Earth needs Therapy, not “Green” Tech

Author: Kamea (@greendreamerkamea)

This article is an extract from a 3 part series inspired by (or rather sparked by frustrations from) COP26—following Part 1, Smokes and Mirrors, and Part 2, A Crisis in Form. Uprooted is a sustainability newsletter rooted in deep ecology and decolonial thought-in-progress. Subscribe here for more.

What if instead of fixating on carbon emissions, we took a pulse on the intimacy and state of our relationships with community and with place—and tracked that as a gauge of healing ourselves and Earth?

When our cortisol levels are elevated, that's a sign that our bodies are experiencing stress. The cortisol levels being high is not the cause of stress. It's a sign. And there are many ways to reduce those stress hormones while not at all addressing nor alleviating the bodies from the strain.

What if the imbalance of greenhouse gas levels were to be understood as symptoms in a similar way? Many consider excess levels of carbon in the atmosphere as the cause of climate change. But there's a deeper story here.

It's actually the rupture of place-based relationships—taken over by colonising cultures and centralised systems completely disassociated from the lands’ unique traits, cycles, and biocultural diversity—that led to the essentialness of the energy-intensive, water-abusive systems many are reliant on today.

Megacities built in deserts are kept functioning through draining rivers piped in from elsewhere. In California, massive almond farms, meant to grow in regions that rain a decent amount, are sucking dry water sources from other landscapes. Rainforests in the Amazon, rich in native trees and plants with deep root systems, are being converted into monocultural farms with shallow roots, compromising the regional rain patterns. Meanwhile, wildfires, an integral part of various terrains, are suppressed by those who do not know their roles, laying the grounds for the more eruptive fires that end up as destructive rather than restorative.

With our homogenized food, water, and greater economic systems misaligned with those of our varied bioregions, they become incredibly resource-intensive just to sustain.

Then, there are the nonsensical, predatory trade deals incentivising countries to export the exact same foods and products they then import from far away. This has been an insidious process of exploiting labor, degrading lands, and disrupting community-based systems—while empowering the few multinational corporations that control most of the global supply chain.

With these broader contexts, it becomes clear that the elevated levels of emissions are merely signs of Earth in distress—with a breakdown of community and a loss of place-based relationships, knowledges, and lifeways.

‘Green’ Tech, & ‘Green’ Finance: The ‘Green’ Sticking Plaster

“The green transition”, as it stands right now, seeks to power the same resource-intensive, exploitative global economy disassociated from ecology—using just another source of energy. But the problem is not an addiction to fossil fuels. The problem is an addiction, period.

Focusing on emissions allows for the actual crises to be side-stepped. It becomes a justification for other forms of extraction and pillaging. It gets used as a reason to further centralise control and to financialise everything for “management” purposes.

On the contrary, when we shift towards holding a relational lens, it leaves no room for these sorts of manipulative games circumventing what is at the heart of our socio-ecological breakdown. And when we focus on healing our relationships with each other, with community, and with place, “decarbonisation”, climate stabilisation, diversification, and collective resilience become the byproducts.

This leads me to wonder: What if relationship therapists were tasked with guiding us towards collective healing?

What historical traumas would we be called to confront, together? How might the perpetrators of harm and abuse learn to view accountability in a new light—as necessary for their own healing? How would we mend our relationships with our unique landscapes and realign our lifeways, cultures, and dreams with their desires and needs? And how might we be directed towards rebuilding regionalized systems rooted in care, interdependence, and reciprocity?

What if, indeed, instead of fixating on emissions, we gauged the intimacy and state of our relationships with each other, with community, and with place?

This article is an extract from a 3 part series inspired by (or rather sparked by frustrations from) COP26—following Part 1, Smokes and Mirrors, and Part 2, A Crisis in Form. Uprooted is a sustainability newsletter rooted in deep ecology and decolonial thought-in-progress. Subscribe here for more.