The Story of Stuff movie.

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http://storyofstuff.com/index.html

You gotta check out this guys blog: Skippy's little world Not so little and lots of great stuff there including a link to the story of stuff.

First flaw I saw in her logic was the idea that there is a “share” and Americans are using more than their share. There is no such thing as a “share”. If there was those countries that are overpopulated and adding more people to a stressed planet should not be given a greater “share”. This is exactly what she, and others, are doing with the “share” concept. That is why such a stupid idea as a “share” is heartily supported by countries like Brazil, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and other grossly overpopulated "third world" countries. (note I do not like the term Third World but will save that for a later post.)

Then she steps into the idea that the enviromental destruction occurring in the "Third World" is the result of the first world consumption and more directly the United States or your consumption.

How true is this? Does it even sound logical? Is the environmental destruction in India or China or other overpopulated third world countries the result of the resources being exported to support the evil over consumptive West?

Lets look at India. Annie has already connected the market and money to a consumptive system so it is fair to look at India’s GDP to see the level of destruction.

I’m not saying that 1 dollar of GDP in India causes the same environmental destruction as 1 dollar in other countries but within India 1 dollar of GDP causes about same damage regardless of it being exported or used internally. Even Annie agrees with this. It is the premise of her movie and India uses the same basic economic system as everybody else. As a result GDP can be used to determine if the USA is responsible for the massive enviromental damage we all agree has and is occuring in India.

India’s GDP, or in this case measure of destruction, was about 3 Trillion in 2007. Of that 140 Billion was exported. Of that 21 Billion was exported to the United States and about 6 Billion to Europe.

In this case the USA cannot be blamed for more than 0.8% of that third world destruction. Only 21 Billion of the 3 Trillion units of environmental damage is caused by the United States. India is causing the damage, not the West.

They are doing that massive "third world" destruction with a Billion people!!! India is responsible for 95% of the damage to one of the planets most vibrant ecosystems and that percentage is increasing. The USA portion is decreasing!

BTW this analysis reaches the same conclusion for all the large “third world” countries and most small “third world” countries. It isn’t the consumption of the west destroying this planet it is the gross overpopulation of the planet, which also includes to a small extent the US and certainly does not include Canada. Canada is one of the few counties that sinks more carbon than it produces and if walled off could still feed its people!

The argument that big business is bad is a socialist argument. How business operates and how much it pollutes is determined by the people in Democracies. Sheepeople are allowing businesses to pollute. It is not the role of business to set trade, enviromental or social rules.

When sheepeople let business do what they want we know what happens. Canada is a perfect example. Thiis problem of big businees has been a threat to Canada for generations and for generations the sheepeople keep voting in the very parties and government that has traded away our resources and rights. That is not a business problem it is an ignorant voter problem.

On the idea that sheepeople have shown themselves to not competent when selecting governments I agree. I suspect the only disagreement is the political solution. Looking to the failed political systems of the past including socialism and communism, is not the answer. None of those systems did anything to address Annie’s concerns.

I laughed at her refuge of “it’s for the babies” argument. When you do not have a good logical reason why people should be concerned just say it is for the children and hope you can bypass the cognitive brain using emotion.

A bypass of the cognitive brain is needed to avoid having people realize that a billion people in one country is impossible without ever expanding cities. As though there would ever be room for a 1.5 Billion people living old school off the land of China as she suggested.

BTW everybody did get the Iraq comment right? Like Iraq has ever been the dominate source of oil. Again playing on peoples ignorance suggests this movie is not as educational as it may appear.

The problem isn’t that Americans, have doubled their consumption since grandma’s time. The problem is the planets population has more than tripled since grandma’s time. Again she forgot to mention that “little” problem. How is it possible for her to not notice that there were only 2.3 Billion people in 1950 and almost 7 Billion today?

Yet she blames the doubling of the American consumer consumption? It should be clear that the problem isn’t related to the consumption habits of just 300 Million people. No matter how much that small population consumes they cannot equal the devastating effect of 7 Billion people particularly if those 7 Billion want to live as Grandma did or as Mom did.

Ok finally, after defining the problem while ignoring the elephant in the room she offers a solution. Wow did she really say that? That’s the solution? Oh good lets go out and have more unprotected sex third world sex because if we think that is going to offset having 7 or 10 or 20 Billion people on this finite planet then we really are fucked.

Even if all 300 Million Americans used less power, consumed less, talked to friends and wrote letters, detoxed, and unplugged from sources of information it wouldn't help. There would 7 Billion others increasing their consumption per capitia and increasing their numbers at the same time!

But the final argument is the old way didn’t work, or isn’t going to work, and this is the only choice.

Well she is wrong. I would hope that anyone actually thinking about this problem would realize that she is deluded, crazy, intellectually lazy, just plain stupid or politically motivated.

While I and thinking people, may not know the solution we do know what some of the characteristics of the solution are and the #1 characteristic is population control.

I can’t help but wonder why the ideas at this site get so much support while the real solution is ignored. I mean can’t everyone see that a finite planet can only ever handle a finite number of people? Wouldn’t this be particularly obvious to someone appealing to olden times when there were only a couple of Billion people? Wouldn’t they be able to see that all the technology in the finite world will not allow an infinite number of people?

I suspect the answer is no. Sheepeople like messages that give easy answers and false answers are better because those do not have address real facts. People would rather die than think and most will.

http://www.overpopulation.org/

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