It's cute how you try to apply a Western way of seeing the world to a radically different cultural mindset. The people I'm talking about believe, in all seriousness, that the plants have spirits, with whom you can communicate, and to whom you owe deference and respect, because they — and you — are part of a larger system that benefits from, even depends upon, a cooperative mode of co-existence.

That kind of thinking suffuses their culture. It is a premise to how they engage with their world. Short-term, "I can burn this down if it serves my immediate needs," thinking is inimical to the traditional way of life of Amazonian tribal societies — or at least the ones with which I've interacted. "Cut it down and turn it into money" is, necessarily, a new phenomenon, since "money" wasn't even a thing for these people until we introduced it to them.

So, yeah. It is, in fact, rather like Avatar, your snark notwithstanding. You can dismiss that kind of thinking as animistic, primitive, or whatever else you want, to your heart's content. But denying its existence to someone who's spoken with these people, and seen the sincerity and reverence with which they hold those beliefs, is ... well, it's very reductively Western, for starters.

EDIT: It's also patently absurd to call that kind of thinking "short-term" in light of the clear-cutting, slash-and-burning, &c, that so many people there commit these days, just to get by — let alone to call it more short-term than the ways people engage today. That makes absolutely no sense to me.