Call me idealistic...
I recently stumbled across a link to The Story of Stuff on a friend's AIM profile. So I watched it.
(Please watch it yourself now. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you're done.)
I am liberal, but only moderately so. I do already know about sustainability, what it entails, our lifestyle right now and sustainability, and even why the new UCSD Sustainability Center being built with partly from the retarded-ass latest student fee increase is not going to be very helpful.
However, after watching this video, I got into a heated debate with my friend about its merits. Her argument was that not enough people know about sustainability and that this video is there to get the word out to people.
In my opinion, however, this video is not quite like that. It seems to me that this video oversimplifies much of the description in such a way as to create scientific innacuracies in ways that evoke the maximum amount of fear. And call me idealistic, but I don't think scare tactics are a good way to try to get the word out about something good...it doesn't seem very honest to me, particularly because of the innacuracies that are brought up.
For example, they mention the existence of Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) sprayed on pillows. BRFs are apparently extremely carcinogenic. "Why do we put them on something we lay our heads on?!" asks Annie Leonard, with righteous fury and indignation. Well, since I'm an internet nerd, my immediate answer was, of course "SO WE WON'T BE ON FIRE!!111" But then I thought about it, and realized, "OH WAIT, THAT'S THE RIGHT ANSWER." I can imagine some scenarios where this is helpful. For example, people who smoke while lying in bed. There's always signs in hotels and stuff saying not to do this, it can cause a fire, etc. So we can have two alternatives - 1. BFRs are on the pillow. The person falls asleep, the cigarette falls on the pillow, the pillow does not catch fire. The person dies of lung cancer 20 years later. Or something. (2.) BFRs are not on the pillow. No more toxins being put in our products! (Cause, you know, that's the only thing factories do, right? Take natural resources and put toxic chemicals in them. Nothing else. And for no good reason.) The person falls asleep, the cigarette falls on the pillow, the pillow catches fire (in general, fabrics and stuff, being large polymers, will burn, if the activation energy barrier is overcome). The fire spreads all over the place, the person is injured, possibly dies now as opposed to 20 years later, the place burns down, releasing MORE toxins, since plastics and other materials our society uses release toxins when burning - hell, even wood releases greenhouse gasses when burning. Which is the better alternative? Somehow, it seems to me that the first one is.
Obviously this is a very specialized example, so I can undoubtedly be attacked very soundly from many sides, but it seems to me that this same sort of logical flaw could be generalized to most of her other arguments, which, to me, seem to be optimized to generate maximum fear with minimal technical expertise.
So, I said I thought it was dishonest to try to convince people with scare tactics. So someone's probably thinking, "Really, Jeff? You're more worried about 'honestly' spreading the fact that we're living an unsustainable lifestyle?" Well, no, it's not just that. It's the fact that this strategy has a very fatal flaw: people hate being manipulated. If a person viewing this video starts to get the impression that Annie Leonard is trying to scare them, they will start to doubt the message. In fact, they will take the message less seriously, and even possibly think of the people trying to spread the message as extremist or something, and this sort of impression will bias the person against the message. So in fact, it could dilute the message and hurt the credibility of people who support sustainability! This is especially worrisome to me because the people who need to hear this message most are young people - people who were born into this already-existing unsustainable lifestyle, and thus have known nothing else. The weakest arguments she make, are, in my opinion, the computer-related one. I will not go into it here, because this is already too long, but her computer-related arguments are those which are the most likely to be caught by younger generations, each more tech-savvy than the last.
So in conclusion (for those who didn't want to read the previous 772 words), I watched Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff, and while I sympathize with her cause - spreading the word about sustainability and how our lifestyles are unsustainable - I cannot agree with her method of doing so, (which, in my opinion, consists of oversimplifying various facts about our lifestyles so as to scare people into believing in the importance of sustainability) because I feel it is dishonest and because I believe that people hate being manipulated, and thus will react very negatively if they see the inaccuracies generated by the oversimplifications.
(Please watch it yourself now. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you're done.)
I am liberal, but only moderately so. I do already know about sustainability, what it entails, our lifestyle right now and sustainability, and even why the new UCSD Sustainability Center being built with partly from the retarded-ass latest student fee increase is not going to be very helpful.
However, after watching this video, I got into a heated debate with my friend about its merits. Her argument was that not enough people know about sustainability and that this video is there to get the word out to people.
In my opinion, however, this video is not quite like that. It seems to me that this video oversimplifies much of the description in such a way as to create scientific innacuracies in ways that evoke the maximum amount of fear. And call me idealistic, but I don't think scare tactics are a good way to try to get the word out about something good...it doesn't seem very honest to me, particularly because of the innacuracies that are brought up.
For example, they mention the existence of Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) sprayed on pillows. BRFs are apparently extremely carcinogenic. "Why do we put them on something we lay our heads on?!" asks Annie Leonard, with righteous fury and indignation. Well, since I'm an internet nerd, my immediate answer was, of course "SO WE WON'T BE ON FIRE!!111" But then I thought about it, and realized, "OH WAIT, THAT'S THE RIGHT ANSWER." I can imagine some scenarios where this is helpful. For example, people who smoke while lying in bed. There's always signs in hotels and stuff saying not to do this, it can cause a fire, etc. So we can have two alternatives - 1. BFRs are on the pillow. The person falls asleep, the cigarette falls on the pillow, the pillow does not catch fire. The person dies of lung cancer 20 years later. Or something. (2.) BFRs are not on the pillow. No more toxins being put in our products! (Cause, you know, that's the only thing factories do, right? Take natural resources and put toxic chemicals in them. Nothing else. And for no good reason.) The person falls asleep, the cigarette falls on the pillow, the pillow catches fire (in general, fabrics and stuff, being large polymers, will burn, if the activation energy barrier is overcome). The fire spreads all over the place, the person is injured, possibly dies now as opposed to 20 years later, the place burns down, releasing MORE toxins, since plastics and other materials our society uses release toxins when burning - hell, even wood releases greenhouse gasses when burning. Which is the better alternative? Somehow, it seems to me that the first one is.
Obviously this is a very specialized example, so I can undoubtedly be attacked very soundly from many sides, but it seems to me that this same sort of logical flaw could be generalized to most of her other arguments, which, to me, seem to be optimized to generate maximum fear with minimal technical expertise.
So, I said I thought it was dishonest to try to convince people with scare tactics. So someone's probably thinking, "Really, Jeff? You're more worried about 'honestly' spreading the fact that we're living an unsustainable lifestyle?" Well, no, it's not just that. It's the fact that this strategy has a very fatal flaw: people hate being manipulated. If a person viewing this video starts to get the impression that Annie Leonard is trying to scare them, they will start to doubt the message. In fact, they will take the message less seriously, and even possibly think of the people trying to spread the message as extremist or something, and this sort of impression will bias the person against the message. So in fact, it could dilute the message and hurt the credibility of people who support sustainability! This is especially worrisome to me because the people who need to hear this message most are young people - people who were born into this already-existing unsustainable lifestyle, and thus have known nothing else. The weakest arguments she make, are, in my opinion, the computer-related one. I will not go into it here, because this is already too long, but her computer-related arguments are those which are the most likely to be caught by younger generations, each more tech-savvy than the last.
So in conclusion (for those who didn't want to read the previous 772 words), I watched Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff, and while I sympathize with her cause - spreading the word about sustainability and how our lifestyles are unsustainable - I cannot agree with her method of doing so, (which, in my opinion, consists of oversimplifying various facts about our lifestyles so as to scare people into believing in the importance of sustainability) because I feel it is dishonest and because I believe that people hate being manipulated, and thus will react very negatively if they see the inaccuracies generated by the oversimplifications.