Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nature in the Active Voice

2009; ANU Press; Issue: 46 Linguagem: Inglês

10.22459/ahr.46.2009.10

1835-8063

Val Plumwood,

Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies

Need for a thorough rethinkIt seems increasingly possible that our immediate descendants, and perhaps many of those now living, will face the ultimate challenge of human viability: reversing our drive towards destroying our planetary habitat.Two important recent books, one by Jared Diamond (2005) and the other by Ronald Wright (2004), show how cultures that have been unable to change a bad ecological course have gone down.The appearance of ecological crises on the multiple fronts of energy, climate change and ecosystem degradation suggests we need much more than a narrow focus on energy substitutes.We need a thorough and open rethink which has the courage to question our most basic cultural narratives.Imagine this scenario: The northern tribe of Easter Islanders never question the desperate religious cult that has devastated their section of the island as they try to placate with tree sacrifice the angry gods who withhold the rain.Instead, their leaders look around for new sources of trees, casting their eyes perhaps on the still-forested lands of the smaller tribe to the south.Meanwhile, their clever men, their scientists, are set to search for tree substitutes-other types of vegetation perhaps.But the need to consume the trees, given by the religion, is never questioned.Most public discussion in our society is dominated by the tyranny of narrow focus and minimum rethink.A rethink deficit is a poor rational strategy in a situation where so many cracks are appearing in the empire, where multiple ecological problems are compounding and converging.Strategies that limit us to casting about for simple substitutes are dangerous.We revamp those hazardous sources good sense has led us to resist so far-nuclear fuels for example.Rethink deficit strategies do not encourage us to question the big framework narratives that underpin our extravagant demands or the associated commodity cult of economic growth.Or to question our right, as masters of the universe, to lay waste to the earth to maintain this cult's extreme lifestyle.So, getting back to my case study, where could my putative Easter Islanders go to find intellectual help?In my scenario, science does what it is told by power, and scientists are not encouraged or intellectually equipped to address the bigger