Climate warrior Jane Goodall isn't sold on carbon taxes and electric vehicles

Speaking to CBC News during the Ottawa stop of her cross-country tour of Canada this week, Goodall said the jury's out on whether levying a consumer price on emissions will meaningfully improve the climate picture over the long term.

Industrial carbon taxes also rarely impose a huge financial burden on major energy companies, which can pay a levy and go on drilling and mining resources that are damaging to the environment, she said.

An independent analysis by the Canadian Climate Institute, released late last month, shows industrial carbon pricing has three times the impact on greenhouse gas emissions as the consumer tax.

Progressive Saskatchewan Sen. Marty Klyne — who sponsored legislation named after Goodall to effectively ban keeping great apes and elephants in captivity in Canada — praised the British primatologist and conservationist for her "legendary discoveries" about chimpanzees and her ongoing work to protect nature and the environment.

Despite her advanced age, Goodall is on the road roughly 300 days a year, mostly meeting with young people to encourage them to stay committed to the climate fight despite what she calls a lot of "doom and gloom" disseminated by the media about the environment.

Jane Goodall Institute Canada, the local branch of her worldwide charity, is focused on biodiversity loss — it has a program to rehabilitate orphaned chimpanzees in Africa, for example — but it's also active on the climate change file.