{"id":14005,"date":"2010-08-24T22:52:51","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T04:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=14005"},"modified":"2010-08-24T22:55:09","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T04:55:09","slug":"beware-annie-leonards-depressing-presentation-about-all-of-our-stuff-unless-youre-ready-to-implement-big-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/2010\/08\/24\/beware-annie-leonards-depressing-presentation-about-all-of-our-stuff-unless-youre-ready-to-implement-big-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware Annie Leonard&#8217;s presentation about all of our Stuff, unless you&#8217;re ready to implement big changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Annie Leonard is the author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Story-Stuff-Obsession-Communities-Health\/dp\/143912566X\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1282711894&amp;sr=8-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change<\/em>.<\/a> I am only partially through her excellent book at this time. Tonight, however, I clicked over to her site to see what Annie had to say in her 20 minute video, &#8220;&#8221;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.storyofstuff.com\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Story of Stuff<\/a>.&#8221;  It turns out that upbeat Annie, surrounded  by cartoonish images, will fill your head with dozens of depressing statistics that will inexorably lead you to the conclusion that we&#8217;ve got to change our ways.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14007\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14007\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14007 \" title=\"IMG_1984\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"158\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14007\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by Erich Vieth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Annie starts out with a warning that we have a &#8220;system in crisis.&#8221; We have is a &#8220;linear&#8221; system on a &#8220;finite planet.&#8221; We also have a big problem getting our government to pay attention. More than 50% of our tax money goes to the military, and our corporations seem to own our government (51 of the largest economies in the world are corporations). Consider also Annie&#8217;s well honed argument that our official government policy is that we should purchase lots of unnecessary stuff and trash the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Many  other sites that can give you comparable statistics, but few of them  have worked n my conscience as much as Annie Leonard&#8217;s site. The United States has 5% of the world&#8217;s population, but uses 30% of the worlds resources. If everyone lived like people in the United States, we would need 3 to 5 planets. Every minute, seven football fields worth of trees (about 2000 trees) are cut down in the Amazon. There  are 100,000 chemicals commonly used in our products, and very few of them have  ever been tested for human safety . Annie points out that almost none of  of these chemicals ave been tested for &#8220;synergistic effects (to see how safe they are when used in combination with other chemicals). BFR&#8217;s (used for fire retardation) are commonly used in computers, couches and the pillows on which you rest your head on each night. The food with one of the highest concentrations of toxins is human breast milk.<\/p>\n<p>Who pays for all  the heap electronic gadgets  that we use? Annie argues that we are all paying for them with the loss of resources and the loss of clean air. The price for these cheap electronics are mostly off the books. We also pay for this cheap stuff by filling  our country with trash.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14006\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14006\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1983.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14006\" title=\"IMG_1983\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1983-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1983-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1983.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14006\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by Erich Vieth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Only 1% of the products that flow through the  manufacturing system are still in use six months later. In other words, 99% of the stuff we produce becomes trash within six months. I found myself thinking about this issue a few months ago <a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/2010\/03\/07\/dumpster-diving-adventure\/\" target=\"_blank\">when I went dumpster diving with my daughters<\/a>; we spotted many dumpsters that were filled mostly with packing materials and pizza boxes.  Annie argues that the average American produces 4 1\/2 pounds of trash per day, which is twice the rate the average American produced 30 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>We can look at this in at least two ways. Perhaps this kind of information depresses you. On the other hand, we can  realize hat there are many ways that we can improve the system such that we  become focused on sustainability and equity instead of excelling at making trash. As  Annie states toward the end of her video, one of the most important things we need to do is to take back our government so that we can start doing the right things on a  much bigger scale.<\/p>\n<p>If you think this is unrealistic to change the way things are going, there&#8217;s another reason to be  more or less hopeful. It&#8217;s that we&#8217;re running out of resources and we&#8217;re running out of places to put our trash. In other words, we will need to change because the status quo  itself is unsustainable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Annie Leonard is the author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Story-Stuff-Obsession-Communities-Health\/dp\/143912566X\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1282711894&amp;sr=8-4\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change<\/em>.<\/a> I am only partially through her excellent book at this time. Tonight, however, I clicked over to her site to see what Annie had to say in her 20 minute video, &#8220;&#8221;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.storyofstuff.com\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">The Story of Stuff<\/a>.&#8221;  It turns out that upbeat Annie, surrounded  by cartoonish images, will fill your head with dozens of depressing statistics that will inexorably lead you to the conclusion that we&#8217;ve got to change our ways.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14007 \" title=\"IMG_1984\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"158\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/IMG_1984.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Annie starts out with a warning that we have a &#8220;system in crisis.&#8221; We have is a &#8220;linear&#8221; system on a &#8220;finite planet.&#8221; We also have a big problem getting our government to pay attention. More than 50% of our tax money goes to the military, and our corporations seem to own our government (51 of the largest economies in the world are corporations). Consider also Annie&#8217;s well honed argument that our official government policy is that we should purchase lots of unnecessary stuff and trash the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Many  other sites that can give you comparable statistics, but few of them  have worked n my conscience as much as Annie Leonard&#8217;s site. The United States has 5% of the world&#8217;s population, but uses 30% of the worlds resources. If everyone lived like people in the United States, we would need 3 to 5 planets. Every minute, seven football fields worth of trees (about 2000 trees) are cut down in the Amazon. There  are 100,000 chemicals commonly used in our products, and very few of them have  ever been tested for human safety . Annie points out that almost none of  of these chemicals ave been tested for &#8220;synergistic effects (to see how safe they are when used in combination with other chemicals). BFR&#8217;s (used for fire retardation) are commonly used in computers, couches and the pillows on which you rest your head on each night. The food with one of the highest concentrations of toxins is human breast milk.<\/p>\n<p>[More . . . ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-sustainable-living","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}