Annie Leonard, an expert in international sustainability and
environmental health issues, made an informative and humorous
video-cartoon called "
The Story of Stuff".
It explores the costs and consequences of our consumer culture and its
impact on the environment, third-world nations, working class Americans,
personal health and our general state of happiness. To learn more about
sustainability, and how our consumer culture works against it,
Click Here to watch Annie Leonard's video.
Sustainability
is defined as "a characteristic of a process or state that can be
maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its
environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human
ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system,
systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, and fisheries, and human
communities in general and the various systems on which they depend."
Since
sustainability has to do with the environment, ecology and people, I
went to the Environmental Protection Agency web site to see if they knew
about the concept. They cite it, but they define it a little
differently. According to the EPA, sustainability is "the ability to
achieve economic prosperity while protecting the natural systems of the
planet."
* Hmmmm, economic
prosperity wasn't mentioned in the previous definition. And why does
economic prosperity come first, before the more important part about
protecting the planet?
A
major problem for us and for future generations is that our dirty
energy economy can't prosper without polluting the planet and increasing
global warming. Simply put, our current system is not sustainable! We
need to transition to a clean energy economy that will create new jobs
in support of renewable energy sources that don't pollute the planet.
And oh yes, contrary to Bush's advice to "go shopping", we could all do
the planet a big favor by purchasing LESS STUFF!
[
*UPDATE, September 2008: the EPA has now adopted a more reasonable definition of sustainability: “
meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”]
Since
her initial film’s launch in 2007 — which to date has generated more
than 13 million online viewers — Leonard has leveraged it into an even more widely-viewed project
(www.storyofstuff.com)
and a 2010 book of the same title (made from 100 percent recycled and
compostable materials, of course). She has become one of the nation’s
foremost authorities on the topic of consumer behavior and its impact on
the environment, appearing in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
the Huffington Post, Wired and Fast Company magazines, and on Comedy
Central’s “Colbert Report,” among other major media outlets.
