Story of Stuff - Video Clip

The Video clip, the “Story of Stuff” is very interesting and I think it is a very simple outlook of how humanity is living in this world today. The five determinants of sustainable development that it mentions are: extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. How humanity goes about doing these five activities determine whether or not we are living in a sustainable world. I agree with the “Story of Stuff” because the of the manners in which we perform the five activities mentioned above; they eventually affect the social aspect of our lives, as well as our economies, cultures and most of all the environment- in an unsustainable way. We as human beings are just using resources, following the trends that are set out for us by advertisements and the media; thus, we are not practicing sustainable development. As was rightfully mentioned in the video, the world we live in is a finite world, where the resources will not always be present for future generations in the same quantities as we have them now. Most of the concepts that the video clip are true and I believe that as human beings, we should realize the impacts and the outcomes of our actions and decisions and divert the path to sustainable development.

The system that connects the five determinants of sustainability is a linear system where there is a beginning and a definite ending. The first of the process is the extraction where the earth’s natural resources are being exploited very rapidly. I agree that this is not being done in a very sustainable manner. For instance, it is very common knowledge and according to the video too that forest covers are being lost very rapidly; the trees are being cut down faster than their population can be replenished which is not sustainable. As everything, including us are all interconnected; in the food-chains, we are at the top of the consumer level, we depend on forests and the animals to survive and live in comfort. We also depend on groundwater and if we are developing unsustainably, it is as if though we are developing selfishly at the expenses of our natural environment.

The Video also explains that the social and cultural attributes of our societies are also affected by unsustainable development; mostly the residents of developing countries and the less fortunate are affected by this. The first world countries, for instance the United States consume much more than resources and energy than residents of less developed countries. For example, a person from a developed country can consume the same amount of energy as a villager in a developing country would consume in a lifetime (Rogers, Jalal, & Boyd, 2008). Since there is high demand for the resources especially by the first world countries because they might not have the resources or have already exhausted theirs, turn on less developed countries such as Belize for them. Examples of these were the unsustainable logging of the Rosewood trees and the