måndag 15 november 2010

My thoughts on The Story of Stuff

I absolutely love this video. It makes me think about Al Gores renowned documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

This sort of video is exactly what people of the west word need to hear. They need to know how their consume obsessive lifestyles affect the world we live in. However, the video blog might be a bit exaggerated at times.

The thought that the government is “on the payroll” of the biggest companies is scary, but sadly, I don’t think it’s far from the truth. Big companies are major contributors to American politicians election campaigns, and I really don’t think they do it just for the fun of it. I personally think the companies have a secret/”unofficial” purpose with their contributions, making the politicians indebted to them. For example, lets say that a major petroleum company (BP) decides to become a big contributor to Obama’s election campaign, in return, he might promise, if elected president, that he would allow BP to expand their oil extraction in the Mexican gulf.

Companies only have one thing in mind, profit, and as long as that is the case, less developed countries will be used for cheap labour and maximising profits.

I personally think that be best solution is to introduce some kind of mandatory table of contents on every single commodity produced, allowing consumers to see where it was produced, carbon footprint and so forth. This table of contents and the common sense of the consumers will help undermine the companies who only care about profit and couldn’t care less about the environment and the security and wellbeing of its employees.  This would most likely lead to a more sustainable environment.

/Gustav