Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Recently a colleague suggested I read Peter Rudiak-Gould’s article published in 2014. “Climate Change and Accusation: Global Warming and Local Blame in a Small Island State”. Current Anthropology 55(4): 365-386.

This is a wonderful article. It might be out of date now but it suggests how we can learn from the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands in terms of their response to Climate Change. There is far more to the article than I am going to cover, so read it yourselves if you can…

Rudiak-Gould begins by pointing out there are two traditions of climate change blame in the West:

1. Some are more at fault than others, usually the industrialised or industrialising world
2. Everyone is to blame. Humanity is self-destructive. With the implication there is not much we can do alone.

The Marshall Islanders are clearly not to blame for Climate Change. They contributed 0.0002% of world CO2 emissions in 2008. Yet it is (was?) common for the Islanders to clearly take on the blame. People rarely mention the culpability of other nations for their severe climate problems, and insist they have to do something about their own problems before facing the world. One person, for example, says

“How can we ask the bigger nations for help, when we are [also] a contributor to climate change?”

p.368

While they agree they make a contribution to climate change, they don’t think they have much ability to affect climate change in total. Rudiak-Gould writes:

“It is never suggested that Marshall Islanders can stop climate change, only that they contribute to it…”

p.371

They don’t have delusions of grandeur, and the idea is not a defense, against action.

Rudiak-Gould explains this situation, by seeing it as related to a wide spread realisation of a decay in traditional life, which they see as the fault of the Islanders themselves: “We follow American culture;” “we have too many things from outsiders… We don’t grow our food anymore.”

RG writes, that for the Islanders Climate change is “the final proof of modernity’s folly, [and] a powerful inspiration to revitalize older ways.” By saying they are responsible, they reassert cultural continuity and distinctiveness, and a course of action.

They are using recognition of their responsibility for climate change to help themselves, not just trying to solve the problem.

Taking responsibility is not an “empty performance.” Islanders try to reduce dependency on foreign oil through solar; restart traditional shoreline management practices; stop throwing plastic onto the beaches and into the sea, and aim to take control over their society’s cultural future.

Taking responsibility says they have a right to speak to each other and to the world. It champions local citizen action, and challenges the dominance of the state, high tech and elite high science, all of which assume people know little and cannot act by themselves.

Taking responsibility also undermines assumptions that a nation cannot act, through ‘people power’. It shows even a small nation can act for itself, and by itself, without any constricting fear that action will ruin the economy or destroy a people’s way of life – it even assumes that a way of real and desirable social life can be revitalised and improved by climate action.

Finally, it challenges common ideas in the rest of the world that pacific islanders are the victims of others. They assert they can help the world and themselves, even if they cannot solve the problem completely, and their action sets an example others might follow.

Taking responsibility and acting the best we can casts doubt on the supposed necessity for a top down solution driven by State or business occurring first. It asserts climate change can be affected by people taking on their own responsibility in a practical way. We do not have to wait for the State or for business to get on board and act.

In a relatively large State, like the ones most of the people reading this will live, this local responsibility and action is possibly the only way that the State will get the message that the people care enough for it to take on the forces that oppose action.

The Marshall Islanders set forth an agenda we can all learn from.

Tags: activism, climate change, politics, social action, Social change

This entry was posted on July 20, 2021 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.