At BigHollywood.com, Anne McIlhinney critiques the anti-industrial environmental propaganda film, The Story of Stuff. The film’s narrator, Annie Leonard, argues that modern civilization uses too many resources to produce too many things. The film is so idiotic (I’ve seen part of it) that it ordinarily wouldn’t merit a response–except for the fact that it’s being shown in schools around the United States.
Problem is when children see Leonard’s film in the classroom they don’t get to hear about all the good things stuff does. Stuff gave my Dad a hip replacement at 91; I think that’s good. Hospitals use loads of stuff so people don’t die really young like they do in places where there’s very little stuff. Your bicycle is made of stuff and your computer is made of loads of stuff not to mention your car. Artists use lots of stuff to make other stuff that they hope someone might like, like jewelry or movies or sculpture or paintings. Lots of stuff allows us to travel much further than our bicycle will take us, it allowed 45,000 people to travel from all over the world to Copenhagen in December 2009 to campaign against other people traveling across the world.
Stuff builds homes so people are protected from the elements and don’t die just because it rained for a week. And stuff is nice to eat. I like sushi and chicken pie and avocado, not necessarily together. People who don’t have access to enough stuff die all the time in places like Africa and that is really not good. Stuff brings water to places that would never ever, ever get water otherwise and that’s good because you can’t live without water.
Making stuff, even silly stuff gives someone somewhere a job that didn’t exist before and that allows his kids go to school and people to get all the other stuff that makes life lovely.
Well put.
My colleague Lee Doren offers a point-by-point rebuttal of Leonoard’s silly film below (in four parts).
At Bigjournalism.com, Woody Hochswender puts global warming alarmism in the context of a long tradition of doomsaying — which wasn’t invented by Al Gore and need not necessarily be about climate — by looking at the dismal career of author Jonathan Schell.
1. Schell argued that given the incredibly dire state of things, a world-destroying nuclear exchange was inevitable. A nuclear exchange was virtually certain to happen, sooner or later, he said, and when it did radioactive clouds would blot out the sun and create a “nuclear winter” resulting in the extinction of human life. Once it started, there was no going back. The concept of inevitability was mortised into the framework of the argument.
2. It was also depicted as a race against time! We had only a teeny-weeny window in which to reverse the horrendous policies and mindset of our ignorant, bellicose leaders (read: Republicans). It was, like, so super urgent, action had to be taken, like, yesterday.
3. But, almost paradoxically, it was already too late! In the bottomless pit of his despair and revulsion at the civilized world for imperiling the planet, Schell contended that we were already too far gone, and it really was too late to stop the nuclear holocaust, although everyone had a moral duty to try.
Sound familiar? What we have here, as Yogi Berra would say, is déjà vu all over again. The eerie parallels between the nuclear-freeze movement and the global-warming movement are clear: the direness of the forecast (which resembles prophecy and has a teleological dimension); the dramatic, race-against-time urgency of the healing project; the element of existential threat as a goad to activism; the notion of human extinction and the “fate” of the earth hanging in the balance, as if suspended by a slender thread; and finally, the admonition that it is probably already too late. The nuclear clock is about to strike midnight; the ice caps are already melting. Fear and trembling all around.
Like other neo-Malthusians, Schell has been spectacularly wrong time and again, but that’s not likely to make him or his correligionists give up on despair. For doomsayers, every year is 2012.
For a more uplifting — and accurate — view of human history, see here.
Oh the Worries of Our Modern Malthusians! In Washington this week, the Anarctica and Arctic Councils met for the first time. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, used the occasion to discuss the problems that global warming was “causing” in these areas. Among the myriad disasters is the possibility that the region’s energy resources will become available and that an all-year passage around the pole might open.
As I recall my history, European explorers spent centuries searching for a Northwest Passage. Given the massive increases in global trade, the efficiencies that this would provide could give our flagging global economy a significant boost – and reduce energy use also. And increasing access to new secure energy reserves (especially given that Norwegian and Alaskan activities have already shown we can extract such resources safely) would do much to address energy security concerns. But to our Modern Malthusians, these are problems!
As I remember geography there were seven continents – North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, and Anarctica. Since humanity never reached the latter continent, it had no real defenders and, thus, in 1959, the global Antarctic Treaty, transformed it forever into a ward of the United Nations. The treaty suggests the global goals of our Modern Malthusians.
There is a total ban on economic activity, even though continental drift over the eons has meant that Anarctica might well have extensive fossil fuel reserves. The treaty forbids almost all economic activities but does authorize residency by “scientists.” This illustrates another bias of the left – “Research good, technology bad!” In her speech however, Hillary went further calling for tourist restrictions (so much for eco-tourism). One begins to understand – to protect the planet, we must wall it off from humanity!
An ambitious goal but one that shouldn’t be ignored. Malthusians have now captured one continent – only six to go!
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