This week on The Sunny Way, we’ve been discussing how science fiction creates the future. By planting seeds of what we and our world and our lifestyles might look like someday soon, sci-fi draws the reader into the future, as surely as the possibility of being an oak tree draws an acorn into its own potential.

While rifling through my newsreader today, I came across a link (via Worldchanging) to a blog post on Futurismic, a site focused on near-future science fiction. Writer James Boone Dryden writes that current sci-fi focuses too much on technological breakthrough:

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I never considered myself to be a fan of science fiction. But the more I thought about writing this piece, the more I realized that that isn’t exactly true. Ever since I remember one of my eyes was firmly on the future. Watching those first episodes of Star Trek on the hand-me down black and white television with my brother and sister in Germany had a very different effect and importance than watching, say, Heidi or Flipper. There was something in those movies that I was looking to for clues about what was possible, about who we are, and about where we were going as human beings.

And it wasn’t just me. We, humans, as I came to understand, seem to be creatures of the future. As much as we are shaped by the past we are always planning, hoping for, looking forward to, dreading or dreaming the future. 

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Just wanted to put up a quick note to apologize for the downtime over the last week. We are in the process of resolving all the problems, and will be back on our regular posting schedule starting on Monday.

Thanks for standing by.

Until we return with more of The Sunny Way, here’s a terrific video to tide you over—a TED talk by one of my heroes, Alex Steffen of Worldchanging, explaining what bright green ecology is all about.

Before The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food brought him to a larger audience, Michael Pollan wrote a book called The Botany of Desire, which looks at the relations between humans and four plant species whose genetic success has been determined by the ways that they suit our needs: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. (He discusses similar ideas in his talk on the human relationship with corn in this video.)

Pollan begins with a hypothesis that plants play upon us even as we believe that we are using them for food and beauty: “We have spent the last few thousand years making these species through artificial selection, transforming a tiny, toxic root node into a fat, nourishing potato and a short, unprepossessing wildflower into a fat, nourishing tulip. What is much less obvious, at least to us, is that these plants have, at the same time, been going about the business of remaking us.” There, I thought, is a very intriguing take on our relationship with nature.

Then, there are the off-kilter moments of humor, such as the description from the Marijuana chapter on Pollan’s old cat, Frank, and his little catnip problem: “Every summer evening around five, Frank would lumber into the garden for a happy-hour sniff of Nepeta cataria, or catnip. He would first sniff, then tug at the leaves and proceed to roll around in what seemed to me like paroxysms of sexual ecstasy. Frank would crash-land in the dirt, pick himself up, do a funny little sidestep, then pounce again until, exhausted, he’d go sleep it off in the shade of a tomato plant.” I’ve often thought of this image of poor Frank reacting to the catnip while watching people at parties, and smiled to myself.

I first started to pay attention to where my food was coming from after reading The Botany of Desire. While the author clearly has a certain point of view, Pollan wooed me to the greenmarket not with a populist guilt trip, but with his combination of beautiful language, history, scientific approach, and humor. The book doesn’t beat me over the head with what is wrong, but reminds me of the loveliest of what is right.

When he describes some of the hundreds of apple varieties that used to be available in America, I felt driven to explore the less-familiar apples at the greenmarket. For years I had thought of apples as a boring winter fruit, until I discovered the wonderfully spicy winesap.

This is just one small example of the way this book made me want to commit with my money and time towards a positive vision. Out of all of the books that I’ve thought would change me, this is the one that produced a sustained result.

Pollan isn’t trying to convert you—he doesn’t have to try; he just can’t help himself. When I compare boring red delicious apples to the unusual types I’ve sought out since reading The Botany of Desire, it’s a no-brainer which one I’d rather eat. Ditto for the Monsanto newleaf vs. peculiar blue or red potatoes, as described in the potato chapter. It’s not a question of guilt, but pleasure—I am intrigued enough to search out better, more unique food, which is native to my area and produced as part of the local economy. Everybody wins.

One last anecdote: On Avenue of the Americas, I once saw an unusual tulip that looked very similar to his description of the tulips with color breaks that once incited tulipmania in Holland. These tulips had supposedly disappeared except for freak incidents, so I hurried back the next day to photograph this rare specimen.

Pollan’s fascinating, upside-down way of looking at the relationship between humans and plants charmed and disarmed me, and got me seeing everything around me from a completely new perspective. I can’t think of any other book that would inspire me to seek out strange new fruits, or run around the city photographing flowers.

Which books have altered the way you see the world and inspired you to do slightly crazy things? Let us know in the comments.

(image by jslander via flickr)

When I first picked up Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, I was a little put off by the author’s use of the term “nature deficit disorder.” Just because something is bad doesn’t make it a disorder, but he did acknowledge that the term is not a medical diagnoses, but a way of explaining a phenomenon. I get that. Sometimes you need a concise way to convey a concept and “Nature Deficit Disorder” does get the point across.

I heartily agree with the basic premise of the book, that children spending time in nature is critical for both the development of children and the preservation of the environment. You don’t have to be an expert to realize that time spent in nature has a profound effect on children.

I wasn’t raised in an outdoorsy family, and yet memories of my experiences in the natural world rank as some of the best, most vivid memories of my childhood. They introduced in me the concept that the world was much bigger, more intricate and amazing than I had ever thought possible. They inspired awe.

To me this was the most important concept in the book. The amazing sense of wonder, awe and curiosity that children are introduced to through their experiences in nature are invaluable—both essential components of happy, successful lives and cornerstones of ingenuity.

While it’s easy to see how time spent in nature is good for children, it may be harder to see how it is good for the environment. The basic idea is that if you love something, you will strive to protect it. You will want to understand it better. You will care for it. Only firsthand experience can foster that kind of love and passion. It’s all well and good that you and I are passionate about protecting the environment, but it can’t stop with us.

It’s cheesy and cliche, I know, but today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. If we lock them away in our homes and schools, we make “saving the environment” an abstract concept like “saving the starving children” was when you were six and didn’t clean your plate. You may pay lip service to an abstract concept. You may even donate a little money to an abstract concept, but you don’t alter your life for it the way you do for something you love.

The one thing I felt this book lacked was concrete ideas about what you can do today to get your kids out in nature. There were a few mentions of fishing and camping, but most of the solutions were about organizing our urban landscapes to include natural areas. That is a worthy goal, to be sure, but I think parents need solutions that work within our existing framework too.

My husband and I do a decent job of getting our kids out in nature, but this book inspired me to want to do more. I checked out the website associated with this book, but I didn’t find much in the way of ideas there either.

In my search I stumbled on a few other sites that seemed to have some great ideas. Here are a few to get you started:

Green Hour is a campaign by the National Wildlife Federation to give your kids one hour a day of unstructured interaction with the natural world. Their activities, Discovery Journal and forums had some great ideas.

The National Resource Defense Center’s link page for kids has lots of fun stuff to check out here. I especially enjoyed the Environmental Club Projects on the EPA Student Center website.

EcoKids Canada is a great site with homework help resources and online games for kids to play (although the games might be counterproductive to the goal of getting your kids outside!) The coolest things on this site are the Eco Field Guides, where kids can learn about insects, fish, mammals, birds, etc. It would be a lot of fun to read about creatures and plants native to your area, then go outside and find and observe them.

Even though Last Child in the Woods left me wanting more, I’m inspired to make the commitment to get my kids outside as much as possible. And so far, we are doing great—living across the street from a gorgeous park helps a lot!

What are your favorite ways of getting outside with or without kids?

(image by CLMinc via flickr)

(image by Hryckowian via flickr)

My friends Nora and James introduced me to The Wire a few months ago, after which no one saw me for several weeks. I was completely transfixed by the story, which goes way beyond and much deeper than your typical police procedural show.

What really got me about the show was the way the characters struggled to fit into their contexts. In his commentary on the pilot episode, creator David Simon puts it this way:

It seems to be a cop show ... but we were trying to mask something different when we created this. This show is really about the American city and about how we live together, and it’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how regardless of what you’re committed to, whether about whether you’re a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge, or a lawyer, you’re ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you’ve committed to.

The Wire doesn’t show us a simplistic black and white world—we see junkies who live by a junkie code of honor and others with no honor at all. We see gangsters who delight in “The Game” (the drug trade) and others who approach it as businessmen and others who participate simply because there’s nothing else for them to do, even though they can’t quite make it work. Same thing on the cops’ side—some love working cases, others are waiting for their retirement pensions to kick in, and others just like to kick around criminals.

Everyone’s in it for his (or her) own reasons, but it’s clear that one cannot play The Game without being altered by it. The police department and the drug family and the longshoreman’s union are not going to change for you. In each organization, there’s a chain of command, and either you follow it or you get your ass kicked.

Even though I have a much cushier job than anyone on the streets of West Baltimore, I can completely identify with this. Most of my working life has been a struggle to figure out where I end and the company I work for begins. How much “me” can I be and get away with it? I like to think that I’m not your typical corporate working stiff, but, really, is anyone BORN a corporate working stiff? Or are we molded in subtle and obvious ways to fit the corporation’s needs?

And what does a corporation need, anyway? In this day and age, businesses exist for one purpose only: to make money. That’s why it’s called “the bottom line.” By the definition of what a corporation is, nothing else matters. Grow or die is the creed, and stock price is the only metric to which any real attention is paid.

That definition has worked well enough up till now. But at this point in history, corporations and indeed all organizations are facing a huge crisis, the same one we’re all facing: environmental devastation. If we don’t have water to drink and air to breathe and arable land to live on, stock price doesn’t matter much. It’s clear we need to turn this boat around.

And it’s obvious that there’s money to be made in clean technologies, non-fossil-fuel-based energy, and green design. So then why is the turnaround effort taking so long? Why are so many businesses dragging their feet and clinging to the status quo?

The answer lies in the nature of organizations themselves. Dee Hock, the founder of VISA (the VISA you pull out of your wallet every day), describes the problems of the modern organization in his brilliant book One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization using the metaphor of “float.”

Back before checks were processed electronically, float referred to the period of time from which a check was written to the time when it was drawn on the issuer’s account. In addition to finance, float once existed in information (letters took a lot longer than email), science and technology (the time between a new discovery and its practical application has shrunk to almost nothing), and culture (new words and trends can sweep across continents in weeks). Here he discusses how float has almost completely disappeared from our lives:

Today the past is ever less predicted, the future ever less predictable, and the present scarcely exists at all. Everything is accelerating change, with one incredibly important exception. There has been no loss of institutional float.

Although their size and power have vastly increased, although we constantly tinker with their form, although we constantly change their labels, there has been no new, commonly accepted idea of organization since the concepts of corporation, nation-state, and university emerged, the newest of which is several centuries old.

Hock argues that organizations that rely on rigid hierarchies and heavy-handed advance planning, what he calls command and control organizations, are constitutionally incapable of dealing with the modern rate of change. There’s so much bureaucracy to wade through that, by the time the group has decided on a plan and moved towards implementing it, conditions will have changed to the point where the plan is irrelevant. Not to mention the fact that, in modern organizations, individual workers often have better and more up-to-date information than leaders do. Top-down management just doesn’t work in this environment.

Instead, he advocates more fluid structures that rely on members’ sovereignty and co-operation, a mixture of chaos and order he calls “chaordic.” Such organizations empower people to make decisions within a framework that is strong enough to keep hold of the mission and operating procedures, but flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing contexts.

Of course, in a group which respects the humanity and gifts of the people involved in it, the myopic focus on the economic bottom line is shifted to a broader focus on serving the needs of humanity and life in general. The idea is to enable organizations to fulfill their missions—when that is done correctly, the profit takes care of itself.

Hock proved that these are not pie-in-the-sky ideas, and that such an organization can thrive. VISA was founded on chaordic principles, and has been unbelievably successful, revolutionizing the financial services and information industries. Although Hock is not involved with or particularly proud of where VISA has ended up, there’s no denying the achievement of creating a completely new kind of organization and showing that it can prosper and even dominate the marketplace.

Dee’s book describes a vision for organizations co-operating and competing with each other to provide the best level of services to the marketplace in education, health care, every possible field. Organizations based on these chaordic principles honor people’s desires—to do good work, function as part of a team, and make their own informed decisions—and they also function at a very high level.

Think about it—a company that uses all of the gifts and skills of the people involved in it will automatically be more productive than one that requires employees to check themselves at the door. And when we bring all of ourselves to work, including the parts of us that want our kids and grandkids to have a nice functional planet to live on, we perform our jobs and make choices from a broader perspective.

A concept of institution that inspires instead of dominating, one that doesn’t require us to fundamentally change who we are, or pretend to be something we are not—this is The Game as it ought to be and must be played if we are to meet the challenges facing us.

Tomorrow we’ll hear from Uli about another exciting new organizational structure that unleashes not only the power of its members, but of the organization itself. Stay tuned!

Recently I was having a conversation with a young man in his early 20s in which I tried to explain the concept of selling out to him. Nowadays, calling someone a sell-out is almost a compliment—it means that you’re smart enough to make some money off your art—but 15 years ago or so, it meant that you had no integrity, that you cared so little about the meaning of your work that you had no qualms pimping it out to sell hair products or cars or whatever. The young man I explained this to giggled as though I were describing some quaint Victorian custom, but I was serious.

When I came of age, in the early 90s, we were ALL serious. My generation hated sell-outs because they epitomized the inauthenticity we hated in American culture and in ourselves. Ronald Reagan and Gordon Gekko put a happy face on greed, but a cursory look at contemporary history shows that much of the generation before us (the Baby Boomers) turned into the biggest sell-outs of all time. And I and most of my friends didn’t want any part of it. We hungered for meaning, but also felt powerless to escape the societal landscape we found ourselves in.  We grew up with both the threat of nuclear and environmental devastation and some of the worst sitcoms known to humanity—a recipe for growing a generation of cynics if I ever heard one.

It was different from the 60s, where righteous anger and blue-sky hippiedom ruled the day. Our malaise was more anti-social and hopeless, more ripped jeans and ugly flannels than hot pants and crazy colors. We smashed our guitars, but we did it with sarcasm, not rage. The 60s were about tearing down an old world and building a new one; the 90s were about looking for a job you knew you were going to hate before you’d even found it. Our possibilities felt very small, and we shrunk in response.

But something is changing now—I can feel it, and I’m sure you can, too. The conversation is shifting. Instead of seeing ourselves as helplessly adrift in a world too enormous to notice us, we are beginning to see ourselves and everything else as integral pieces of the big picture. And we see that every piece has a very real impact on the whole.

Why is this shift occurring? I think it’s a direct result of the snark that so may of us have indulged in for so long. After a while, irony gets old. Bitchiness gets boring. We start to realize that coming up with the most wickedly hilarious quip is not the end goal of life. We start to want something more.

The interesting thing to notice as this happens is that we are not giving up our evil sense of humor to do this. We are still cracking awful, dark jokes, but we’re doing it in the service of a new kind of determination. I won’t call it grim, because we are having fun and laughing a lot even as we behold the daunting tasks ahead. But we are approaching those tasks with our sleeves rolled up, even as we roll our eyes. Cynicism and optimism are learning to work together.

To me, this makes perfect sense. To get through the largest challenges humankind has ever faced, we are going to need some seriously black humor. Of course! Maybe The Smiths and Seinfeld and OJ were just there to prepare us for this. Or maybe we had to live in cynicism for a while so that we could learn its limitations and decide to go beyond it.

It occurs to me that in addition to providing a much-needed steam valve for frustration and fear, dark humor and critical thinking also play useful roles in helping us navigate the avalanche of green-flavored BS that’s coming down the mountain along with all the real, positive changes.

Whatever the reasons, ideas centered around optimism and responsibility are in bloom everywhere, from the millions-strong green blogosphere to green tips on the Today Show to the fact that we now see people carrying reusable grocery totes wherever we go. I certainly don’t operate under the delusion that grocery totes on their own are going to save the planet, but it is an emblem that things are changing. For all our grousing about the state of the world our parents left us, I can’t remember any of us grunge fans in the early 90s doing anything about it, even something as mundane as thinking ahead to bring our own bags to the grocery store. That would have struck us as way too eager, even if secretly we might’ve thought it was a good thing.

Regardless of where we came from, though, I couldn’t be happier to see this curious blend of optimism, responsibility, and hilarity arrive on the scene. One incredible example of this is the Greenzo episode of 30 Rock that aired last year during NBC’s Green Week of programming (choose Episode 205 in the 30 Rock link). Tina Fey and her cohorts are able to hold two competing ideas in their heads at the same time: the real need for change, and the fact that many of us (especially lots of big, status-quo-loving corporations) seem to want a green halo more than we want that real change.

Transforming our world will not be possible with either pie-in-the-sky optimism or dead-eyed cynicism. We need to think both critically and in terms of possibilities to make this jump to a future that works for everyone. For my part, I’m proud that, after years of being called shiftless, apathetic, and cynical, my generation seems to be taking the lead and using our powers of snark for good instead of evil.

A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of meeting Ben, Julie, and Mark, three intrepid souls who have spent the last 10 months traveling around the United States and covering positive environmental stories as documented on their website, Your Environmental Road Trip. By July 4, 2008, they will have visited all 50 states! The culmination of their work will be a feature-length documentary about their travels and the amazing people and projects they encountered along the way, along with a short video for each state.

I met them at a party in Brooklyn the weekend before Earth Day, which they elected to spend in New York City. Over hummus and peanut butter brownies, we got to know each other and spent several watery early spring hours talking about everything from my brother and sister-in-law’s restaurant (where Ben has eaten—small world!) to permaculture in Tennessee (where we also had mutual friends) to pioneers in Idaho who put the rest of us to shame by living in warm, well-appointed and comfortable caves.

Mark, Ben, and Julie impressed me not only with their stamina and determination, but also with their outlook, which is very Sunny Way-esque. With their combination of hilarity, positivity, and realism, they are spreading the good news that we can make a better future and in fact already are!

I can’t wait to see their documentary! In the meantime, have some fun watching their short videos and reading their blog entries.

A little light entertainment as we head into the weekend. Happy sunshine-bottling gnomes battle gloomy swamp-dwellers in this cartoon from 1935. (via Fed by Birds)

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Earth Day 2008 started out promisingly enough. I sit on the recycling committee at the giant corporation I work for (of course I do!), and we arranged to get some sweet freebie travel mugs to give to our colleagues, to encourage them to use fewer paper cups in the office.

We set up a table outside the cafeteria and handed out about a thousand of them, and people were jazzed. What a great idea! we heard over and over again. By the time lunch was over, we were almost out of mugs, and patting ourselves on the back.

We also set up a screening of The 11th Hour, which I hadn’t seen at that point. And, flying high from the talk I’d given the previous week which had ended with a truly wonderful conversation, I’d volunteered to facilitate a discussion after the screening. The CEO’s office even kicked in some free soda and popcorn for attendees. We were pumped for another great event.

So ... 5 pm. Screening time. About 15 people showed up, less than half the number that had RSVPed, but that’s to be expected. No biggie. I warmly welcomed everyone and invited them to stay afterwards to talk about the film, then we settled into our seats and the lights went down.

An hour into the film, I was wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. The first 2/3 of this movie are seriously depressing. How was I going to put a Sunny Way spin on 60 relentless minutes of how screwed we are?

The last 30 minutes throw the viewer a small bone of hope, but seriously? The proportions are all wrong. Leonardo DiCaprio and friends go into a lot of detail on the problems, but just sort of breeze through the solutions, almost as though they are an afterthought.

I suppose I should have been grateful the doom-and-gloom hour came first! Imagine the mood in the room if they’d ended with the falling sky stuff. We would have had to hand out cyanide instead of popcorn.

Anyway. The film ended with a rousing Coldplay tune, the credits rolled, and the lights went up. Discussion time. Things started out innocuously enough: What did you like about this film?

One nice man, the leader of our recycling committee, said he liked the feeling of optimism and possibility at the end. I nodded enthusiastically. Yes, I said. It’s important to stay positive, because who does anything when they feel overwhelmed and depressed? Others in the group murmured their agreement. It’s up to all of us.

At that point, another gentleman jumped in with a torrent of sentences. They should have done a lot more about cars, America was built on the automobile and it was great, at least until unions ruined it. I blinked a few times, then buckled down to talk a bit with him about all that. Pretty soon I was on the history of transportation in the U.S. and he was on how everything comes down to no one disciplining their children anymore.

Twenty minutes or so later, I was not at all sure what was happening, but I knew it was not the positive, proactive conversation I’d been hoping for.

Then, another man got up to leave. He hadn’t said a word, but he stopped by my chair, looked me in the eye, and told me, “I really appreciate you doing this. I have to say, though, I think it’s too late. We don’t have a prayer.”

Stunned, confused, and frustrated, I turned to him and said, “All due respect and everything, sir? That is a cop-out.” His resigned expression didn’t change. He simply shrugged and walked out.

Another guy nodded in agreement with him. So did my union-busting, car-loving, red-blooded American debate partner. I could feel my color rising, so I wrapped things up, thanked everyone for coming, and bolted.

On the subway home, I broke down in tears. How can people be so closed-minded? I wrote wildly in my journal. So deaf to anything other than the sound of their own voices? How are we ever going to get anywhere?

And at that moment, the enormity of the situation rose up before me like a massive concrete wall, so high I couldn’t see the top, so smooth and monolithic I couldn’t see a way to climb it.

Now before you start wondering about my mental health, let me make sure I am clear on this: I am not kidding about what it says at the top of this web page. I am dedicated to this cause with every cell in my body and every thought in my head. This project—creating a context of possibility, encouraging everyone to take part, making responsibility the rule rather than the exception—is the purpose of my life. And it’s not like I think it’s going to be easy. I know the task before us is HUGE.

But we all live in the bubble of our own experience, and my experience is usually filled with people who think a lot like I do. Yours probably is, too. Birds of a feather and all that. Reaching out to a new flock is something most of us don’t do very often. I suppose I shouldn’t expect my first time to be perfect, but I was disappointed in myself all the same. Bitterly disappointed.

Talking with a friend later that night, I got a bit of perspective. Of course we’re going to run into obstacles! Of course people see things differently! That’s why this project is so important—because right now our differences are keeping us from actively working on solutions.

Another truth: these people had stayed at work for 2 hours past quitting time to watch and discuss a movie about the environment. It’s more than possible that the level of their cynicism is exactly equal to the level of their care. Transform that cynicism into action and half our battle is won.

And, finally, on a personal note, recognizing one’s own limitations is the first step in learning how to transcend them. To break through a wall, you kinda have to hit it first. Failure holds more lessons than success.

So, now, several days later, I can see the gifts in this breakdown. My less-than-stellar performance showed me that if I really want to fulfill my mission, I have to grow. We all do. If we want to create something new, we have to let go of what we think we know. That beautiful, elegant future we dream of? It lies outside the borders of the easy and the familiar. It is a brand new place whose gates won’t swing open to us until we learn to see and create in brand new ways.

The question is: Can we lay down everything we think we are sure of and travel to that unknown land together? Are we willing to try and fail and try again?

I am, and I hope you are, too. Stay tuned.

I recently saw Horton Hears a Who and it was so good I went to see it again. The movie is gorgeous to look at, the acting is wonderful, and the story embodies a sense of faith, optimism, and responsibility that fits right into The Sunny Way of looking at things. Dr. Seuss sure knew what he was talking about.

Last night my friend shared this quote from The Lorax with me, and, on this beautiful Saturday morning as I prepare for today’s Sunny Way meeting, I would like to share it with you.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Are there other amazing Dr. Seuss tales that speak to you even as an adult? Let us know in the comments. I myself am a HUGE fan of The Sneetches.

Part 1:

Part 2:

The folks at TED have just posted video of the presentation Al Gore gave at the TED Conference in Monterey last month.

This is not the slideshow he’s presented over 2,000 times and which forms the basis of the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, this is a new presentation “cobbled together” as he puts it, to fit the shorter format of the TED Conference, and delivered here for the first time.

Probably because of that, the talk is a little rough around the edges. Nonetheless, it’s a compelling, stirring performance and his theme of optimism in the face of the challenges ahead is one I think we can all get behind.

I recently watched The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard, a 20 minute film about consumerism, its destructive effects, and a little eensy bit at the end about what we can do about it.

It is good—very well thought out and clearly presented. One thing I loved hearing about was how consumerism was designed into our economy as its driving force after World War II. This quote by economist Victor Lebow is astounding:

“Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

Too bad Lebow’s predictive powers didn’t follow all the way through to how future generations were supposed to deal with the mess created by this idea ... but I digress.

It seems to me that this film was made to introduce people to the concepts of sustainability, and it mostly does a very good job of that.

But there is a bit in the intro, about 2 minutes in, where Leonard says “The government is there to take care of us. That’s its job.” That statement right there just turned off about a hundred gazillion people, including me. And most of the people who would be turned off by that statement? Are probably the ones who most need to watch the rest of this video, which really is excellent.

There’s also a bit where a diminutive government stick figure shines the shoes of the big fat corporation stick figure in a top hat, which made me giggle, but I’m not sure how many conservative types will stick around after that.

Maybe Leonard doesn’t care, but she should. Isn’t it possible that there are people who identify more with conservative, small-government values but still are interested in a better environmental paradigm? The choir understands the sermon already. It’s time to widen the circle.

Besides turning off non-liberals, I also don’t think it’s particularly useful to cast corporations in the role of villain. We are all in this mess together. Every person and every organization has a contribution to make.

In fact, giant corporations have the biggest potential to turn things around. I and everyone I know can be yurt-living vegans and still never have anywhere near the impact of Wal-Mart increasing the fuel efficiency of their truck fleet by 25%, as they are on track to do by the end of this year. Any solution for our future is going to require the full participation of industry, so why antagonize?

So much environmental rhetoric is full of this venom for corporations. I believe it’s a huge failing on the movement’s part for many reasons, but none more important than this: people do not respond as well to anger as they do to encouragement and inclusion. Ever have a boss who yelled at you vs. a boss who was nice to you? Who did you work harder for?

Corporations are made up of people, and people can be reached if you approach them in a way they can respond to. Accusing them of killing babies is probably not the most effective tactic.

What do you think about The Story of Stuff? Let us know in the comments.