Jane Goodall

We can talk about the distant past, plan for the distant future, discuss ideas with each other.

so that the ideas can grow from the accumulated wisdom of a group.

We can do it by talking to each other, we can do it through video, we can do it through the written word.

And we are abusing this great power we have to be wise stewards.

and we're destroying the world.

In the developed world, in a way, it's worse because we have so much access to knowledge of the stupidity of what we're doing.

Do you know we're bringing little babies into a world where in many places the water is poisoning them?

And the air is harming them.

And the food that's grown from the contaminated land is poisoning them.

And that's not just in the faraway developing world.

That's everywhere.

Do you know we all have about 50 chemicals in our bodies we didn't have about 50 years ago?

And so many of these diseases like...

asthma and certain kinds of cancers are on the increase around places where filthy, toxic waste is dumped.

We're harming ourselves around the world as well as harming the animals, as well as harming nature herself, Mother Nature that brought us into being.

Mother Nature where I believe we need to spend time, where there's trees and flowers and birds, for our good psychological development.

And yet there are hundreds and hundreds of children in the developed world who never see nature because they're growing up in concrete.

And all they know is virtual reality with no opportunity to go and lie in the sun or in the forest with the dappled sun specks coming down from the canopy above.

As I was traveling around the world, I had to leave the forest.

That's where I love to be.