The Story of Stuff

Nothing will solve our worldwide problems until we get human population to more manageable levels.  I used to believe that reusing, recycling and diminishing the amount of human consumption would help us, at least, solve some of our environmental problems.  And, whereas actively recycling and reusing certainly does help, it will never completely solve our environmental problems and the problems of poverty for the majority of the world's citizens.

Much of the world's poverty is a direct result of the over consumption of goods by wealthy countries. Almost every product we purchase is in some way tied to the people of foreign countries and their resources, often at their expense.  Corporations futher contribute to world poverty through the exploitation of indigenous peoples and their resources.  You can read an exampe of this at http://thirdworldtraveler.com/south_america/bolivia_waterwayvictory.html  for more details, but it involves the Bechtel Corporation. The Bechtel Corporatoin intended to buy all the water rights of Cochambambas, Bolivia purely for profit. Unfortunately,  it took riots and death in Cochambambas to prevent this from happening.  The corporation had planned to simply raise the cost of the locals' water, most of whom were already living in poverty, by 35%,  forcing many to give up a basic human right to their own natural resource.  How is it possible that a corporation and those who run it would lack the ethics and morals to even conceive of such a thing at the expense of human well being, dignity and even death? The truth is that this hidden practice is common today.

The point of this post is to make people aware of the the effect of excessive consumption and how corporate greed negatively impacts basic human needs and rights of people world wide.  A documentary film, "The Story of Stuff" explains the life cycle of products from conception, to consumption, to the land fill and how this process impacts the world.  You can view this twenty-one minute video at http://www.youtube.com/storyofstuffproject#p/u/3/9GorgroigqM