The problem with assholes is that everyone has one. Or is one. Or something. I don't know.

Last night someone tried to force me to watch The Story of Stuff, which, if you're unfamiliar, is an environmentalist documentary by some dykey looking chick named Annie Leonard who bases her entire argument against consumerism and mass production on this one statement: "You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely."

The first time she said this I immediately turned off my ears and stopped trying to pay attention. Since she says this early on, I hardly watched most of the thing, though I kept glancing at it to see how ridiculous it became. (The black and white drawings made me think it would be intelligent science, like how Imagining the 10th Dimension is smart so I was inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.) For being someone who drives a Prius, my God do I hate this kind of bullshit.

1.) Humans are a linear system inherently. We're born. We kill things. We eat them. We shit them out and dump our shit in the ocean. Nothing we do can be circular or self-sustaining, unless you mean we fertilize our fields by dumping our shit into them instead of the ocean, but I have a feeling that human feces isn't the best fertilizer. (Turns out it isn't but if you compost it then it's OK.) Animals do this, too, it's called living.

Living is a linear system. The amount of whatever it is we shit out every day combined with the decomposing mass of our body when we die does not replenish the planet of what we took from it while alive. We are not batteries or generators. We are simply machines that consume until we die.

Even Native Americans used up shit. They didn't breed a buffalo for every buffalo they killed---they just made sure they didn't kill all the buffalo and they used mostly all of the buffalo because they didn't have anything else to use. (Though we can say, "Because they understood that waste was wrong..." if we really want to.)

2.) Finite planet? So wait a second... this planet we're standing on... we're going to use it up and it's gonna disappear? First up, Earth is not finite. It was here before we were here, living happily, even with dinosaurs on it (which is pretty fucking mind blowing when you really think about it, fucking DINOSAURS roamed the Earth) and after we use up WHAT WE NEED, the Earth will be here. And when we've all died off because we can't survive in the California heat that's spread to the whole globe, the Earth will recover, grow a bunch of trees, and eventually Man will take it over again and fuck it up unless the Sun goes all red giant on us sooner than 1 billion years from now (anywhere from 600,000 to 2 billions years are given figures for how long before the Sun wipes us out all by itself).

There was a time when life on this planet didn't revolve around nonrenewable resources. Oil's always existed but it wasn't until someone invented something that used it did we need it so much. When the oil is gone, it's not going to affect anything to do with the earth. The shit lies underground, doing nothing for no one.

Trees grow. They're a renewable resource, there's nothing finite about trees, and somewhat unarguably they're one of the primary backbones of society. Annie Leonard makes a big deal about how a lot of the original trees are cut down ("only 20% of our natural forests are left on the planet") without pointing out that, uh, trees grow from the ground almost entirely on their own accord. She goes as far to say this: "Where I live, in the United States, we have less than 4 percent of our original forests left."

The U.S. Forest Service says that 33% of our nation is forested and that number has been stable for about 100 years (and I hate to cite Fox News for this info, but whatever). So in 100 years we haven't lost any forests, but we've only got 4% of our original forests left?

What, exactly, qualifies as an original tree? I'm assuming a 2,200 year old sequoia is an original. That's probably where Leonard gets her 4% figure at: the only original trees in the United States are sequoias. I'm certain every other tree has probably been cut down or has died at some point in the history of the world, so I'll give Leonard the benefit of the doubt:

Fine, all our "original trees" are gone. All we've got now are those cruddy replacement trees that hardly process carbon monoxide nor generate any sort of useful wood---oh wait, those replacement trees are "original trees". (I am, obviously, ignoring the impact on local ecosystems by deforestation but only because over 80% of paper comes from tree farms and not 'natural' eco-system supporting wilderness.)

I could keep going (into how stuff naturally decomposes over time, even stuff that doesn't decompose in minutes before our eyes) (how fresh water is formed and replenished by natural processes) but most of this woman's points all hinge on the idea that the planet is going to be exhausted.

The planet is not going to be exhausted. What's going to be exhausted is all the things we think we need to survive. Oil can go get fucked, nothing needs that. (Coal, too, isn't necessary for the planet's survival.) Fresh water? There's plenty of it being made every day in parts of the world where we aren't. Trees? There's probably a tree outside wherever you are right now that is actively growing, plants that are photosynthesizing as we speak. Even if you live in the city, within a mile there's probably a couple hundred animals living without human intervention just fine.

We're going to miss electricity, though, when we run out of oil & coal and can't power our generators. We're going to miss our cars and all our plastic shit, too. That'll be really hard on modern society. We'll miss driving to the grocery store and buying meat right off the shelf. What we'll have to do, instead, is walk to our local farmer's market and buy meat off the farmer who knows how to handle cows. Not so tough.

3.) I wouldn't be so annoyed if the people who showed me this shit, if the people who made this shit weren't gigantic hypocrites. You're so righteous, with your big ideas for making society less wasteful, but what do you actually do?

A few minutes into watching The Story of Stuff I said, "Well, I think we should demolish everything, all the houses, and burn all our things, and then live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle," and immediately I was attacked. "How would you survive!" "I'd grow things?" "No, no, that's not the point, watch what she says in the video..."

Then what's the point? What is the point of this video? Isn't the whole environmentalist agenda (to say "agenda" not in a derogatory way) to decrease man's impact on the environment. Well, let me tell you, that house of yours, (that really nice house of yours) is impacting the environment. That is land that trees could be growing on, that animals could be living on. You could demolish your house down to the bare essentials (let's say kitchen, bathroom, big main room for sleeping) and still end up with a lot of land that you're just uselessly covering with concrete and wood.

Wood, by the way, that probably came from "original trees". Good job, you've officially contributed to destroying 97% of our "original forests", you big asshole. (That concrete, too, was made out of minerals that were displaced from their natural habitat, thus wreaking havoc on local ecosystems that depended on the geography of the land.)

And that car! Hooboy, how many years have you been driving those things around? Don't you have feet? You could ride a bicycle... but wait, that's manufactured, which impacted the environment. So, no bicycle, but you still have feet. Feet are 100% natural and totally free of environmental impact--UNLESS YOU STEP ON PLANTS WHILE WALKING. So, don't do that and you'll be fine.

That plastic cup you're drinking out of... at the least it could be handmade ceramics, that way when it broke you could just grind it up and put it back into the soil.

I'm sure you see my point. Or, maybe you don't.

When your comfort still comes first, you're not a goddamn environmentalist. You aren't a saint because you put a couple bricks in your toilet to conserve water---you still shit in a toilet and waste water just to get rid of your shit. You could stop using a toilet, but you won't, because it's easy and simple. You're not about to throw out your television or your iPod, because you're attached to these things---which are obviously completely unnatural and merely suck resources from the environment to give you pleasure.

As long as you're simply lessening the impact you're not making a change. This whole thing is the equivalent of saying, "We're punching nature in the face 18 times a day but if we do this thing we will only be punching Nature in the face 10 times a day."

So my advice, to you, environmentalists, put your money where your mouth is. Demolish your homes. Throw away all your stuff and never buy anything but exactly what you need and never throw anything away ever again unless you have to. Stop driving a car, stop using electricity (unless you generate it yourself via a natural hydro/solar/air/human powered generator), stop buying produce and goods that are mass manufactured or pasteurized and most of all... stop using the internet to peddle stupid bullshit like this to me.

Epilogue: I am obviously frustrated. I drive a Prius but I am not an eco-nut. I recognize that the result of our modern, comfortable, and utterly boring lives is that there is an environmental impact. Even when you build something out of wood, by hand, using primitive tools, you end up with a bunch of wood pieces left over. When you start building stuff out of things made out of synthetic and non-synthetic chemicals, you end up with a bunch of pieces left over. All these pieces have to go somewhere, and since they aren't useful for anything, they get discarded. That's just the way things are.

Human life is a constant cycle of using tools and disposing of them when they are no longer useful. Originally our tools were bones and rocks, animal pelts to clothe us. Now they're iPods, computers, televisions, cars, and pudding cups. The natural cycle of things, of the world, is that what once was useful or pertinent is no longer. This isn't a matter of planned obsolescence (courtesy of General Motors) slowly taking over our lives.

Environmentalist zealots want you to believe things are only this way because evil greedy (white, probably) men have influenced the world to be this way for their own means. This isn't so: people like you and me realized it would be easier to provide goods to a large number of people by producing things in this way. There's no secret agenda, aside from the clear agenda of profit, which people who work and provide goods are entitled to. You profit every day you go to work and leave with money. (Environmentalists also like to villainize corporations, as Annie Leonard does in Story of Stuff, because they're profit-based enterprises and obviously anyone motivated to make money is the devil.)

The problem isn't a matter of "a linear system on a finite planet" being unsustainable (and, as I stated, she should be saying "a linear system on a cyclical planet" but that wouldn't support her agenda), it's a matter of too many people for too little resources. All these horrible things we do the environment are a result of more people needing more goods. Developing countries pollute a lot because of this: supporting the lives of more people requires industrialization in order to inflate the amount of goods available, but unfortunately they don't yet have the vast coffers necessary to legislate and regulate burgeoning industries.

If anything it shouldn't be The Story of Stuff, it should be The Story of Unsustainable Prolonged Growth. When animals in the wild reproduce to excessive levels they end up eating everything around them, and then their numbers dwindle until their habitat is able to recover enough to support them again, and then, if they all haven't starved to death, the cycle continues until it balances itself out: sustainable ecosystem due to the "finite planet" resulting in the deaths of what can't survive.

Unfortunately humans developed reason and imagination beyond what animals are capable of and when it came time for nature to flex her muscles and say, "Hey, I don't have enough shit to support all you damn humans right now," man said back, "I don't think so, bitch," and we've been raping her ever since. If we don't have what we need where we are, we steal it from somewhere else. This is why we're killing the planet, and we've been doing it since the end of the Middle Ages. It's not even a modern phenomenon.

You're not an environmentalist until you accept this fact, the fact that your very presence on this planet goes against the natural order of things, and then realize the only real truth there is in any of this: if you want to save the planet, you should kill yourself. If it wasn't for all the things we do that are polluting it, harvesting it, and destroying it, you wouldn't be alive. You shouldn't be alive right now, period. Your existence is killing the planet.

Lessening our impact is only going to prolong the inevitable. Those who truly, deeply, and honestly care about the environment can't argue: to truly save/love the earth we have to end our exponential growth. We have to stop relying on industry to keep us alive. In short, we have to allow ourselves to starve to death when we can't feed ourselves any longer.

Until you're willing to go hungry, to grow bored, to get sick and die, you don't give two fucking shits about the environment, you goddamn poseur. Stop talking in my ear about how enlightened you are, I'm sick of it. You're just as delusional as the people you vehemently oppose.

P.S. (After 2,410 words I still need to say more:) In the beginning of the video Annie Leonard waves around an iPod as her example of "useless consumer garbage" and I take some offense to this. Can you even begin to imagine how digital music players like the iPod have lowered the economic footprint of the music industry?

Instead of driving to a store, buying a CD made out of multiple bits of plastic that had to be manufactured and all the pollution that comes along with that, that was shipped to the store via truck which polluted more, just to fill my house with more stuff I'll just eventually break, lose, or throw out, I can just jump onto a computer, click a button, and *poof*, just like that, I have a ton of new music.

How much closer to zero environmental impact can you get? Sure, the iPod is made out of stuff, but 202 albums (about 1/3rd what my iPod can hold) is a lot of unused plastic, and the iPod certainly doesn't have that much of anything in it.

~fin