Would you expect a plantation owner to have any idea how to abolish slavery? They would be the last people to ask to make a strategy for ending the practice providing their livelihoods and wealth.

To ask a plantation owner to end slavery is to ask them how to give up everything they feel they own. They’d risk vengeance from the people they freed. They’d have to acknowledge their actions that hurt others and violated their own values, then lied to themselves and others about it.

I’ll copy the above two paragraphs, changing the domain from slavery to polluting and depleting. See if the perspective illuminates not to listen to polluters about how to stop polluting. It may be tempting to avoid comparing something to slavery, but recall that one of the biggest difference between slavery and unsustainability is that the suffering and death from unsustainability is much greater than from slavery.

Would you expect someone who pollutes and depletes for a living to have any idea how to live sustainably? He or she would be the last person to ask to make a strategy for ending the practice providing their livelihoods and wealth.

To ask a heavy polluter and depleter to live sustainably is to ask them how to give up everything they feel they own. They’d risk vengeance from the people they made sick. They’d have to acknowledge their actions that hurt others and violated their own values, then lied to themselves and others about it.

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Nearly all Americans, from poor to rich, pollute and deplete more than nearly anyone else alive and who ever lived. Americans of any stripe will almost certainly give terrible advice for how to reach sustainability, including those we hear the most from: journalists, activists, politicians, business executives, Silicon Valley types, anyone in advertising, teachers, and scientists. Yet we look to them.

I suggest we look more to people living sustainably, like the few remaining indigenous cultures hanging on by a thread. The movie Aluna by podcast guest Alan Ereira shows the Kogi trying to help us. I’d listen to them before most Americans. It’s free to watch online:

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