Story of
Video: 'The Story of Change' -- Can shopping save the world? (with script)
Video: `The Story of Electronics' -- Designed for the dump (from the makers of `The Story of Stuff')
November 10, 2010 -- From the makers of The Story of Stuff and the The Story of Cap and Trade, Annie Leonard presents the latest episode in the series, The Story of Electronics. Like the first film, Leonard simply explains in plain English how an economy based on endless production of commodities for profit's sake creates waste and pollution and poisons people and the planet. While she urges consumers to make wiser choices when they shop, she also points out that it is the nature of the present system of ownership and production, and its lack of adequate regulation, that has to be changed to really make a difference. You can download the annotated script of The Story of Electronics HERE.
Countering the critics of Annie Leonard's `The Story of Cap and Trade'
By Patrick Bond
December 16, 2009 -- Eight million people viewed Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff video since December 2007 and her new nine-minute Story of Cap and Trade has received 400,000 hits in the two weeks since its December 1 launch.
The film, produced by Free Range Studios, was developed in collaboration with the Durban Group for Climate Justice and Climate Justice Now! networks, which joined Climate Justice Action and other networks to put tens of thousands of activists on the streets of Copenhagen, London and dozens of other cities in recent days, demanding large carbon emissions cuts, the payment of ecological debt to climate victims and the decommissioning of carbon markets.
But critics abound, so what trends can we discern from the sometimes venomous feedback to Story of Cap and Trade, and what do these tell us about US and global climate politics? Let's consider three categories of critics:
- libertarian climate change denialists;
- Big Green groups and other carbon trading supporters; and
- self-interested green capitalists.
To start, right-wing extremists are easiest to dismiss because they deny that climate change is a product of human/economic activity -- but there's a schizophrenic double agenda. For although they're pro-business, libertarians like Fox TV's Glenn Beck oppose market-based cap-and-trade schemes.