Discussion For Society Class

 1. According to “The story of stuff”: How is “stuff” extracted, processed, distributed, and disposed? What are its impacts—environmental and social?

2. According to the assignments in Part Two and Part Three: How have we been transformed into obsessive consumers?

3. (a) Connecting “The story of stuff” to the assignments in Part Four and Part Five: How has the consumerist culture damaged the environment and been a fundamental cause of climate change, disasters, and widening wealth inequality? (b) On the other hand, what/who do the assignments in Part Two most fundamentally blame for the creation of consumerist culture?

4. According to Part Six: What is the trend in U.S. and global wealth inequality?

250-word minimum; no maximum word count. Display the word count at the end of your post.

Part 1

1. Our story: The story of stuff (Links to an external site.)
2. The Story of Stuff (Links to an external site.) (22 minutes)

Part 2

1. Affluenza (Links to an external site.) (56 minutes)

Part 3

1. The Litter Myth (Links to an external site.) (33 minutes)
2. Susan Spotless (Links to an external site.) (1 minute)
3. The Crying Indian (Links to an external site.) (1 minute)
4. The constant consumer (Links to an external site.)
5. We are all accumulating mountains of things (Links to an external site.)

Part 4

1. Use it and lose it: The outsize effect of U.S. consumption on the environment (Links to an external site.)
2. The world is drowning in ever-growing mounds of garbage (Links to an external site.)
3. Climate change is the symptom. Consumer culture is the disease (Links to an external site.)
4. Climate change threatens the global food supply, UN warns (Links to an external site.) (1.30 minutes)
5. Natural disasters worsen wealth gap and inequality, study says (Links to an external site.)

Part 5

1. The causes of global climate change (Links to an external site.)
2. Carbon-intensive industries—the industries that emit the most carbon (Links to an external site.)
3. Which countries have emitted the most CO2 since the year 1750? (Links to an external site.) (10 minutes)

Part 6

1. The world’s richest 1% gets 82% of the world’s wealth, Oxfam says (Links to an external site.) (45 seconds)
2. Global wealth inequality” and “U.S. wealth concentration versus other [rich] countries (Links to an external site.)” (charts)