Allen Manalili

HCOM 214

Blake Roger

La Historia de Cosa

            The video The Story of Stuff  revealed to me many significant and eye opening statistics and perspectives. When I think of the materials' economy, I would picture sales, stocks, and consumption, etc... But, there is a lot more to it than I had presumed. For example, the video states that the materials' economy is made up of the processes regarding: Extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. The planet is exponentially increasing its population and consumption, but is unable to keep up with the production and renewing of natural resources. When taken into retrospect, an ever increasing population will lead to more waste; and more waste will lead to more pollution, therefore constricting the growth/ renewal of our scarce natural resources. With everything that we purchase at stores, there are other costs in clandestine from our view.

             With extraction, of cost is that animals and people too are losing more and more of their natural habitat as big corporations yearn to produce more in order to maximize profits. The process of production emits deadly toxins from the factory out to the environment and also the factory workers assembling the materials. The distribution process wastes lots of oil and gas in order to ship the goods out to stores, which pollutes the environment even more. The consumption aspect of the materials' economy that we are most familiar with, like buying new clothes, electronics, etc... And then the disposal of our waste that we had consumed ruins natural habitats and beautiful ecosystems. Personally, one step that may help out the environment may be the banning of plastic bags, just like they have been banned in this county already. I feel that companies go through such a hassle to find and drill oil in order to produce plastic bags that will most likely only be used once, then either be sent to a land fill or  littered.

             It is mentioned that over fifty percent of the United States' tax dollars are funded towards the military. Personally, I feel that the production and energy used and spent to keep the military operational is a little excessive at over half of the USA's tax dollars. And this may also lead to more pollution in the environment, because many weapons and vehicles will have to be produced to ship out to supply our troops. I do support our military and offers a great sense of security by having the best military in the world, but in reality, I don't think that fifty percent of our tax dollars is a necessity for our military. I feel that a great but yet argumentative step to stop funneling money to the military would be to withdraw from the war on terror. The war on terror is and has been never ending due to the accidental deaths of innocent civilians and bystanders, which stirs up and instigates emotions of hatred and fear, then resulting into more violence.

            One eye opening statistic regarding the destruction of the planet's natural environments and ecosystems is that the Amazon rainforest is losing around 2,000 trees every minute. Also, over eighty percent of the earth's original forests are gone. All this is evidence that the human race has been living beyond their means and in a sense, over staying their welcome here on this planet. I believe that if there is a substantial amount of people showing concern regarding the materials' economy, mother nature will have more time to re- grow/ renew the natural resources that we have destroyed and ruined due to our consumption. But that is the hard part, to get that substantial amount of people to reveal the detrimental effects of the materials' economy. I feel that if we all approach our actions with compassion and an open mind, we will then be aware of all the hidden costs of what we consume.