only conclude the only dumb animals are ourselves for being ignorant to think so in the first place.

If conservation is something your interested in I suggest the Dr Jane Goodall Institue as a place to start, especially if you have kids, they are very youth conscious. In fact my wife and I are Chimpanzee Gaudians for Petit Prince.