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--especially the US. The US is the most advanced in unsustainable living--and what is worse, in unsustainable policy contrived by multinational corporations and the super-rich for the benefit of the few, and brought to a culmination of unsustainability by thugs like Bush and Cheney as the result of rigged elections. For the last eight years, we haven't even been trying to do anything right, and have been actively making things far, far worse, with oil wars that both kill and pollute, and massive looting of government funds that might have been used to help people transition to a 'green' economy. And that is after being on a wrong course since the oil giants and war profiteers kicked Jimmy Carter out of office and installed Reagan. Carter was the last president we had who understood sustainability. He put solar panels on the roof of the White House. Reagan took them off!
Bolivia is a less complicated, and far less industrialized society. So is Ecuador. And, because of their large indigenous populations, they have had a chance, with the rise of democracy (based on the long hard work of many people, including many grass roots groups, but also people like Jimmy Carter), to bring the indigenous viewpoint, and reverence for Pachamama, into the "mainstream"--and, in Ecuador, into the very language of the Constitution, for the first time, ever. More complicated (urbanized, mixed culture) societies like Venezuela have also made advances in environmental consciousness, with the success of democracy. Environmental groups and indigenous tribes are an important part of the Chavez coalition, but they don't have as much influence in Venezuela (and other complex societies like Brazil and Chile) as they do in Bolivia and Ecuador.
Paraguay is an interesting case--and may be harbinger for an indigenous/Catholic coalition on the environment. They just elected their first leftist president, ever--the beloved "bishop of the poor," Fernando Lugo, who spent his entire Church career living with the poor indigenous. One of his most important issues is the pesticide spraying that harms poor farm workers and poisons the soil and the water. He is a highly conscious clergyman, and president.
Brazil is a country comparable to the US in size and complexity, and there doesn't seem to be any alternative, there, to the mantra, "JOBS, JOBS, JOBS." Even their best leaders--like President Lula da Silva, who is closely allied to Morales, Correa, Chavez and Lugo--are hamstrung by their vast population of displaced people in urban areas. Lula has done some good things--for instance, preserving a huge swath of the Amazon as living habitat for several uncontacted tribes (which also protects the forest, birds and fish), but he also made a bad biofuels deal with Bush that will hurt small farmers and the environment, for the benefit of short term jobs and revenue. If politicians like Lulu don't produce jobs, they are out.
The problem of huge urban populations vs the environment is probably the biggest unsolved dilemma of saving the planet and achieving social justice at the same time. What do you DO with all these people--sucking up water tables, requiring vast power generation works, in need of currently polluting transportation, who don't grow their own food and whose developments are moving ever further into natural areas and paving them over?
The Chavez government is trying to solve this problem in Caracas with land reform. Prior governments deliberately created a highly artificial, import-dependent, rich urban elite to service and profit from the oil industry. This urban elite in turn utterly neglected vital issues like food self-sufficiency, displacement of small farmers and local manufacturing. (They were importing machine parts for the oil industry!) The Chavistas have created the first well-run land reform program--encouragement of return to the land, well-thought-out help for small farmers and finding fallow land to be farmed, without too much social/economic disruption. But programs like this can take decades to produce results. Meanwhile, you have tens of thousands of people crammed together in urban areas, most of them poor to very poor. How do you feed, clothe, house and bootstrap them (with education and other supports), and employ them?
I think this is going to take an urban 'greening' movement, on a very large scale--that is, the creation of food gardens on every urban lawn or in every urban apartment window, as well as community gardens--for starters. Some cities in the US are well in advance of the federal government on 'greening' policies, but they really haven't addressed the coming food crisis, and Brazil hasn't either. (Brazil also has the excruciatingly painful problem of farmers--food producers--moving into and destroying the Amazon.)
You can't give land back to the indigenous that now has tens of millions of people living on it, in an unsustainable way--as I pointed out above. But you CAN learn vitally important wisdom from the indigenous, if you open society to all views, improve democracy and equality, stifle bigotry and address social justice issues so that the indigenous can speak, and want to speak. If the Irish had listened to the indigenous farmers in Peru, there would have been no Potato Famine. The Peruvian indigenous had thousands of years of experience and wisdom in cultivating a wide variety of potatoes, to prevent plagues. But the Peruvian indigenous couldn't speak--they were being oppressed--and the poor Irish had no means of obtaining the information they needed, to prevent a potato plague that ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people through starvation.
And this is just one example of why social justice for the indigenous is vital for everyone's survival, and not just the right thing to do. The indigenous (majority) in Bolivia have a far, far, FAR saner attitude on drug policy than our own insane government. We can learn from them, and save ourselves about a trillion dollars a year that we are now pouring down that rat hole, the US "war on drugs." But we have to improve our democracy, and rein in our war profiteers, to be able to benefit from that wisdom. It wouldn't at all harm us to be growing a few coca leaves and marijuana plants in our urban gardens. Marijuana can be used to make fuel, for one thing. And coca leaves are highly nutritious (and would help people keep from freezing to death, as global warming screws up the climate and produces ice storms where people aren't prepared for it).
The 'greening' of the world starts with social justice for the indigenous. And the joy of it is, as Evo Morales has said, "The time of the people has come." At least in South America.
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