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Dr. Jane Goodall, the famed primatologist and founder of The Jane Goodall Institute, appeared onstage with Forbes Senior Editor Maggie McGrath at the Forbes Sustainability Leaders Summit in New York this week, where she argued that planet health must sit at the center of any serious conversation about economic policy. The summit, held by Forbes as part of its sustainability series, brought together business and activist elites to push an ambitious environmental agenda.
Goodall’s message — that protecting nature and restoring ecosystems are inseparable from long-term prosperity — is heartfelt and consistent with decades of her advocacy for conservation and youth engagement. She has long warned of biodiversity loss, the consequences of habitat destruction, and the need for people to rethink consumption and stewardship of natural resources.
But admiration for Goodall’s life’s work doesn’t mean we should accept sweeping, top-down prescriptions from coastal conference stages that ignore economic realities. Goodall has even urged dietary shifts and reductions in animal agriculture on climate grounds, a stance that, while rooted in environmental concern, has enormous implications for farmers, consumers and global food systems.
Forbes and other summit speakers consistently call for accelerated action to cut emissions and rethink energy and production — goals that sound noble until you consider the human cost of rapid, politically driven transitions. There is a dangerous tendency among elites to equate moral clarity with policy certainty, pushing mandates that increase energy costs, punish domestic industries, and leave ordinary workers footing the bill.
Conservation matters, and Goodall’s Roots & Shoots program and her decades of public education deserve respect for mobilizing people to care for the natural world. Yet conservation succeeds best when it empowers private stewardship, property rights, and local communities rather than handing more power to distant bureaucrats or financialized ESG schemes that reward virtue signaling over measurable results.
We should also be clear-eyed about the realities of innovation: free markets and technological breakthroughs, not heavy-handed mandates, have historically delivered cleaner, cheaper energy and more resilient agriculture. If policymakers truly want to honor Goodall’s call to protect nature, they should incentivize real solutions — permitting reforms, private conservation incentives, and public investment in breakthrough technologies — instead of imposing one-size-fits-all regulations that crush growth.
Respect for the planet and respect for the people who work it are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually necessary. Real stewardship means balancing environmental goals with economic freedom, defending the livelihoods of farmers and workers, and trusting citizens to solve problems through entrepreneurship and local action rather than through sanctimonious, centralized decrees from summit stages.
