Review

Art

Climate

Culture

14 March 2023

5 min read

Our human tribe

A famed photographer's exhibition about Amazonia prompts Jane Cacouris to consider the wider issues.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

Amazonia from the air.

Neil Palmer/CIAT, Wikimedia Commons.

'What drew me back to the Amazon? …it was to savour afresh the unparalleled beauty of this vast region. For me, it is a last frontier, a mysterious universe of its own, where the immense power of nature can be felt as nowhere else on earth.'

These are the words of world renowned Brazilian photographer, Sebastião Salgado, in the foreword of his book, Amazônia. Over a period of six years, Salgado travelled around the Brazilian Amazon photographing its sweeping landscapes: forests, rivers, mountains, as well as the people who live there. A photograph of a Yanomani tribe on the edge of a vast vista with a towering mountain shrouded in cloud in the distance is an extraordinary snapshot of his travels. Salgado documented the daily lives of a dozen indigenous tribes, capturing on camera their warm family bonds, traditional dances and rituals, the artistry of their body painting and means of survival – hunting and fishing. Although Salgado was unable to communicate by speaking to the tribes he visited, he describes vividly how the human emotions he shared with his hosts - to love, laugh, cry and to feel happy or angry – served as their common language. He says:

I felt at home in my own tribe, that of all humans, where myriad systems of logic and reason are interwoven with my own, with those of Homo Sapiens.

During a recent trip to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, I visited Salgado’s Amazônia exhibition at the Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) in the centre of the city. The photographs are awe inspiring, all in black and white. They depict lush rainforest vegetation, winding rivers and waterfalls. Beautiful people with dark eyes, mainly naked, dressed, feathered and painted according to their tribal traditions sit against a black canvas backdrop or are portrayed in their natural surroundings. Salgado’s talent lies in capturing the epic beauty of the region’s landscapes, but also the delicate detail of the individual faces of the people he photographs. Each person looked straight at the camera lens – and as I looked back at them, it was as if I could see a little of their soul and personality. To the right of each portrait is the name of the person, and a note about their role in the tribe; a reminder that each face is not just a stunning photograph, but a human being who is valued and respected.

But Salgado’s portrayal of the Amazon rainforest, often referred to as “the world’s lung,” is not simply remarkable visual artistry. It is a powerful reminder of a number of issues that we collectively face today as a global tribe of human beings.

For over 10,000 years, humans have enjoyed an inter-connectedness with our natural environment, tending and living off the land. And this is still the case with the Amazonian tribes who rely so tangibly on tapping into the rainforest’s renewable wealth and provision – its animals, fruit, nuts and medicinal plants. A growing body of evidence shows that globally, indigenous people are especially good at sustainably protecting their territories. This is no exception in the Amazon; the indigenous reserves legally ringfenced by the Brazilian government are the areas that are most pristine. The areas where tribes have been driven out have been damaged irretrievably.

With our human quest to develop, the past two hundred years has seen a slow positive global trajectory towards eliminating absolute poverty, reducing conflicts and improving human rights. Encouraging on paper. But this positive change has come at a huge cost to our environment. Ironically, the same expanding global economy which has driven improvements in development and social justice, is based on fossil fuels and high consumption of natural resources causing climate change, mass extinctions and pollution. The results of these changes are hitting the world’s poorest communities the hardest – those who have done the least to cause them. The delicate balance that has existed between humans and our natural environment for millennia is being thrown out of kilter.

COP27, the annual UN global climate conference took place in Egypt at the end of 2022 and the impact of the climate crisis on vulnerable countries was finally on the agenda. It is promising to see growing public support from across the world for action. More people than ever before – including Christians and churches – are speaking up for climate justice, campaigning, joining marches and praying for change. Christian NGOs and pressure groups, such as Tearfund, Christian Action, and World Vision to name a few, are often at the forefront of climate campaigns.

So why are Christians calling for climate action? First, it’s an issue of ownership. As campaigner Ruth Valerio explains: the Bible tells them that creation was made by Jesus, through Jesus and for Jesus. Therefore, this world that was made brimming with abundance and vitality has immense value to God. The world is not ours to do with as we please, it belongs to its creator who has entrusted it to humans to care for. Second, it’s an issue of justice. The outworking of climate breakdown, such as global temperatures rising, floods, drought and extreme weather events has a disproportionate impact on people in poverty and who are already vulnerable, affecting their livelihoods, health and security. Christians believe that we’re all made ’in the image of God’. This speaks powerfully of equality between each one of us within our global human tribe.

Therefore acting justly means responding to the needs of our global neighbours, not only our immediate communities. The Bible says ‘Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy’. Christians – especially those living in privileged countries with social safety nets and funds to invest in climate resilience – are asked to stand up for equality and justice, calling on those in positions of power to make decisions that protect those who are more vulnerable, as well as this Earth that belongs to God.

At COP27 these Christian groups joined with countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change to call for justice in climate financing. It’s a simple but radical case of compensation; rich nations who have already used far more than their fair share of carbon to develop their economies should now pay for the unavoidable “loss and damage” experienced by those whose homes, livelihoods and even lives are being lost as a result of the climate crisis. The protection of the Amazon also remains a critical theme.

Addressing the COP27 conference, Brazilian President Elect Lula said,

There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon.

Visiting the Amazon rainforest with my family in 2019 I was stunned, like Salgado, by its majesty and magnitude. Sleek, dark waters teeming with fish and crocodiles, trees with trunks that curved and curled, and the cacophony of sounds and song – amphibians, birds and beasts - that accompanied the sudden blackness of the night that fell like a curtain. This is creation as God meant it to be – in all its life and vitality. Can our vast human tribe, scattered and concentrated across the earth, who all laugh and cry and love under this single sky, unite and make the critical decisions needed to care for each other and our world? The protection of Amazonia is only one part of the solution, but it’s an integral part. So will we act? Before it’s too late and Salgado’s extraordinary photographs become simply a segment of history showing future generations the way it used to be?

Article

Culture

Economics

Ethics

1 May 2025

1 min read

The rights and wrongs of making money with meme coins

When does investing become speculating, or even addictive gambling?

Laurence Fletcher

Laurence Fletcher is a journalist at the Financial Times.

A montage shows Trump with a raised fist against other images of him and the phrase 'fight fight fight'.

$Trump coin marketing image.

gettrumpmemes.com,

Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs may have driven sharp swings in global financial markets, but his actions in markets a few months earlier were in some ways even more peculiar.

On the Friday before his inauguration as the 47th US President in January, the Republican surprised many with the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin, described by its website as “the only official Trump meme”. The cryptocurrency token, in which Trump’s family business owned a stake, initially soared in value to more than $14bn over that following weekend.

Then, on the Sunday, Trump’s wife Melania launched her own memecoin, $MELANIA, which reached a value of $8.5bn. Even the pastor who spoke at the president’s inauguration subsequently launched his own memecoin.

For those wondering what exactly a memecoin is, you are not alone. In short, they are a form of cryptocurrency - an asset class that itself has attracted plenty of questions about its substance and purpose - representing online viral moments. They have no fundamental value or business model and, according to the US securities regulator, “typically have limited or no use or functionality”.

Donald and Melania Trump’s coins subsequently plunged in price, but still have a value of around $2.5bn and $214mn respectively, according to website CoinMarketCap.

There are plenty of others in existence. PEPE, based on a comic frog, has a value of around $3.6bn; BONK, a cartoon dog, has a market cap of $1.5bn; and PNUT, a reference to a squirrel euthanised by authorities in New York and about which Trump was allegedly “fired up” (although doubt has since been cast on the president’s involvement in the matter), is still valued at around $174mn, despite having fallen sharply in price.

Dogecoin, seen as the world’s first memecoin and originally created as a joke, boasts a market value of around $25bn. (There are other memecoins which may not be suitable for these pages).

Some people’s willingness to buy an “asset” with no use or fundamental value may seem strange to more traditional investors. But it can be viewed as just one manifestation of the speculative investor behaviour evident since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and, indeed, at times throughout history.

The price of Bitcoin recently rose above $100,000, despite many investors still viewing it as having little or no value (in 2023 the UK’s Treasury select committee described cryptocurrencies as having “no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good”). In early 2021, shares in GameStop - a loss-making US video games retailer that some hedge funds were betting against - rocketed as much as 2,400 per cent, as retail investors piled in, many with the aim of inflicting pain on the hedge fund short sellers (in that respect at least, a highly successful strategy that became the subject of the film Dumb Money). The huge rise in AI and other tech stocks in recent years - until the recent tariff-driven volatility - has also been described as a bubble by some commentators.

Whether or not such episodes can be compared to infamous bouts of speculative mania in history depends on your point of view (and often can only be judged with the benefit of hindsight) - be it the 17th century Dutch tulip bulb mania, shares in the South Sea Company in the 18th century or the dotcom boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

But it does give rise to the question of when investment should start to be described as speculation or even as gambling? And what are the rights and wrongs of any of those activities?

There can be negative effects, for instance if the actions of speculators force businesses in the real economy to change their plans or divert time and resources...

Gambling can be thought of as risking a stake on, for instance, the result of a game of chance or sport in the hope of a bigger payout. While often the result is purely down to chance, in some cases a strategy or an element of research (for instance of a horse or football team’s form) can be used. Investment, in contrast, tends to involve purported economic utility and assets believed to have some sort of underlying value, and holds the hope of future profit (although there are also plenty of bad investments or those that have gone to zero). While an investor must be prepared to lose their entire stake, in some cases such an event is relatively unlikely (for instance, if they buy a fund tracking the performance of a major stock exchange). Speculation is harder to define, but is generally seen as shorter term than investment, with more chance of a bigger gain or loss, and dependent on price fluctuations. Rightly or wrongly, the term has a more negative connotation than investment.

One writer who explored the ethics of these activities was Oswald von Nell-Breuning, a Jesuit theologian and economist who served as an adviser to the Pope and who was banned from publishing under the Nazis.

While he found that “one general definition cannot capture all the nuances” of speculation, he identified two different types of speculative activity - one that was purely trying to make a profit from financial market trading, and one based on trying to create a viable business. (See this article in the Catholic Social Science Review for a fuller explanation of Nell-Breuning’s views on speculation).

As the CSSR article shows, Nell-Breuning found that there can be positive effects from speculation - one might think of better liquidity and price discovery in a market, while, in commodity futures markets, speculators allow producers to hedge risk.

But he also argued that there can be negative effects, for instance if the actions of speculators force businesses in the real economy to change their plans or divert time and resources away from production.

And whereas gambling typically takes place within a circle of players who have chosen to take part, speculation, he wrote, can affect a greater portion of society - for instance, if it affects the price of shares or bonds they hold.

The Bible - on which Nell-Breuning’s faith and analysis was based - does not take a prescriptive approach to such activities. But it does provide some interesting guidance.

An entrepreneurial approach to business and investment is applauded, for instance when the writer of the book of Proverbs (traditionally believed to be King Solomon) praises the virtues of “an excellent wife”. These include investing in a field and using her earnings from business to plant a vineyard, and feeding her family from her gains.

Jesus tells a story of a master who, before going on a journey, gives his property to his servants, each according to their ability. To one he gives five “talents” (a large unit of money), to a second two and to a third servant he gives one.

The first servant trades with his talents and makes five more talents - a 100 per cent profit - and is applauded by the master on his return. The second servant also trades and similarly makes two more talents and is again applauded.

But the third servant, being afraid and believing the master to be “a hard man”, hides the money in a hole in the ground. He is condemned as “wicked and slothful”, and told that he should at least have put the money in the bank.

While Jesus’s story may primarily be about how we view God’s nature, how we use our God-given abilities and whether or not we can take risks in faith for Him, it is also hard not to see investment and indeed wise speculation as being virtuous activities here. Putting the money into a bank account is, in this story anyway, more of a fallback option.

But the Bible also warns us against putting money above all else in our lives. The love of money is, famously, a root of all sorts of evil, while we are also told to be content with what we have, and that “wealth gained hastily will dwindle”.

Nell-Breuning similarly warns that a “get-rich-quick” mindset, when this is placed above all else, can be harmful, and advises caution in situations where the lure of big profits can lead the speculator into market manipulation or fraud.

After all, both gambling and crypto trading have the potential to become dangerous and damaging addictions needing treatment.

Ultimately, Nell-Breuning struggled to come to a simple conclusion on the question of whether speculation, in and of itself, is morally wrong. It is, he wrote, a judgment call for those involved.

When making such decisions ourselves, his - and the Bible’s - warnings may be worth bearing in mind.