By Stephen M. Sachs

Now that it is exceedingly clear that climate change, from mostly human induced global warming, and other environmental degradation from pollution and over use of resources, faces the entire world with an immediate critical crises, that effects everyone on the earth,¹ it important that we shift away from the modern western world view that has brought us to this impending global catastrophe, and approach the complex set of environmental problems facing us all, appropriately.

We need to find real solutions, and avoid making the environmental situation worse with quick fixes, or narrow actions that address one aspect of the problem, only to create new difficulties in other areas. It is time to return to an older Aboriginal perspective, and learn from the lessons of Indigenous thinking, developed from long experience, demonstrating the importance of living in harmony with the natural environment, upon which they were closely reliant for their survival and well being.²

All traditional Indigenous people consider themselves to be part of nature, with a responsibility to keep it in balance, both for their own good, and that of all other beings.³ From experience they understand the necessity of taking into account the short and long term effects of actions,⁴ being aware of the full set of relationships that are involved in all human activity.⁵ If the world’s leading public and private policy makers of the last two centuries had been Indigenous thinkers, climate change would not be a major world crises, today.

The key learnings from Indigenous thinking for the world in dealing with climate change are that everything is connected, but each location is unique.⁶ Actions and events have developing consequences over time, so that in making decisions, it is necessary to take into account the full range of relationships that are involved, considering how they will be affected over an unfolding, and lengthy, period of time. Western science has long focused on taking things apart, and reducing consideration of phenomena to focus on a limited number of factors, in order to isolate essential forces or rules.

This approach has great power, but its reductionism tends to miss the interconnections that contemporary ecology, the cutting edge of physics, and developing chaos or complexity theory are beginning to demonstrate to the West, are the true nature of the world. It is an exceedingly complex, interactive system. Climate change and other ecological issues are essentially issues of how we use resources (broadly defined to include energy and matter, that which is animate and inanimate), including the chains of direct and indirect effects of finding, acquiring, transporting, processing, and applying those resources and disposing of (or allowing to disperse) the byproducts of that use.

This requires analyzing holistically, in terms of complex systems with interacting subsystems, so that decisions are made in the course of examining the full range of relationships and interactions involved, over time. It involves understanding that every action has a wide range of effects that need to be taken into account. This means not only examining all of the physical aspects of an ecological problem over time, but the full range of human concerns as well: social, cultural, economic, political,.., in order to develop an appropriate balanced set of actions across time.

Another tendency of traditional western science and thought has been to develop general conclusions, and to apply them universally, often without thinking through how they properly apply in different circumstances. This has caused untold problems.⁷ For example business or technical consultants often take a program that worked well in one place, or a set of similar sites, and “can it”, simply presenting the program in other locales without first assessing the conditions and needs of that location. When those conditions and needs are different from what the presenter assumed, the program does not work.

This is an especially serious problem in making cross-cultural transfers. For example, several years ago agricultural scientists developed a new variety of cotton that was more hardy and produced more cotton per plant than traditional varieties. They took it to villagers in one location in India, without asking what the local people used the cotton plants for. Most of the villagers decided to try the new cotton. But when the scientists returned five years later, they found only a small amount of the cotton being grown was the new variety. The reason was that the villagers used the plant both to produce cotton, and for fuel by burning the stalks. The stalks of the new cotton plants did not burn nearly as well as those of the old plants.

In dealing with environmental issues, it is important to realize that what works in one place may not work, and may have negative results, in another. General principals – when correct – may generally apply everywhere, but to apply properly, they have to be adapted to the differing conditions of each particular place, including taking into account (so far as possible) how those conditions will change over time. If the world’s decision makers can take an Indigenous perspective on what needs to be done, there is still a good possibility that the worst potential effects of global warming and environmental destruction can be avoided, and much of the already occurring damage can be reversed or ameliorated.

Global Warming and What Can Be done About It: Applying Indigenous Thinking

Applying this Indigenous perspective, global warming needs to be understood as part of a complex interactive ecological system in which human action, particularly resource use, have a large impact. There is now almost complete scientific agreement that global warming, bringing horrendous climate change, that is already having serious impacts on human life around the planet, is primarily caused by human activity, resulting in carbon dioxide, methane and other green house gasses entering the atmosphere, that then trap heat.

The relevant direct human action is first the burning of fuels (and other burning) that result in the release of green house gasses, but such gasses are also directly put into the atmosphere by other human acts; and secondarily as a result of the warming that has been occurring because of people increasing green house gas levels in the atmosphere (such as the melting of permafrost in the Arctic releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide, and 14 times more heat increasing methane, and the heating of the oceans which reduces their capacity to absorb green house and other gasses – directly, and from the reduction, which occurs with raising sea water temperatures, of ocean plant life that transforms huge amount of carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon). ⁸

Global warming is also increased by human action, such as deforestation, that kills trees and other green plants that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon (used by the plants). Thus global warming can be reduced in several ways: 1) by reduction in the burning of green house gas producing fuels, by increasing fuel use efficiency, reducing fuel burning, and switching to non-green house gas producing sources of energy, including wind power, photovoltaic cells and other direct solar power, wave action, hydro electric power, ocean temperature differential power, atomic energy (which may be too dangerous to use because of possible meltdowns, and the problem of dealing with highly radioactive waste that remains dangerous for as long as 100,000 years), geothermal energy, using hydrogen and possibly other non-green house gas producing fuels, using as fuels green house gases that would enter the atmosphere without producing energy for human endeavor, if not captured and burned (e.g. capturing and burning methane escaping from landfills), and capturing carbon produced by green house gas producing fuel use; 2) by increasing the number of trees (ending deforestation, and reforesting) and other carbon dioxide transforming plants; 3) increasing the amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere, which blocks incoming sun light, and has a cooling effect. This, however, almost always has major detrimental side effects for human beings, including causing major health problems (to consider only the simplest of the many aspects of putting dust into the air).

As this last method of reducing global warming suggests, there is much more to the ecological problem facing human beings than simply reducing global warming. Human activity causes a great many other impacts on the environment, some of which tend to change the ecological system of the planet, and/or its local and regional subsystems, often negatively from a human perspective, and which in many cases have direct negative effects for human beings, including the production of a wide range of pollutants from simple dust, to toxic chemicals, radiation, and biological hazards.

So while global warming is often considered the most obvious current environmental threat for humanity (though some would say that radiation from bombs, accidents and nuclear waste is a greater danger, or that human caused or spread disease is a greater threat), global warming cannot properly be looked at in isolation. It has to be considered as part of a larger set of relationships among human beings (physical, social, economic, political. Etc,) and considering human beings as part of the Earth’s environmental system and subsystems. Indeed, in that context, global warming is only one of the negative side effects of human activity that needs to be considered. For example, destruction of the ozone layer (leading to toxic levels, for many – and at some point virtually all – forms of life) of ultra violate radiation penetrating the atmosphere, as the result of the use of certain chemicals that escape upward and destroy the ozone layer of the upper atmosphere, is again increasing because of the growing use in some developing counties of refrigerants and propellants, whose use has been greatly reduced in the rest of the world.

One aspect of the global warming problem in particular, and of environmental protection generally, is resource use: the finding, processing, transporting, using of resources, and disposing of residual material in that whole process, including all the results (positive, negative and neutral), direct and indirect, of that activity. In the case of energy, the most used source world wide, oil, is approaching the point where demand overwhelms supply, largely because of the huge and growing increases in oil consumption by China and other developing nations.

Compounded with interruptions and uncertainties about some major oil production, because of war and political instability, this has spurred the development of biofuel, particularly ethanol, most notably in Brazil and the U.S. While increasing ethanol production has economic, political and security advantages, ethanol production currently increases global warming, and other polluting, because its production requires significantly more energy than does gasoline and other oil product production. (That may change as more effort, money and energy is required to mine oil, whether in pumping steam into no longer free flowing oil wells, or in mining oil from shale and tar sands).

Also, despite what some advertising claims, burning ethanol simply produces a different combination of pollutants than does burning gasoline. While it might make sense to have some increase in ethanol use as a bridge to develop non-greenhouse gas producing energy, and to include economic and human concerns properly in the process of energy transformation, to overcome global warming and reduce dangerous pollution more generally, it is far better to emphasize non-greenhouse gas producing sources of energy (taking into account the pollution, including greenhouse gas production, and cost of such development – e.g. manufacture of photo voltaic cells is not entirely clean). The politics and public relations of powerful established economic interests, in many cases, resists changes that are beneficial to whole societies and the population of the planet. And that resistance must be overcome, and where possible transformed (as has been happening, as even some oil companies have been moving to “greener” business practices).

One of the ways of reducing green house gas emission, and major pollution, as well as scarce resource use, is to reduce automobile use, which is one of the major and fastest growing sources of pollution, including greenhouse gases. Increasing public transportation, including high speed trains between cities, will help this, and incentives and encouragement to use such transportation will further help (reduced fares, etc.). A problem in the U.S. is that automotive and truck use is governmentally subsidized, while railroads are not. Increasing automobile efficiency, introducing electric and highbred vehicles – which can be supported by subsidies and other incentives, while penalizing (e.g. taxes) greenhouse gas producing emissions, especially by highly inefficient engines. Encouraging, rewarding use of bicycles and walking can also reduce vehicle use. Careful urban, land use and traffic planning by governments, business and NGOs can also be a major method for reducing vehicle use, and resulting pollution.

Production of power for electricity, manufacturing, etc., can also be switched from higher to lower polluting – particularly of greenhouse gases – while machines, devices, equipment, appliances, etc. can be made more energy efficient, and such use encouraged/subsidized/advertised. Providing public information about the problem and what people can do about it, with specific information about helpful products and actions, can be a major help in all aspects of dealing with environmental-human protection.

A major aspect of reducing greenhouse gas emission and other pollution and environmental degradation is the development of new and improvement of old technology, methods, energy sources, etc. A great deal of investment needs to be made in this area (and some of that is happening) with the support of public and private funding.

Almost all of the aspects of the problem can be better met with increased intra and inter organization, and interpersonal, collaboration and efficiency. Government and private organizations and persons can play an important facilitating and communicating roll here (such as planning locations of facilities for shorter travel/shipping, coordination of research, sharing of information, timing of work shifts to avoid traffic jams, etc).

A critical aspect of protecting human life, economy, health, etc. by protecting the environment is in a variety of public policies at every level of government, from direct regulation (which should be smart regulation - as set out in Reinventing Government),⁹ subsidies, encouragements, penalties, planning, voluntary planning – encouraging collaboration/coordination, smart seeding of research and production of better products (e.g. the government ordering large numbers of a better product to bring the price down to make it competitive), spreading information, encouraging environmentally friendly activity, etc. To achieve this requires political action, including public expression (hence the need of public and private public education), by individuals, groups, corporations, and government entities.

Green business policies and actions are also an extremely important aspect of meeting environmental threats, including global warming. Government policy can encourage this, as must public caring about the issues and demand for green business activity. Education of business leaders and personnel is also critical. Understanding that moving in a greener direction can create jobs (some very well respected analysis shows clearly that moving to protect the environment will produce far more jobs and business opportunities than it destroys, though some vested interests do, and will continue to, resist that proposition).

Already quite a number of firms, and in some areas chambers of commerce, see that their future is dependent on protecting the environment, while others now want to seem that they are acting in a green way (investigative reporting and environmental group research needs to expose false green claims, encouraging real green action). Professional organizations can play an important part by developing, publicizing, encouraging, and at times enforcing a green ethic.

Public education is critical, in schools, by government and community leaders, and by nongovernmental organizations, to insure that here is public demand for environmentally friendly public and corporate policy. It will help if people at large are informed and encouraged to take ecologically positive actions, from recycling and careful use of toxic materials, to efficiency in using energy and other resources. Small individual acts do help, when widely carried out. But the doing of them is important in developing a general green consciousness

These are a few of the many interrelated aspects, briefly presented, of meeting the massive environmental threat we human beings are bringing down on ourselves. In proceeding to take protective action, it is important to join Indigenous people in seeing that all the aspects of the problems involved are interrelated, and to analyze them and act upon them holistically, and so far as possible (with out co-opting oneself) work collaboratively to reclaim the circle of the world, to the extent realizable, minimizing the damage, so, as Native people say, life will be good for the seventh generation to come.

Footnotes

1. Elizabeth Rosenthal, “UN Report on Climate Change Details Risk of Inaction: Scientists Final Accounting Is Forceful on Temperatures and Seal Levels,” The New York Times, November 17, 2007, pp. A1 and A5. The article, with links to similar articles and the text of the full report is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/science/earth/02cnd-climate.html. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website contains the panels reports at: http://www.ipcc.ch.

2. See Willis Harman, Global Mind Change, Second Edition (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 1998), as a whole, and particularly pp. 135-136, 142-143, 175; and Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), Ch. 2, 3, 6, and 8.

3. For traditional American Indians, the ideal for individual and social life is harmony, and balance (which the Navajo call beauty [hozo], based upon respect for all beings (and everything is alive, even the rocks are living), in accordance with the natural order of which human beings are a part and all are related. The Lakotas, for example, state this at the end of prayers: Mitakue Oyasun: "all my relations - amen!" - a word, which like the Hindu Om, when fully stated contains all the vowels (See Gerald Mohatt and Joseph eagle Elk, The Price of a Gift: A Lakota Healer's Story (Lincoln: the University of Nebraska Press, 2000), pp. 3, 35, 145-146, 298-199; and Joseph M. Marshall III, The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons of Living (New York: Viking Compass, 2001), pp. 211, 227. The Muscogee, like numerous other indigenous nations, have a very similar approach to interrelatedness, and when they dance the first friendship dance, recognizing and honoring the creator that surrounds all things and beings, they chant "iyabileyuppe," which also contains all the vowel sounds (Jean and Joyotpaul Chaudhuri, A Sacred Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks (Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2001), p. 26). On the Navajo, See Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothy Leighton, The Navaho; James F. Downes, The Navajo (New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston, Inc., 1972), particularly chapters 2, 3 and 8; Robert W. Young, A Political History of the Navajo Tribe (Tsaille, Navajo Nation, AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1978); and Alice Reichard, Navaho Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, 1950).

For the Muscogee (Creek), the totality of interrelatedness is seen in their creation story, and in all their related stories showing how everything is interrelated and must be kept in balance, as set forth by in Jean and Joyotpaul Chaudhuri, A Sacred Path. The Chaudhuris tell us, for example, "The beautiful astronomical legends give us a picture of the balance of male and female energies, thereby showing the patch of darkness in light and light in darkness, all circling in the search for harmony in motion. The legends provide a humanities parallel of the science of the Creeks which also sees the search for balance between the four elements and the synergy linking the cycles of dynamic energies of the earth, the water, the sun (fire), and the sky (air). This is no romantic pipe dream, but the vision of an earth-centered culture with sacred trust responsibilities. The Earth centered physics involves exchanges between and transformations of various forms of energy and the cycles of energy among soil, water, nutrients, animals, sunlight, air and rain in an environmentally balanced manner (p. 19)". This dynamic balancing, that is necessary in the physical sphere, is also necessary in society, in which all the elements: men, women, the different clans and the two moieties - indeed all individuals - each have their unique and essential functions that must be kept in, and returned to, balance (Ch. 5-10). The same is true of the individual, who if internally out of balance can not act socially in a balanced way. "In the Muscogee Creek cosmos, all things consist of particular combinations of body, mind and spirit. When these are not in harmony, one is truly lost and healing becomes necessary for the entity to continue (p. 23, the theme pervading chapter 4)." But harmony, balance, beauty, peace is not automatic, one has to work continually to attain and maintain it at every level, including in and with the natural environment. As the Chaudhuris say of the Muskogee, "Given the unpredictable .elements of nature and the quirks of human nature, the search for harmony takes sustained effort in all social institutions"(p. 68, see all of Ch. 9). Hence, in personal inner work and in all relationships, including with the natural environment and all its nations of plants, animals, etc., one continually participates in processes for returning to harmony. Each Native culture did this in a different manner, but almost all followed the same general principles (at least until they become too large or events put them sufficiently out of balance).

4. Cajete, Native Science, p. 63-69.

5. As discussed in footnote 2.

6. For a discussion of the relevance of traditional Native thought to western science, and growing convergence of the two, see, Stephen M. Sachs, “The Cutting Edge of Physics: Western Science Is Finally Catching Up with American Indian Tradition,” IPJ, Vol. XVIII, No. 2.

7. Stephen M. Sachs and Deborah Escobel Hunt, "Appropriate Consulting with Indian Nations: Facilitating Returning to the Wisdom of the People," Proceedings of the 2000 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2000).

8. For a short overview of appropriate ways to deal with global warming and other environmental degradations see Stephen M. Sachs, “Global Warming and What Can Be Done About It,” in Nonviolent Change, Spring 2007. NCJ regularly reports on major climate change and other environmental developments. A good ongoing source for environmental information is the World Watch Institute: http://www.worldwatch.org.

9. See David Osborne and Ted Gabler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector, From Schoolhouse to Statehouse, City Hall to the Pentagon (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1992).