You are not as complex as the rainforest.
October 12, 2020 2:38 PM   Subscribe

This is my message to the western world - your civilization is killing life on Earth. An opinion piece for The Guardian by Nemonte Nenquimo, a member and leader of the Waorani people of the Ecuadorean Amazon and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2020.

Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day in the United States.
posted by biogeo (27 comments total) 46 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thank you very much for posting this.
posted by Kemma80 at 2:52 PM on October 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


It is heartbreaking to read. And it is wrong and terrible that people with the most money and power don't seem to care.
posted by Glinn at 4:02 PM on October 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


I remember first learning about the Waorani when one of their communities was filmed as part of David Attenborough's The Living Planet for the BBC, which would have been in the mid-1980s. The portrayal of indigenous people by Westerners is always fraught, of course, but at least in Attenborough's depiction they seemed to have a deep understanding of how to work with their rich environment to get everything they needed to survive and flourish, and also seemed to enjoy sharing their skills and lifestyle with the BBC film crew. One image that particularly sticks in my mind is of a young girl happily feeding a pet baby bird. Even then, though, their environment was under threat from slash-and-burn agriculture and other unsustainable exploitative resource extraction by outsiders. Over thirty years later and the threat is only greater. I'm glad they have a leader like Nemonte Nenquimo to advocate for them today.
posted by biogeo at 4:52 PM on October 12, 2020


Leading scientists are aware of the problem, and are involved in developing solutions. As Steven Pinker writes:
For the cleaner environment we enjoy today we must thank the arguments, activism, legislation, regulations, treaties, and technological ingenuity of the people who sought to improve it in the past. We’ll need more of each to sustain the progress we’ve made, prevent reversals (particularly under the Trump presidency), and extend it to the wicked problems that still face us, including the one that is unquestionably alarming: the effect of greenhouse gases on the earth’s climate.
There are problems, certainly; but there are also solutions.
posted by No Robots at 5:52 PM on October 12, 2020


A week or so ago, I read that some scientists believe that Venus had oceans and a thin atmosphere comparable to Earth's as late as 700 million years ago.

And right now, Venus's albedo is so much higher than Earth's that it might actually absorb less visible light than we do (visible light makes up only about half the Solar energy we get; the rest is almost all infrared, and I'm assuming the albedo figures I've read don't take that into account because none of the figures I've found mention it. And that doesn't take re-radiation into account either, as far as I can tell).

But I don't think it's out of the question that we might be able to tip the Earth into a positive feedback loop of warming parallel with if not similar to what must have happened to Venus.
posted by jamjam at 6:20 PM on October 12, 2020


There are problems, certainly; but there are also solutions.

As Steven Pinker (a linguist) writes:
The success of deep decarbonization will hinge on technological breakthroughs on many frontiers, including advanced nuclear technologies that are cheaper, safer, and more efficient than today’s light-water reactors; batteries to store intermittent energy from renewables; Internet-like smart grids that distribute electricity from scattered sources to scattered users at scattered times; technologies that electrify and decarbonize industrial processes such as the production of cement, fertilizer, and steel; liquid biofuels for heavy trucks and planes that need dense, portable energy; and methods of capturing and storing CO2.
And so, according to a linguist, salvation hinges on a handful of hypotheticals, whose likelihood of success is justified here only by induction on a limited number of past technological achievements. I think the only thing that could possibly be more embarrassing than his credulousness is the credulousness of anyone that relies on his telling.
posted by invitapriore at 6:41 PM on October 12, 2020 [14 favorites]


Just a reminder I have a group going that focuses on decolonizing our lifestyle and spirituality. It's animist and polytheist focused for any with that interest. Please message me for interests. We can absolutely change our relationship with the earth and nature and each other, and it also takes work and awareness and building communities rather than isolated "self sufficiency" and environmental consciousness. We need to be working on community sufficiency that includes people with lower incomes, people with health issues and functional limitations, people without land access etc.
posted by xarnop at 7:03 PM on October 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


salvation hinges on a handful of hypotheticals, whose likelihood of success is justified here only by induction on a limited number of past technological achievements

The hypothetical here isn't the technology, it's whether or not we have the will to do these things at the current cost of doing them.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:10 PM on October 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Thanks for sharing this message that feels more urgent than ever.

I recommend David Attenborough's new documentary, "A Life on our Planet," where he looks back upon his decades of work as a naturalist, and marvels both at the splendor of it all, as well as the terrible toll modernity has wreaked on the natural world.

A Yale environment 360 article begins: "Recent climate models project that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 above pre-industrial levels could cause temperatures to soar far above previous estimates. A warming earth, researchers now say, will lead to a loss of clouds, allowing more solar energy to strike the planet."

Luckily I'll be dead before most of the worst effects of climate change really begin to settle in, and humans (who are being born right now, and didn't have anything to do with the devastation) truly have to live with cost of their ancestor's hubris. I do hold on to a tiny bit of hope that the "modern" wing of the human project will come together and listen to the wisdom of its scientists, and of other societies, and will find ways of coexisting with this glorious planet, even if that means diminished returns on investments, minimal shareholder value, and fewer gadgets.
posted by nikoniko at 11:36 PM on October 12, 2020


Thanks for posting this thoughtful and beautiful piece.
Right now as I was reading this a flock of migratory birds flew over the house and I was reminded that they have been doing this for thousands of years before there was any building here. It feels so shameless that we are destroying the natural world for our own very nearsighted gain.
That said, if we extinguish ourselves because of our greed and ignorance, the planet will recover, gradually. It may take thousands of years, but it will happen.
Another thought: the current right-wing populism is in large part driven by racism and white fragility, but it is funded by people who are fighting teeth and nails against sound climate policies, people like Putin, the Saudi royal family, the Koch brothers, the Mercers and many others whose fortunes are built from fossil fuels.
posted by mumimor at 2:10 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]


The planet will not recover. The planet has been irreparably harmed. Some version of the planet will continue, but it will not be the planet with the same ecosystems and organisms it would have been with more responsible human consumption.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:18 AM on October 13, 2020 [7 favorites]


The planet will not recover. The planet has been irreparably harmed. Some version of the planet will continue, but it will not be the planet with the same ecosystems and organisms it would have been with more responsible human consumption.

I think the point is, this is not the first mass extinction event on Earth and it will probably not literally exterminate all life on Earth. Of course we have done irreparable harm. But the Earth is not and has never been static. The version of Earth that existed right before we got here and started fucking it up was always going to be transitory, even if we'd never existed.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:42 AM on October 13, 2020 [6 favorites]


There's two orthogonal issues here.

I personally believe we are past the tipping point in terms of our ability to 'reverse' the damage. The anthropomorphic climate change is irreversible. This means that 'civilization' as we know it now is on the path towards the inevitable change and collapse. This does not however, mean that humanity is doomed. We will survive as human societies. It's gonna look very different that what we are used to now. So this emphasis on 'humanity is doomed' is misplaced. Our current civilization is doomed; I agree.

The second is that 'life on earth' is doomed. BS. Life is going to go on; long after we have either perished or transformed. the Cockroaches and Rats are going nowhere. What is doomed is the current version of the biota. The Sixth Extinction has already started and, again, I think it is irreversible. We may be able to mitigate it some; but the decline is real and accelerating.

E. O. Wilson's idea that we leave one half of the planet alone; the 50 percent idea; is the only one I think is even going to make a real difference. But given the state of the world politically; this is pretty much impossible.
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:53 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


Sure, this isn't the first mass extinction. But in terms of the point of this particular call to action from Indigenous communities, saying "Well, the earth will continue without us" is actually orthogonal to their point. What this community is saying is that The Amazon Rain Forest as we know it is being irreparably harmed and that further inaction will make it unrecognizable. Who gets to blithely say "things will continue without us?" Not the people who are currently having their ways of life destroyed by the consumption habits of the Global North.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:06 AM on October 13, 2020 [4 favorites]


I don’t know why you think I don’t agree with you.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:10 AM on October 13, 2020


I didn't think you didn't, I was just trying to clarify my point.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:21 AM on October 13, 2020


Furthermore, the planet that will continue past this mass extinction and catastrophic climate shift will not be the same planet that birthed our species. We evolved in the world as it was in the pleistocene and holocene, and while our physiology is remarkably adaptable to varied conditions, it is not infinitely so. How much CO2 can we breathe without it affecting our minds? How many poisons and endocrine disruptors can we drink before our lives are shortened and made more meager? Our civilizations and our societies developed in the world as it has been for the last few thousand years, and while our ingeniousness to invent our way out of problems is prodigious, it is not infinitely so. Already there are ways of life that have sustained people and provided their lives with meaning for generations which are becoming impossible in a changing environment, like those of the Waorani, or the indigenous people of the Arctic. How many people will industrial agriculture be able to feed in a world where essential crop pollinators have gone extinct? How will our cities survive when the landscape is ravaged by uncontrollable wildfires and extreme weather?

Yes, the Earth has always been a dynamic place, but rarely with such great changes on such a short timescale. If we find ways to reverse the damage we've done, and reduce our numbers and our appetite for natural resources, our gradually changing world could sustain us indefinitely as far is meaningful for human planning.
posted by biogeo at 10:43 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


I guess I need to clarify too: I am so angry that sometimes I can't sleep. We need a real revolution, and while I will never be in favor of capital punishment, the people who are driving the destruction of habitats need to be stripped of their assets and to get meaningful jobs cleaning up after their destruction.
That said, I have mentioned several times here that I have seen man-made desert turn into forest in my lifetime, right here where I live. I know change is possible. I think the migratory birds who now spend the winter on my neighbor's drained field will get their wet meadows back before I die, because no young farmer is going to take on the stupid Sisyphus task of growing grains for an industrial pig farm on a salty, sandy meadow, fighting the birds every winter.
I'm not saying we can relax, and everything will be OK, I'm saying that protesting and voting and studying and making change locally all work. We can change this, and we must.
posted by mumimor at 10:50 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


I am running for a local school board, in fact, in the largest school district in California. Part of my run is to counter the idea that high school students must be trained to fill the niches that destructive industries have for them, and my statements go like, they have to save our planet, and a different kind of education has to happen to effect that. Part of that education is personal resource management and how our current system seeks to make them life long consumers of things that are devastating to our world. Part of my stuff is that students learn their power and their inherent creativity and they can help make the world they inherit. I am in oil and ag city. I have been accused of attempting social engineering, when the whole juggernaut students are expected to take up is an elaborately engineered situation driven by investments, idealogues, the 1%, future profiteers who require poorly educated people to work for little. Anyway...
posted by Oyéah at 11:41 AM on October 13, 2020 [11 favorites]


Sepultura - Guardians of Earth (includes Nemonte Nenquimo at various times)
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 4:42 AM on October 14, 2020


Luckily I'll be dead before most of the worst effects of climate change really begin to settle in

This is the core of the Western problem: an absolute materialism that denies the reality of spirit. Within this outlook one is free to indulge one’s bodily desires with moral self-righteousness. After all, if everything is ultimately doomed to absolute extinction, what difference does it make when or how this occurs for any individual or life-form? It makes one long for an everlasting hell wherein the despoilers of the Earth are consigned. How hilarious to see those who died happy to escape the worst effects of environmental degradation find themselves permanently ensconced in just what they had counted on avoiding.
posted by No Robots at 10:39 AM on October 14, 2020


No Robots, I don't agree with that analysis. When a philosophical justification for the unbridled exploitation of nature is offered in a Western context, it is not generally from a materialist standpoint, but a theistic one: natural resources were created by God for use by humanity, God will provide new resources indefinitely so worrying about their depletion is not sensible, and/or the return of Jesus and subsequent end of the world is imminent and will occur before we need to worry about climate change or environmental collapse. Likewise, many materialists, myself included, believe that in a universe that is wholly material, a life of meaning is one that seeks to enrich the world past the lifetime of the individual, so that our good works outlive us. I'm not arguing that materialism is necessarily more compatible with an ethic of conservationism and environmental justice, or that spiritual/theistic/immaterialist worldviews are incompatible with it. Rather I don't think that distinction cleaves the issue in a meaningful way, and the supposed materialism of Western culture (which is debatable) is not the heart of the issue. I would look instead to excessive individualism, capitalism, corporatism, and rule without consent or consensus as a starting point.
posted by biogeo at 12:34 PM on October 14, 2020 [5 favorites]


^Thank you for the considered response.

excessive individualism, capitalism, corporatism, and rule without consent or consensus as a starting point

These are the end points. Materialism is the starting point.

in a universe that is wholly material, a life of meaning is one that seeks to enrich the world past the lifetime of the individual, so that our good works outlive us.

Up to universal heat death, of course.

God will provide new resources indefinitely so worrying about their depletion is not sensible, and/or the return of Jesus and subsequent end of the world is imminent and will occur before we need to worry about climate change or environmental collapse.

This may well be the position of some our more absurd Christianists. Here is something somewhat more useful:
“Hear O Israel” --“Listen, my fellow-Jews!” “Being is our God; Being is one!”…. The only value of monotheism is to make you realize that all being, including every creature – and that means the rock and the blade of grass in your garden as well as your pet lizard and your human neighbor next door – are all one in origin. You come from the same place. You were created in the same great act of love. God takes delight in each form that emerges and bestows God’s own grace upon it. Therefore – and this is the “payoff” line, the only one that really counts: Treat them that way! They are all God’s creatures; they exist only because of the divine presence, the same divine presence that makes you exist. This realization calls upon you to get to know them! Get to love them! Discover the unique divine gift within each of them! Live in amazement at the divine light strewn throughout the world. That’s what it means to be a religious human being.--"A Theology of empathy" / Arthur Green
Where materialism sees only bodies, spirituality sees Mind expressed in and through bodies. This is the foundation of all wisdom. The West denies this foundation and thereby imperils the whole of the planet. Only a turn back toward spirit can provide the necessary tools to act positively to safeguard the Earth.
posted by No Robots at 12:55 PM on October 14, 2020


Needless to say, we disagree pretty fundamentally here about the underlying philosophy. I do not know what "a turn back toward spirit" really means, but if it entails cultivating an attitude of reverence and humility toward the natural world around us and our place within it, and recognizing the rights of indigenous peoples not to have their land and resources despoiled and stolen from them, and searching for concrete strategies to undo the damage we have done to our world, and generating the political will to adopt a more sustainable way of life in industrialized societies, then as far as actual actions are concerned, we're on the same side. To the extent that it may entail supposing that an immaterial influence on our world will help solve our problems, that is where we part ways. But inasmuch as we agree on the need for concrete action, I hope that people who see the world as I do and people who see the world as you do can work together to solve our problems.
posted by biogeo at 1:12 PM on October 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


I hope that people who see the world as I do and people who see the world as you do can work together to solve our problems.

If even Steven Pinker is considered an embarrassment, I don't see much hope.
posted by No Robots at 2:45 PM on October 14, 2020


No Robots, just so that it's clear, I was being sardonic for dramatic effect. The comment was borne from the fact that so many of my friends are having children right now, and I can't help but think that they're all nuts. Why would you bring new human life onto this overpopulated (by humans) planet that is effectively being turned into a more hostile place? (I get that there's a biological imperative, and that kids are wonderful. Also, I don't judge in anger, it's more a sense of bewilderment.)

If my spirit remains on this plane of existence, then so be it. I've tried to live in harmony with my fellow humans, animals, and nature. I'm vegetarian, I bike or walk everywhere and have never owned a car, and try to live simply (is this enough virtue signaling?).
posted by nikoniko at 5:59 PM on October 14, 2020


@ nikoniko:

If that is virtue signalling, add me to the list. Including all you listed (well, not the biking part as I am too lazy, but I do take public transportation everywhere); I also pretty much only buy second hand clothing. I have a limit on all things I have, including cookbooks that forces me to look at my consumption habits. I try to be deliberate in my purchases. I decided early on in my life to be childfree, which pretty much led to my divorce. Plus I have started to value experience over consumption in terms of my spending. But this, like you said, is virtue signalling. The world is not going to change because of this. I am doing this primarily to feel better about myself.

I feel helpless with the world's inaction.
posted by indianbadger1 at 8:34 AM on October 15, 2020


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