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

3 kommentarer:

  1. Legendary thoughts Gustav! I also like these kinds of videos, they make us feel that we are really bad persons, the only thing we do is polluting. I like the part about BP and election, it is a bit scary but it does not surprise me if that would be the truth.

    It would be awesome if companies allowed to consumers to see where and how they produced their products. I think some companies already do that, but these companies do it because they are proud of how well they manage. It is interesting to see the big companies footprints when they making products.

    SvaraRadera
  2. Regarding politicians/companies, I bet that's what going on all the time. It's a win/win situation for everybody involved, of course that's how they act. In the end it's always every man for himself. Sad but true. The footprint and more trading details etc is a great idea, and hopefully that would affect our conscience enough to make us help more people in the third world.

    SvaraRadera
  3. Hi Gustav,

    I agree, I also love this video. Videos like this should be shown in every classroom worldwide. We cannot ignore this problem much longer, action needs to be done. As long as the main focus for every company is profit maximization we will not solve this problem. Unless we can somehow make eco smart behavior results in great profits.

    Well written as always.
    /H

    SvaraRadera