Tuesday 25 May 2021

Can We All Become Indigenous People?

Peter Sutoris (an Anthropologist of Development and the Environment) has written thought-provoking article on the mindset change needed to extract ourselves from the climate crisis (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/24/climate-change-crisis-culture-politics-technology). Sutoris (probably) rightly claims that humans will not be able to innovate (by carbon capture etc) themselves, out of the mess they have got themselves into. The Anthropocene could be the end of the species as well as the planet. Sutoris naturally sings the praises of indigenous groups who appear to know the limits 'their' environments can sustain. Interestingly, most of the planet's surviving biodiversity is also concentrated in their lands. Sutoris thinks we need to become more humble and aware of our connectedness to the environment. At the moment, he suggests, we are too vain and individualistic. The trouble is that 'perfect' indigenous groups generally live at very low densities in large, diverse regions. Individual consumption tends to be low and lives short. Indigenous groups generally have leaders but they don't show the extraordinary differences in wealth and lifestyle, one sees in 'developed' societies. I can't really see, however, a) That there would be room for everyone on the planet (we have more people now than the grand total for all earlier recorded history) to become members of indigenous groups; b) Many humans giving up the belief, that they are the dominant species and the planet 'owes' (or was given to) them and c) The mega-rich voluntarily giving up on their privilaged lifestyles. Even Sutoris, does not really lay out, in graphic detail, what a fundamental change in attitudes/actions would be needed from the majority of people to really counter the climate crisis. We all want our cake and we all want to eat it!

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