...Is Avatar stupid? The standard rap is that James Cameron's movie turns the complex relationships between civilization and nature into a black-and-white, heroes-and-villains battle. It caricatures corporations (and, more generally, capitalism and Western civilization) as rapacious. Nature and indigenous populations, meanwhile, are treated with dewy sentimentalism that discounts the achievements of civilization and the rapaciousness of nature itself.
David Brooks is the latest to take a shot, identifying some implicit racism in Avatar's plot, in which a white guy becomes the hero of blue people. (At least he's handicapped.)
All good points! But there's something seriously off-base about these critiques.
Here's what I'd ask the critics: It may be cliched; it may not be even-handed. But does Avatar (in which a corporation and and its army of mercenaries attempt to kill members of an indigenous tribe and destroy their jungle home in order to mine a rare element) get the basic man vs. nature theme wrong?
Capitalism has achieved ever-improving living standards for many around the world. But the cost to the earth's biosphere -- measured, say, in lost biodiversity -- has been incalculable, and is ongoing, its ultimate blowback to mankind unknown. Historically speaking, ecological damage is usually assessed after it's too late. Now science tells us mankind has so altered the earth's climatic system that it will likely lead to a series of cascading environmental disasters unless we do something Big, Fast. Compared to that, what goes down in Avatar -- (spoiler alert!) the destruction of one giant tree and the attempted destruction of another, ecologically essential one -- is small potatoes.
Second, unchecked capitalism is environmentally rapacious. Corporations around the world need land and/or natural resources; most don't consider protecting the environment their top priority, especially if it gets in the way of that. Many (but of course not all) fight government or community attempts to protect nature that get in their way. All the better for them if it's in the developing world, where such legal protections are weak.
Third, nature, in reality as in the movie, is more complex and precious than corporations -- or most of us -- give it credit for.
Take a look at a real-world situation that tracks Avatar's concerns rather closely: mountaintop removal coal mining. This week, a group of scientists published a paper in Science outlining the extensive damage that this form of mining -- in the U.S., practiced mainly in Central Appalachia -- does to the environment, particularly mountain streams that are obliterated by so-called "valley fills." They also take a step into the policy arena, arguing that the federal government should ban MTR outright.
I've interviewed many of these scientists in the course of writing several pieces about MTR. I've visited mining sites, talked with people who live around them. The scale of destruction is astonishing. (There is, coincidentally or not, a cutaway scene at the start of Avatar that looks like an MTR site.)
The attitude of the coal industry isn't far removed from that of the unobtanium-extraction operation on Pandora: We need to get that coal. You need us to get that coal to keep your electricity flowing. We have the technology to do it and employ thousands. Stop whining about nature and let us do our jobs. (In Appalachia's business community, where coal has long ruled the roost, there are few of the formal niceties about respecting the environment and accommodating local "stakeholders" that you hear from corporate types in DC or elsewhere.)
Avatar is set on an alien moon, so there are (apparently) no government checks on corporate activity. In Appalachia, there's a breakdown of basic government responsibility. The radical practice of decapitating mountains isn't even specifically addressed in the weak and erratically-enforced patchwork of laws and regulations that govern "surface mining." There are crazy overlapping jurisdictions between agencies including the EPA, the Interior Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
That's why this week's scientific report is important. It's an attempt to assemble the scientific knowledge that has emerged over the past decade about the effects of MTR -- with the hope of cutting through the huge amount of bureaucratic and political BS around this issue. Among other things, the participating scientists outline the rich complexity of mountain ecosystems, particularly streams in forested high mountain valleys. Destroy them and the effects are felt for miles around, and far downstream. As with Avatar's clever biosphere "nervous system" idea, these ecosystems are complex and intertwined, having evolved over millions of years. Obliterate them and they're gone forever.
The pro-coal Bush administration did what it could to ease regulations on MTR. The Obama response has been better, but still measured. No matter how outrageous mountaintop removal is, officials have said, we can't ban it. We may be able to compromise, make it less bad. But can you really make wholesale destruction (which is typically followed by inadequate and, some scientists argue, futile attempts at restoration) "less bad"?
It sounds absurd, but that's how government works. The scientists are saying the emperor has no clothes, that there's is no middle ground here: compromises will only slow irreversible demolition of mountains and the life and biodiversity on them; if you want to preserve mountain ecosystems, you have no choice but to stop mountaintop removal.
This is why the criticisms of Avatar's cliches ring hollow. (Okay, maybe not the "enlightened white man" critique. Point Brooks!) Cinematic plot devices and stereotypes are often misleading or tendentious. But the issues Cameron raises are genuine.
This post first appeared on my True/Slant blog.
Follow John McQuaid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnmcquaid
Pollution from the mining and processing operations of Doe Run Peru has led to dangerously high concentrations of lead in children's blood in La Oroya...and that's just their operations in Peru
Meanwhile the CEO of Doe Run lives in some billion dollar mansion
it's all about "us" and "we". it's clear that we need to create an environment that supports, rewards, and provides sustinence for being more blue than greedy-green. currently, our system provokes and then supports selfishness. what do we expect from such a system. and this system is supported by each of us.
we maybe missing an important point. blue is in us; now we need to create the social scaffolding, institutions, natural connections, that will produce the society we all know is more rewarding than consumerism and infinite quarterly growth.
If it itches that much, it's not the movie, it's your conscience.
The planet is not as big as you are used to thinking. There are billions of humans on the planet now which is an exponential growth considering how few humans there were on the planet for almost the whole 100,000 years humans can be said to have been doing our busy thing here.
Now there are billions of people cutting down flora and making so much smoke each and every day that it would be silly to think we do not impact the eight thin miles of atmosphere above us. We are creatures of the Earth and so can throw as good an extinction as any other Earth creature. It would behoove us to get back to the garden of our origions story because, yes, of course the plant has had wild swings before in climate and many creatures have gone extinct. It would behoove us to try to learn to hold her steady.
You are right not to believe when you could know.
The issue is much more how much we consume than that we consume. Coal may be inferior to say solar (BTW you have to dig pretty big holes to make the infrastructure for solar as well. Not to mention land alteration of also precious desert habitats with concrete and solar arrays on top.
So long as we focus on supply side environmental theory our chances of succeeding are very dim. In the end the consumption dynamic will drive change or it won't. People will willingly accept consuming less or however we produce what we consume will have too large of impacts.
Not using coal and using solar/wind is better but in the end is it really supportable with a billion chinese and indian consumers coming online wanting to live how we do. Everything we do has an impact and those impacts consume scarce resources of one kind or another, resources located on in and under existing natural habitats that we must alter change and take. Coal is dirty and the others cleaner so we can get better but is that good enough, really. Or is it a placebo to ease our conscience as we park our SUV outside our garage packed with resources we barely used.
Though the Avatar does go a bit far in it's white man saves the day fantasy, there is yet something radical and transgressive about the idea of turning against one's own military to fight for the oppressed. Survival requires people of all races, to stand in solidarity with those around the world who have no power. Until we see our fates as intertwined, we are blindly racing toward our own annihilation. Those trees being logged in Malaysia or Peru or the toxic waste being dumped in the Amazon, may seem as far away as another planet, but it's not.
Our societies are so messed up it's beyond words. My family has been connected via investments to some of the biggest mining companies in the world. Just five seconds on google reveals how much human blood I am connected to through my family's money. It's quite sickening to know that for my entire life I have benefited from the destruction of other people's lives.
I am numb with sadness at what I've been a party to.
Missionaries replaced our spirituality with the religion that has benefited the European for centuries. Christianity taught and controlled with stories of of a vengeful selfish God. We were taught not question Christians and the images they gave us. Missionaries replaced pagan African religion with Christianity. Church missionaries and later Hollywood vilified and frightened our people away from our own religions.
When you understand the power, magic and beauty of African spirituality it is very easy to understand why Europeans tried to rid Africa of the priests in the slave trade, and to replace African spirituality with their own European based religion. ( www.orisha.org or www.ouidah.org.)
One of the most prominent indigenous spiritual system in Africa is called Fa/Ifa. To address problems divination/consultation is invoked in Fa/Ifa system. Fa/Ifa system is like an ancient computer bank of information addressing anything that can or will happen. Fa/Ifa can find solutions to problems that affect indivuals, families and communities. Fa/Ifa can find your lost family in Africa and reveal invaluable family history such as, how your family's ancestors were trapped into the slave trade. Fa/Ifa can help reveal present and future problems as well as solutions.
Respectfully,
Iyalashe
Thanks to to humankind, the sourcing, acquisition, and burning of coal has become one of the most destructive processes on the planet, particularly in the U.S. where almost 50% of our power generation is dependent on coal.
As you pointed out, mining coal is destroying the environment and ecosystems around them, and burning it is contaminating the air.
Getting off coal and using cleaner, alternative sources of energy would be the fastest way for the U.S. to reduce it's carbon footprint.
The ski resorts opened in an empty shell in the 1960s.