Jane Goodall says 2024 is the 'most consistent voting year'
When I spoke to Jane Goodall in 2019, she called on consumers and businesses to make responsible choices and protect the natural world.
Now she's telling people something much simpler: vote.
The celebrated primatologist believes that governments around the world are not working hard enough to combat climate change. And in a year when more than forty countries – including the United States, India and South Africa – will choose their leaders, Goodall is telling anyone who will listen that the health of the earth itself is at stake.
“Half of the world's population is going to vote,” she said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. “This year could be the voting year with the greatest consequences when it comes to the fate of our planet.”
As my colleague Manuela Andreoni wrote last week, the leaders elected this year will face consequential choices on energy policy, deforestation and emissions reductions. In the United States, Republicans plan to roll back environmental regulations if former President Donald J. Trump is re-elected. In Mexico, the favorite to win the presidency in June is Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist who is now mayor of Mexico City and has pledged to take action to reduce emissions.
Goodall noted that the outcomes of national elections can have profound and immediate consequences. She pointed to Brazil, where voters two years ago ousted far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro and brought back President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Overnight, Lula abandoned Bolsonaro's laissez-faire approach to environmental regulation and redoubled efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest.
Similar policy swings will reverberate around the world in the coming months as people head to the polls, Goodall said: “Every vote matters, more this year than perhaps ever in history.”
'The rich are affected'
Goodall refrained from endorsing specific candidates.
But she believes that with extreme weather ravaging every corner of the world, more and more voters came to understand that climate policy matters.
“When climate change started to make itself known, it was Bangladesh and poorer countries that suffered,” she said. “Now the rich are being hit. The industrialized countries are hit where it hurts them economically.”
In the United States alone, there were 28 storms, wildfires or other disasters last year, each costing at least a billion dollars or more in damage, my colleague Christopher Flavelle reported this month.
“There are floods in New York, floods in Britain, floods in various parts of Europe, unprecedented heat waves killing people in France,” Goodall told me. “It is changed.”
But in what is expected to be a tight race between President Biden and Trump, climate is not one of the campaign's dominant issues. To the extent it is a factor, it is often invoked by activists who believe the Biden administration is not doing enough to cut emissions, or by Trump with promises to expand oil and gas drilling.
Goodall also expressed hope that companies could do more to reduce emissions. Just as voters might respond to climate crises in the elections, she said corporations could start channeling their lobbying dollars to candidates who prioritize climate issues.
“I'm hoping that because businesses are being hit economically, some of them will think, 'Well, we better put some more money into the right politicians,'” she said.
'An all of the above moment'
Goodall, who turns 90 in a few months, was in Davos to discuss her efforts to educate young people about the plight of the natural world — and to bend the ear of the policymakers and CEOs who sought her out for selfies.
Elections, she said, matter to the extent that they help preserve the natural world.
“The ecosystem is a tapestry of interconnected plants and animals, and each individual has a role to play,” she said. “When a species goes extinct, it's like pulling a thread. And if enough threads are pulled, the carpet hangs in tatters. The ecosystem will collapse.”
Goodall, who has lived in the jungle for decades studying chimpanzees, is not dogmatic in her approach to combating climate change.
“We need the technology,” she said. “We need a switch to renewable energy. We must stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies. We need to think about the human population with its livestock. It's an all-from-the-above moment.”
But she said these policies will only be implemented by leaders who realize the severity of the crises facing planet Earth.
“We have to get the message out so people understand, and then they will vote the right way,” she said. “Then they will understand how important it is for their children, and their children's children.”
Geo-exchange students: colleges practice clean energy
To reduce carbon emissions, a growing number of colleges and universities are digging deep, using underground pipes to heat and cool their buildings without burning fossil fuels.
Princeton University is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a new system that will heat and cool buildings using a process known as geoexchange.
It starts with a big, muddy mess as thousands of boreholes are drilled around the campus. But the holes will eventually become undetectable and can perform an impressive magic trick. During the warm months, heat from Princeton's buildings is stored in thick pipes deep underground; in winter the heat is extracted again.
“This is what saving the planet looks like,” says the aptly named Ted Borer, head of Princeton's power plants. “It's extremely chaotic. It's messy. it is disruptive.” But he added, “A year from now, kids will be playing Frisbee here.”
Among the colleges where geoexchange or geothermal systems are being tested, installed or in use are Smith, Oberlin, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Carleton College, Ball State University, William & Mary, Cornell University, Brown University and Columbia University.
Many of the colleges use their projects as classrooms and provide educational seminars and tours.
Lindsey Olsen, associate vice president and senior mechanical engineer at Salas O'Brien, a technical engineering firm, said five years ago the company was working on two or three geothermal projects on campus at the same time. That number has grown to between 20 and 30 projects, she said.
Across the country, geo-exchange systems are generating excitement among students, faculty, staff and alumni.
“I'm not always the person who gets cheered at a faculty meeting,” says David DeSwert, executive vice president for finance and administration at Smith College, where a geothermal system is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent. “When we presented this, they were extremely happy.” — Cara Buckley