Jane Goodall, Roger Revelle, and Michael Pollan on global warming's impact

Panel Discussion

Global warming panel

What is the impact of global warming on our community and what will be the consequences be here where we live?

Panel discussion:

What is the impact of global warming on our community and what will be the consequences be here where we live?

Jane Goodall

Primatologist Jane Goodall is famous for her pioneering work with chimpanzees. Goodall's work underlines the similarities between humans and the great apes. By showing human connections with the animal world, Goodall demonstrates our responsibility as a species to preserve the environments where animals live. She is concerned about "deforestation, the growing human populations and bush-meat trade, which is the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, the live-animal trade, shooting mothers to take babies. The chimpanzee population… [was] somewhere between 1 million and 2 million a hundred years ago…Today, 220,000 is the closest estimate….I always tell people that the most important thing you can do is to spend a little bit of time learning about and acting on the consequences of the small choices that we make each day, like: What do we buy? For example, clothing: Where does it come from, how was it made, did it involve child slave labor? Food: Where was it grown, how was it grown, did it have a lot of pesticides, can you buy organic?" (Peter, 2008, pp.1-2).

Goodall's presence on a panel dealing with global warming would reveal the consequences of environmentalism upon the animal and human world. Because of her earlier work in Africa, Goodall has also shown a great deal of interest in the reasons that individuals live in a non-sustainable manner in the developing world. Eradicating poverty and the causes of animal cruelty in Africa in the developing world are necessary to improve the planet. Goodall's work links compassion to animals, humans, and the planet. Improving all facets of this 'equation' is required to make life better for all.

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan, the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma and Food Rules, has devoted his career to exposing the harms of commercial agriculture on the environment and upon human health. Pollan details simple ways that human beings can change the way they eat, such as avoiding processed foods and foods with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFC), to live healthier lives that are better for their bodies and for the planet. A heavily meat-based diet based upon a monoculture of growing corn for animal feed and corn-based sweeteners is linked to excessive caloric intake and also to increases in greenhouse gases, writes Pollan (Pollan 2007). Pollan's writings demonstrate how the food human beings eat has a real impact upon the planet, and is persuasive in his articulation of how poor farming practices lead to obesity, an issue that is of concern to many on a very immediate level. The consequences of global warming upon human life, Pollan's work suggest, are manifest in the here and now.