Watch this Movie

Some of you have porobably already seen this, but I was recently reminded of how great this short movie is: http://storyofstuff.com/
This is something I think about a lot: where stuff comes from. I think this video does a really great job of showing the whole system of production and consumption, especially how we are tricked into buying new things all the time. Annie Leonard divides the "story of stuff" into a few categories: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. In class we did a small activity to see what specific examples we could add to each different stage of the story. Not surprisingly, we had a much harder time finding personal examples to extraction, production, and distribution. However, consumption was not hard for us to talk about at all. It's obvious where we are most involved along this process, and it's exactly where the producers want us to be. The reason it is hard to think about everything that happens before we see the products is because advertising and the media works so that we only see what we want to see and we can ignore everything that went into making our favorite stuff. Thank you. I would like to think that if the extraction and production processes were more visible to us that people would make different consumer choices, but I don't think that would actually happen. Most people only want to see their favorite things in the stores and they don't care how they got there.

My New Favorite Photographer Must Really Like to Count...

My friend just showed me this artist: Chris Jordan.  His collection called "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait" looks at contemporary US culture through statistics.  And the numbers are staggering (3.6 million SUV sales in one year and 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries every month), but they really don't mean anything until you can see them.  His giant photographs are composed of thousands or millions of smaller photographs to correspond with the statistics.  I would post some of the pictures, but you really have to go to the website so you can see the zoomed-in versions to really get an idea of what they are showing.  They are clearly not meant to be seen on the computer instead of in person, but sometimes you have to work with what you have...

Because a lot of his pieces have to do with consumption and over consumption, Jordan has been labeled an environmentalist - which I'm sure he is.  But it interesting to me that pictures of oil barrels and junk yards inspire more of an environmental ethic than landscapes.  Landscapes are mass-produced and sold in stores like Hobby Lobby so people can hang them above their couches, but they certainly do nothing to inspire an environmental consciousness.  And landscape painters have certainly never been called environmentalists.  Why is it that images of the thing we are supposed to be protecting (nature) do not affect us, but pictures of our trash can be so profound?

Also, here is a link to a video of Chris Jordan speaking.

Our Disappearing Resources

Greenboy has a good post on declining amounts of key resources. Not only our oil supplies drying up, but we are seeing rapidly depleted sources of iridium, hafnium, silver, tin, and uranium. All of these elements play key roles in producing products we use every day.

We of the developed world have lived like kings for decades. We haven't given a second thought to our footprint on the soil, where our computers and other consumer products come from, or how our consumption affects people around the world. Now, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and other "developing nations" are demanding resource consumption on the same level as the United States, western Europe, and Japan. We can't supply those products. We're already seeing rising oil prices. Expect to witness huge increases in the prices of computers and many other products in the next twenty years, prices high enough to be a slug in the gut to world economies.

Every human-made thing you see around you comes from somewhere. Most of it goes through heavy industrial processes to get there. Look around carefully. You are the last generation to live at this level of luxury.