Getting the Whole Story

I personally really enjoyed watching "The Story of Stuff" in class on Tuesday. When people try to address environmental issues, many times it just ends up being a long, boring speech that people begin to tune out about halfway through. This video, in stark contrast, kept it simple and for the most part, to the point. It gave viewers a lot of information that many of them may not have known before.

Therefore, I think that the debate is rather ridiculous. One of my favorite lines as I read the NY Times article was about the 9 year old kid asking his parents if buying more Legos would hurt the planet. It is great that kids this young are asking such important questions! It is much harder to "teach an old dog new tricks," or in this case, to get adults to change their consumption habits. This line, however, was pointed out as a major problem in the Heritage Foundation article.

The debate doesn't solely focus on the issue at hand; rather it nitpicks at a few things that may have been a little too extreme for conservative or even moderate viewers. I'll admit that when I heard the statistic of 50% of taxes being spent on military, I was a little skeptical. One of the main problems that then arises from a small point being factually incorrect is that those who were already somewhat skeptical of the whole message may now completely disregard anything that is said. It also very easy to see the biases that the Heritage Foundation held about the topic right from the beginning of their article. By focusing only on these few potential exaggerations, they chose not to focus on the much more important big picture of consumption.

The Cohen article, on the other hand, gave a better, less biased review of the film. He brought up interesting points in that we need to know what will happen next. If the film had a more conclusive ending with some real prescriptions for change, the Heritage Foundation may not have been as into bashing the few problems they could find.

It will be very difficult to ever reconcile these distinct differences between the two sides of the debate and come to some sort of an agreement. With the conservative side always championing the cause of the corporation and the liberal side championing the cause of the people and the world, it may be hard to make that happen. With more concrete goals, there can be better discussion towards a common solution and hopefully less debate over the little issues.