The Story of Stuff
In the NYTimes I ran across The Story of Stuff by Annie Leoard. As the article states, "The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution."
I had a look, and the general gist is fantastic - "The reason it [the economic system of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal] is in crisis is that it is a linear system and we live on a finite planet and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely" - and it makes use of hard data with excellent information visualization. Still, there were a couple of things that made me furrow my brow in a heavy way, and ultimately I found myself thinking that this kind of weak argumentation is exactly what I don't want on my side of the political fence.
First, there were some claims made that made me stop and think, "Uh, yeah, not quite." For example, Leonard talks about the throughput from consumption to waste while the animation shows a pile of goods moving from a person's home to a bin labeled "TRASH":Guess what percentage of total material flow through this system is still in product or use 6 months after their sale in North America. Fifty percent? Twenty? NO. One percent. One! In other words, 99% of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport - 99% of the stuff we run through this system - is trashed within six months." (Emphasis hers.)
The key word that jumped out at me was "harvested." So, we're talking about food here, of which very little should still be around after six months, never mind that consuming food is does not constitute being "trashed." Come to think of it, a lot of materials are consumed by necessity: water, bandages, soap, etc. This isn't trashing, this is use. (Leonard cops to this, kind of, in her footnotes: "This statement is not saying that 99 percent of the stuff we buy is trashed." Wait, it isn't? You just told (and showed) me that 99% of stuff is "trashed" six months after purchase.) Why give away this point for people to quibble about later?
Second, when it comes to planned obsolescence she references computers. The claim is made that only one "tiny little piece in the corner" (the chip, I'm guessing) is actually changed, but the since it won't work with the rest of the computer, the whole thing has to be pitched. This one set off alarm bells because, well, it's just wrong. I know enough about hardware to know that while a lot of it is about generating consumer desire, whole swathes of a new computer is intrinsically different from the previous model.
So here's what bugs me about this. I agree with the conclusions, but egad do I not like to see arguments with which I agree argued poorly. It's so easy for someone to say, "Pfft, no, computers have upgrades to serious components like memory and data buses and storage devices display and power efficiency" and suddenly the whole thing seems to become ambiguous and filled with questions. The same goes with the waste claim. If you can force a change in terms (e.g. "Oh, well, when we said trashing we meant used…") or numbers (e.g., "When we take food out of the equation, the numbers are different…") then the entire argument is back up for grabs.
This is nit-picky compared to the primary issue, though. What really bugs me is that so much of this is predicated on ideology. Granted, it's an ideology that I largely agree with, but take away the ideology and the argument starts to get shaky. This is what I loved about An Inconvenient Truth: the points were argued in a very empirical way, making it very difficult to dispute. While the Story of Stuff cites a lot of data, it's also built on an ideological foundation that's very easy to challenge. Near the top of the piece Leonard says, "We'll start with extraction which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation which is a fancy word for trashing the planet." What starts as a narrative introduction quickly becomes an unnecessary editorial comment and just like that there's an invitation to challenge everything else that follows.
Or take this passage: "President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisors Chairman said that 'The American economy's ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.' MORE CONSUMER GOODS??? Our [economy's] ultimate purpose? Not provide health care, or education, or safe transportation, or sustainability or justice? Consumer goods?" (Emphasis and bracketed editorial comments hers, by the way.)
Frankly, there are many people who would very earnestly answer that yes, the economy's primary purpose is to produce consumer goods; and in particular, the economy's purpose is not to produce justice et al. (To underscore that point, note the author's insertion of "economy" in brackets in the preceding quotation. It's eliminated in the spoken script, and without it she makes a conceptual shift from our economy's purpose to our purpose. This is rhetorical sleight of hand, and it bothers me.) If someone wants to challenge her point, they only need to suggest that hey, a capitalist system is supposed to generate consumer goods, and now suddenly we're having a totally different conversation.
And this really bugs me because this is being shown in classrooms. I don't want this kind of thing to be argued as a question of ideology. In fact, I'm uncomfortable with ideology being taught in school full stop, even if it's my own. Critical thinking and causality are good things to teach, and when you have to base your argument on a particular kind of political thought, it's headed in the opposite direction.
Grr.
I had a look, and the general gist is fantastic - "The reason it [the economic system of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal] is in crisis is that it is a linear system and we live on a finite planet and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely" - and it makes use of hard data with excellent information visualization. Still, there were a couple of things that made me furrow my brow in a heavy way, and ultimately I found myself thinking that this kind of weak argumentation is exactly what I don't want on my side of the political fence.
First, there were some claims made that made me stop and think, "Uh, yeah, not quite." For example, Leonard talks about the throughput from consumption to waste while the animation shows a pile of goods moving from a person's home to a bin labeled "TRASH":Guess what percentage of total material flow through this system is still in product or use 6 months after their sale in North America. Fifty percent? Twenty? NO. One percent. One! In other words, 99% of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport - 99% of the stuff we run through this system - is trashed within six months." (Emphasis hers.)
The key word that jumped out at me was "harvested." So, we're talking about food here, of which very little should still be around after six months, never mind that consuming food is does not constitute being "trashed." Come to think of it, a lot of materials are consumed by necessity: water, bandages, soap, etc. This isn't trashing, this is use. (Leonard cops to this, kind of, in her footnotes: "This statement is not saying that 99 percent of the stuff we buy is trashed." Wait, it isn't? You just told (and showed) me that 99% of stuff is "trashed" six months after purchase.) Why give away this point for people to quibble about later?
Second, when it comes to planned obsolescence she references computers. The claim is made that only one "tiny little piece in the corner" (the chip, I'm guessing) is actually changed, but the since it won't work with the rest of the computer, the whole thing has to be pitched. This one set off alarm bells because, well, it's just wrong. I know enough about hardware to know that while a lot of it is about generating consumer desire, whole swathes of a new computer is intrinsically different from the previous model.
So here's what bugs me about this. I agree with the conclusions, but egad do I not like to see arguments with which I agree argued poorly. It's so easy for someone to say, "Pfft, no, computers have upgrades to serious components like memory and data buses and storage devices display and power efficiency" and suddenly the whole thing seems to become ambiguous and filled with questions. The same goes with the waste claim. If you can force a change in terms (e.g. "Oh, well, when we said trashing we meant used…") or numbers (e.g., "When we take food out of the equation, the numbers are different…") then the entire argument is back up for grabs.
This is nit-picky compared to the primary issue, though. What really bugs me is that so much of this is predicated on ideology. Granted, it's an ideology that I largely agree with, but take away the ideology and the argument starts to get shaky. This is what I loved about An Inconvenient Truth: the points were argued in a very empirical way, making it very difficult to dispute. While the Story of Stuff cites a lot of data, it's also built on an ideological foundation that's very easy to challenge. Near the top of the piece Leonard says, "We'll start with extraction which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation which is a fancy word for trashing the planet." What starts as a narrative introduction quickly becomes an unnecessary editorial comment and just like that there's an invitation to challenge everything else that follows.
Or take this passage: "President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisors Chairman said that 'The American economy's ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.' MORE CONSUMER GOODS??? Our [economy's] ultimate purpose? Not provide health care, or education, or safe transportation, or sustainability or justice? Consumer goods?" (Emphasis and bracketed editorial comments hers, by the way.)
Frankly, there are many people who would very earnestly answer that yes, the economy's primary purpose is to produce consumer goods; and in particular, the economy's purpose is not to produce justice et al. (To underscore that point, note the author's insertion of "economy" in brackets in the preceding quotation. It's eliminated in the spoken script, and without it she makes a conceptual shift from our economy's purpose to our purpose. This is rhetorical sleight of hand, and it bothers me.) If someone wants to challenge her point, they only need to suggest that hey, a capitalist system is supposed to generate consumer goods, and now suddenly we're having a totally different conversation.
And this really bugs me because this is being shown in classrooms. I don't want this kind of thing to be argued as a question of ideology. In fact, I'm uncomfortable with ideology being taught in school full stop, even if it's my own. Critical thinking and causality are good things to teach, and when you have to base your argument on a particular kind of political thought, it's headed in the opposite direction.
Grr.