From Story of Stuff creator Annie Leonard, we now have an accessible and visually engaging outlook on the financial crisis, deficit mania in Washington, and how to shift public funds toward a greener future. She makes a few compromises in the pursuit of mainstream appeal that may not sit so well with social ecologists — focusing on electoral solutions, and simply replacing petrochemicals with “bio-based materials” – but overall this 8 minute animation does an exceptional job of illuminating the links between environmental and economic priorities for our time.
After viewing The Story of Broke, be sure not to miss Naomi Klein’s exceptional cover story on “Capitalism vs. the Climate” from next week’s issue of The Nation. Following a close-up examination of the mentality behind right wing climate denial, Klein makes the best case yet for why the climate crisis is “the most powerful argument against capitalism since William Blake’s ‘dark Satanic mills’.” She argues compellingly that “climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.” It’s essential reading. (It’s also available on ZNet at http://zcommunications.org/contents/182656.)
