The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [13]
3. I’m not bashing the United States.
There are some sweet things about life in the United States. Many of the technological advances and consumer options we have here have added to our quality of life. But after having traveled to forty countries, I also know that there are places from which we could learn a thing or two. I’m envious of my friends in Europe who aren’t stressed about how to pay for their health care or their university education. I wish we had subway systems as clean, quiet, and prompt as the ones in Seoul and Montreal. I wish it was as pleasurable and safe to bike in U.S. cities as it is in the Netherlands. I wish our rates of obesity, diabetes, and other health problems weren’t topping the charts. I don’t believe it is U.S. bashing to point out that we’re losing ground on some serious quality of life issues. On the contrary, I think it’s patriotic to express a desire to aim higher and fix what’s not working. I think of it as a tribute to my country’s incredible potential.
A WORD ABOUT WORDS
Americans:
The Americas are, of course, far larger than the United States, including Canada, the Caribbean, and all of Latin America to our south. I’m therefore aware that it’s inaccurate to refer to the citizens and residents of the United States as “Americans.” But using “citizens and residents of the United States” repeatedly is a mouthful. Another term, états-unisians (French for “United Statesian”) is catching on in international circles but hasn’t made it to our own shores yet. So, with apologies to folks in the rest of the Americas, I use the word in this book to mean that mouthful: people living here in the United States. Similarly, all amounts given in dollars ($) refer to U.S. dollars.
Consumer/Consumption:
The word “consume” originally meant to destroy, as by fire or disease, to squander, to use up. That’s where the old-fashioned term for the disease tuberculosis, “consumption,” came from. That means that a consumer society is a society of destroyers and squanderers. No thank you.
Michael Maniates, a professor of political science and environmental science at Allegheny College, says perhaps we should rename most of what goes on in various life stages of Stuff—extraction, production, even distribution—and call it all consumption.1 When we cut down a virgin forest to make disposable wooden chopsticks, wrapping them in paper and then burning fossil fuel to ship them halfway around the world, aren’t all those processes, not really production but simply consumption, aka destruction? Yes. In fact, when we talk about national rates of resource consumption, all those things such as how much wood or oil the United States consumes, are included.
However, in the chapter in this book on consumption, I am using the common definition, focusing on the slice of consumption that involves consumers purchasing and using Stuff.
Corporations:
Some people have complained that the Story of Stuff film unfairly portrays all corporations as evil. For the record, corporations are not inherently good or evil. A corporation is just a legal entity. It’s how the corporation is run that makes it an asset or a detriment to the broader society. I know that many people within corporations do care about the planet and people and are working to lessen their company’s environmental impact. Some are going further, striving to be a force for positive change. Unfortunately though, there are some structural aspects of corporations that make them less than ideal neighbors—or planet-mates.
First, some have gotten so big and powerful that they have disproportionately large influence and impact, increasingly overwhelming the democratic process. Of the hundred largest