The causes of unsustainability can be traced back to the industrial revolution where human consumption of natural resources skyrocketed and increased even more so in the centuries following. However, after World War II, in order to try to ramp up the economy, the government and large corporations created a plan to increase consumer demand through two methods: planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is when the production companies design goods that consumers buy to break after a short amount of time, causing them to need more. The time frame is accurately counted in which when it breaks, it’s long enough for the consumer to want to buy more but also not too short to make the consumer consider whether the product broke too soon. Perceived obsolescence is largely through advertising. Through advertising, these companies try to spread new “trends” for the consumer to follow. The perfect example is shopping. The trend of fashion is a repetitive cycle that causes the consumers to continuously want to change their clothing our outlook in order to fit into society. The constant flow of products cause these corporations to earn lots of profit and they use a portion of it to give themselves more and more, but at the same time, these goods get thrown away over and over again, destroying the environment.
This leads us to the symptoms of unsustainability. As focused in Klein’s arguments, climate change. Climate change is perhaps the biggest symptom of unsustainability. Constant pollution from factories, the cutting down of trees, and our every day routines such as driving cars, contributes to climate change. It is because of our demands as consumers that cause climate change. This is a vicious cycle that is slowly destroying our planet. There are other symptoms of course of unsustainability. Another major one is the depletion of natural resources. However, Klein focuses her points on climate change.
Klein believes that in order to solve climate change, we need to change the public’s view on climate change and the impact it brings. As she states, this is what people think of climate change: “Yeah, I care about climate change but not that much”. That attitude is what she wants to change. People see climate actions as a sort of privilege where “if you don’t have anything to care about, you can care about climate change”. She believes that in order to get people to want to help the environment, we must give them immediate results. Klein says she is excited for the march in New York and the UN Climate Summit because it might bring about change. The people protesting are directly affected by the fossil fuel companies who are destroying their environment and causing these protestors’ children to have asthma or because they have toxic sites in their backyard. When the climate change directly affects people, they are willing to stand up and to, as in the Story of Change quotes Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Thus, Klein believes that it is more important to solve the intermediate causes that can be solved easily so that people can see the change and join, before she goes into solving the root cause. On the other hand, Annie Leonard, the speaker in the Story of Stuff project, believes that although it isn’t easy to see a clear path from the place we are today to the place we want it to be, the path didn’t start off easy for any of the other people that took action. Thus she believes that they should go immediately to the root cause through protests and other peace movements to tell the government to change their policies to save the Earth. They both, however, agree that in order to save the climate, people must be willing to take action. Taking action is what they’re missing, not the information.