>> when you see that involved in politics at nine years old, what kind of involvement? >> i was listening to the radio, listen to bill bennett became a personal mentor and friend to me. and who wrote the forward to my new book. getting to understand what i believe in and why i believe. allows question are you involved in any actual campaigns right now? >> no, no. absolutely not. except i do have my campaign button, franklin roosevelt for ex-president. there we go. >> thanks very much for your time. >> annie leonard one of "time" magazine's 2000 euros of the violent says health hazard, environment damage and social injustice all result from the american obsession with acquiring stuff. it's about 45 minutes.

>> thank you. thing to so much for coming. i have so many friends in the odd is that i am so happy. like i really, really, i know it's in the days to come out on a school night. thank you guys so much from the bottom of my heart. today is day nine of the book tour. we have been to new york, toronto, and d.c. tomorrow we have san rafael, portland, seattle, olympia, boston and denver. and we're continually adding new places. so if you have friends in other places, please tell them to look on a website and find some of the other places were going onto a. this is of course the best place on the store to be. i'm so happy to be here because i am home. so i get to do my two favorite things on the same day which is talk about garbage and hang out with my daughter. so to do them both in the same that is so great. i just want to thank you so much for this important, making this book. right towards the end of the hellish year during which i

barely saw her, and bunch of people sitting around the dining room table to discuss won't be a great subtitle of the book. and the one that she voted for was the story of stuff, the book that ruined my life. [laughter] >> so thank you so much. [applause] >> berkeley is also home to so many factors environment organization, and there are two that are the beneficiary of tonight's book sales. the ecology center which every i hope knows and loves and is a member of, and the project of the ecology center that works on the same kind of issues that we discussed in the story. i just want to give a shout out and two books, inc. for offering for all of the sales from tonight's book sales to go to the ecology center. thank you so much. [applause]

>> this tour has been great. largely because everywhere we go where having big gatherings, and this is a great example, especially with the contributions from bookings to the power of getting people together in. we have been getting great media. we are thrilled about this today. i just made. i was on 35 of the 35 bestsellers of the neocons. it's not bad for a book about stuff. i'm not ask for going to read from the book tonight. you can do that yourself as you buy a copy here tonight. i know that if you buy your book for my local bookstore it will cost more than if you buy on amazon. it will cost about $8 more. i wanted to the $8 create local jobs, keeps the money in the local communities, and it helps to provide a place for gatherings for things like this. in addition it benefits those two wonderful organization.

but buying your books online, it's better not buy your book at all, it doesn't provide the sensitivity as a local bookstore does. [applause] >> so instead of actually reading i will tell you quickly what in the book and then i want to share with you a story. the book contains a lot more information on the materials economy. in the film which i hope you've all seen i went really, really fast going through extraction, production, consumption, disposal. i left something out in which case it's a 20 minute cartoon. it's a really big global economy. i talk fast but not that fast but a lot of the stuff i left out is in that book. i felt lucky because i didn't write this book and a packet. i received about 80,000 e-mails of people asking for more information to i really did my very best to answer the information and provide the resources and information people want it. a couple of other things the book at the on the film. it has a lot of another way.

there's these roadsides of turn directions to another way. you can flip through the book and find the another way. they are examples of how we can do things different. examples of solutions and ways that we can make our products without toxic chemicals or fuel our industries without destroying the climate. how we can do things different. a lot of examples of signs of hope and a little cartoon of me holding a sign that said hope and you can flip to the book and see them. in new york city david, a whole are is writer me and he said were it not for the signs of hope he might put a boat or is it about halfway through. the book is full of signs of hope. a lot of people ask me why i'm so optimistic about this work in spite of the really grim data about the environment. it's because everywhere i go in every city in every state and every country all around the world there are people that are rising up in creating an alternative. so we can live, there's not a single pot in the sky thing. people are doing it right now. and, finally, i have personal

stories. i really did spend over a decade traveling around the world visiting the factories where stuff is made and the stuff is done. or visiting the survivors in the ballpark of the survivor of the world's largest chemical industrial disaster. they are all around the world, firsthand reporting from visiting where our stuff is made and where it comes from. but i wanted tonight to share story does not in the book. i want to share the story of "the story of stuff." how it can to make "the story of stuff." and i particularly want to share that with you here in berkeley because i think it's really important take-home lessons for those of us who are working to make change. i love living in berkeley. so many people here are working to make change. so for those of you who know me, about 20 years i have been really, really interested in garbage. my friends, many of you humor me during those 20 years, which i thank you. but i was largely ignored.

one of my friends told me one of the good things about being ignored for 20 years is when people finally pay attention, you are good at what you have to say. i had a lot of practice talking about that during these 20 years i got deeper and deeper into my exploration of stuff come about where all our stuff comes from and goes. i was fascinated and i develop this kind of neurosis about our stuff. i couldn't turn it off. whenever i pick up anything, a cell phone or toothbrush or parishes or anything, it just looked to my face, my eyes, my brain. that's why i sort of stumble long when i have you in the cracker barrel across the street or target, they think i'm stoned but i'm not. the oil fields and chemical factories in malaysia, i can't turn it off. i really recommend it. but sometimes the deeper and deeper i get into it, i got loaded because with my

increasing expertise i was becoming less able to tell other people about it because i had so much jargon and so much insight or reference. so i had a real breakthrough at a workshop that was run by the rockwood learning train program. and workshops all around the country is a really, really incredible leadership training program. anybody who wants to make a change in the world on environment, help on any issue i really recommend you look up the rockwood leadership training program and sign up for one of their programs. it's really great. so i did the year-long program. it's a group of about 20 very experiencexpensive and very diverse. the head of the largest gay-rights group in the country, the head of move on, very individuals that one of the things were supposed to do in this training was talk about what our purpose was. we've given each other permission for feedback and we

stood in front of the group and we talked about what our purpose was. and me being a total materials geek, i stood up there and send my purpose is to bring about a paradigm shift in a relationship to materials. and i went into this whole long thing about parts provided carbon sequestration, and when i was done i was very confident having said this for 20 years. eli, ahead of move on, a really smart guy, he raised his hand and i'll be forever grateful for him and he said i have no idea what you just said. [laughter] >> and then there was this symbol you're supposed if you agree. i don't have to sick and the whole entire room did it. and they said that i rated very high on profits. they said were very sure you know what you did. [laughter] >> but we couldn't understand a word of it. and i remember the license i don't even know what you're talking that much or. what is material? i said it's what you're holding. it's what you are sitting on. and he looked at any said actually, annie, i'm sitting on

a chair. and i just is that what your brain does when he sees that? and they were all like, yeah. they said what does yours do? ice for me it looks like wood, could be mahogany, it could from indonesia, what travel community at kickoff, and you're all like, annie, you need to get out a little bit more. [laughter] >> and they gave me some really important feedback, which fundamentally changed how i communicate as an activist that this is what i want to share with you, because i miss him you guys are all activists and want to make the world a better place as well. they told me i was using way too much jargon. when i use words like, they didn't know them. and try to find plays in the brains for the word and by that time i was off to the next thing. they said simplify it. and i think a part of me thought the other words were coming it down or being patronizing or something.

but what i realized is there is so much environmental and economic and other information out there, such experts that there's so much jargon it actually serves to exclude people from participating in the conversation. they told me that i used to much jargon. they told i was starting the conversation 20 years into. they said we have been going to dumps for 20 years but they said start early. it reminded me of the famous statement about talk to people where they are at, not where you're at. they also told me to sort of lower my center of gravity and come out of my head and talk from my heart. i said i was full of parts per million and all these facts and statistics, but there was no stories, no humanness. and at some level i was making a mistake that a lot of environmeenvironmentalist made, is that we think the truth will set us free. but if the truth would set a street we would be free. because we have the truth. we know the signs.

and that we are really missing is organizing it. communicate and networking and organizing it. it is organizing that will set us free. the goals of my communication and i realized before i was giving this talk, my goal was to impress them. i wanted him to think i was far, that i knew all this information. and i realized afterwards that unless you're applying for tenure job, that's probably not the right approach to a much better approach to make a connection. you don't have to tell someone everything you thought of in the last 20 years about your issue of choice but make a connection. if you make a connection then you can go deeper into the discussion together over the longer term. so is a really fascinating experience, because over the year this group met, we met four times. and each time we were invited to practice communicating about our work. it was incredible.

we don't give each other off any feedback. people come we cannot sell crack without feedback that the only thing anyone told me in 20 years was i talk too fast that no one told me it was unintelligible, you know, i'm inspired to told any of this before. i wondered why people did want to help all these years. so each time and again things we would practice different ways of talking about it. on the final time, they kept saying, on the third time they said we'd give up. they said you will never learn how to talk about these issues and the way that regular people want to talk to you. so i get the award for the most improved. [laughter] >> on the final time i made this big sheet of butcher paper and they get sick start at the beginning. so i do a mound and i said extraction and production and iran through this story of stuff that i get off the top of my head. and i was kind of joking. loved it. they said keep working on this. and so some of the people they're invited me to speak at

another conference and invited me to speak at another conference. over the next two years i gave that talk live dozens and dozens of time. it was incredible experience. absent that rock would feedback, i never would have stood up there and drawn cartoons. i was getting to the people in a way i never could have when i was being sent on the scientific walks. it's an unusual expense. i finally get the talks only times i will throw up if i give this talk again, like right around the second, i can't do it. but i continue to do. i decide to make a film. every time i give the talk someone would raise their hand and say to you have a film on this? and i said no, but give me a name in if i ever make what i would say that i had a shoebox full of names a business card that i had a friend who might be here, she filmy giving the talk live and we took the film to free range studios, which is a fab as communicator and storytellers. we took the film to them. they were so funny at first when

i called and said i want to make them about how materials go to the coming. and they were like great. [laughter] >> but then they saw the stock and said that about a lot more. so they came up with a bunch of different ideas on how to make the film. we made the film. in a funding proposal wind were raising money, we thought we need 50,000 people, we would be happy. we got that in four hours. i mean, we put it up on the internet, we are lucky when we decide to make the film, i got the shoebox and said do you have money? they all pitched in like crazy so we could make the film. we didn't need to recoup money so we could put on the internet free. with a creative common place, instead of inviting people to run with it, it has been a national television and a half a dozen countries. it has been translated into different languages. a puppet show in south africa, as a theater in pakistan, songs. amazing. . .

>> lots and lots and lots of people want to see our society on a different path. i feel like the film showed a growing sense of disease. we get e-mails from people who say, i knew that, i just didn't know how to say it. or i knew a piece of it, i worked on recycling or worker

safety, but i didn't understand how it fit into a whole system. my favorite day was where i got an e-mail from a fourth grader in minnesota who had seen it in her class, and she said the film was totally awesome, and she 6 inches of emoticons on it. [laughter] and i got an e-mail from a professor who said in punjab there's an expression to enclose -- [inaudible] we've really relied on getting the word out of an incredible network of friends and allies in activist groups as well as in the media. the media's been fascinating in terms of the diversity. one of the things they told me at that rockwood group is i wasn't providing entry points for people to enter, so i really worked on providing a range of points, and it worked. recently i was profiled in a radical filipino

anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist femme anytime journal and in one of -- feminist journal and martha stewart in the same month. [laughter] one piece of the response really does worry me. i've been going all around the cup and showing the film of the story of stuff. and as you know from seeing it, it lays out a pretty broad, pretty systemic problem. it's not like a little problem i'm pointing to. i cannot tell you how often in the public event that universities, conferences, churches all over someone raises their hand and says, what can i buy differently to solve this problem? or people ask, what can i do? i like to see what people are thinking, so i say, what can you think of doing? and sometimes i push and push and push, and the answers stay stuck in this individualist consumer part of ourselves. i can ride a bike, i can

recycling, i can carry my own bag, i can stop using bottled water. all of this as an individual or as a consumer. now, i think we should definitely do all those things, and those are great, but those are not in the category of making systemic change. those are rah kind of like noting your teeth and washing your hands as you use the toilet. you should do those things, but they don't take the place of political action. and what i've come to see is that there's different parts of us, two different parts. there's a consumer part of ourself and a citizen part of ourself. and that consumer part of ourself is spoken to and validated and nurtured from day one, and anyone in here who has a kid knows it is from day one. and that is why our kids and grown-ups, too, can recognize different brands of blue jeans and sodas by their bottles but we don't know who our city council members are. this consumer part of ourself has become overdeveloped, the citizen part of ourselves are at

toefied, the community part, the idea instead of saying what can i buy differently, why not say what can we collectively do to solve this problem at its root? because that's what it's going to take. when people say, what can i buy differently? i say the solutions we need are not for sale at the store, even at whole foods. the solutions are in our communities and in our civil society by reengaging that citizen action muscle. when people really ask me, on some level i don't even care, just start to engage in something. get to know your neighbors. 46% of people in the united states do not know their next door neighbors names right now. get to know your neighbors. invite them over for dipper. i told my -- dinner. i told my daughter a statistic that most people in the united states only have three guests -- >> she said you mean you don't

have someone over three nights of the year. i said, no, sweetie, we're not the average. i want people to reengage that citizen muscle partly because it's what we need to really get this country back on track, but also because it's more fun. i've been doing a bunch of reading about this emerging science of happiness, and it turns out that the things that make us most happy across cultures, across age groups, across income brackets, the things that make us most happy are not that new flat screen television or that new pair of boots. the things that makes us most happy are the quality of our social relationships, our coming together with others around a shared goal. and our having a sense of meaning beyond yourself. those are the top three in every study people have looked at about what brings more happynd. that's after your basic needs are met. after a point more stuff doesn't make us happy and actually undermines our happiness because

we are working, i'm shopping, watching tv, spending so much time getting, maintaining, repairing, tending to, replacing, upgrading, you think tagging the cords that we're taking that time away from engaging in civil society and in communities. so for me i think that's great because how lucky we are that the one thing that we most need to rebuild and engage civil society in a living democracy in this country is also the thing that makes us most happy. it actually will be more fun as we unplug from that work/watch/spend treadmill and engage into community. so that's the one thing that worries me the most, and that's what i want to ask all of us in berkeley to really lead on. if we cannot reengage that muscle here in berkeley, then how can we possibly call on other people elsewhere to do it? we have a good head start with our long tradition of citizen

activism. i think it's time to get back involved in communities, back involved in civil society, back involved in local planning and other democratic and governance things here in berkeley so that we can turn berkeley around and then engage nationally as well. [applause] people, just one final thought and then i'll take questions and answers. people often ask me do i think we're going to change, are we going to be able to change? and, you know, we're right now globally using 1.5 planets' worth of resources. i was giving a talk recently and we started debating is it 1.3 or 1.6? i was like, you guys, anything over one is a problem. we're using 1.5 planet' worth of resources. they actually mark the day each year, earth overshoot day, when we've used that year's worth of biological resources. last year it was september 25th. that is not a good trajectory.

so when people ask me do we think we're going to change, we're definitely going to change. you cannot use 1.5 of what you have indefinitely. we are definitely going to change. the question is not if, but how. are we going to change by design, or are we going to change by default? either way it's going to be hard work, but if we change by design, if we're proactive, if we invest in solutions, if we, if we're intentional and intelligent and compassionate about it, it's going to be a lot better than if we dig our heels in and say that the american way of life is nonnegotiable as our former president would repeatedly say. we're still going to change, but it's going to be a lot more violent by default, it's going to be a lot uglier, a lot worse. so, yes, we're going to change, but it's up to us. it's really us that decides are we going to change by design or

by default? share this book, give it to your librarieses, give it to your schools. reengage that citizen muscle to help to build the power base to get this country back on track. thank you guys so much. [applause] do you want to do questions? >> yeah. we'll do question and answer for, like, 20, 30 minutes and then we'll go ahead and get some books signed and do that. >> do you want to call on people? >> sure. how about you, sir? >> okay. are there any middle schools or high schools that is taking this on as subject matter or curriculum? >> the question is if middle and high schools are using this. yes. it's just amazed me. when i was making this film, the film has the words, you suck in it, and somebody involved in production said you might want to take that out because schools might not show it, i said,

schools aren't going to show this film, what are you talking about? it has been just an incredible hit in schools literally all over the world. we have had hundreds and hundreds of teachers write to us for more information which was one of the reasons we made the books. and we're partnering with this group in seattle called facing the future. if there's any educators inth in the crowd, facing the future makes educational curricula on sustainability and justice issues, and so we're working with them right now to make a curriculum around the story of stuff where they can show the film, use the book with a whole range of interactive exercises to explore more deeply. the film is being used in so many schools, and i'm hoping the book will, that it got the attention of glenn beck and fox news. what happened was there was a new york times reporter who was writing about what teachers are using these days for educational stuff on environment, and she called around, and a lot of them said there isn't good stuff, so

we're using story of stuff. she hadn't even heard of us. and so she did this article about how the story of stuff had taken off in the schools. it was on the front page of the new york times. so within days it was on fox news. just attacking us for saying that we're terrorizing children, we're turning them into socialists, we're undermining the foundations of american democracy by asking people to be citizens instead of shoppers. [applause] the highlight for me was when glenn beck had his famous board on which he slaps these magnets with words, and so he says do you want what story of stuff is about? and he slaps this stuff out, and it says social justice. [laughter] i said, that's right, mr. beck. so, yeah, lots of schools. >> you've nailed my achilles heel, and i'm going to have to think about this talk a lot because my self-absorbed wonk thing is corporate peoplehood,

and i've got to find out your secret and how to convey that. because to me that's that community, where we work. we spend all of our time where we work, and it's how we work. and who we empower with our work. and just one point of the work of eleanor old strom, have you been looking into that? >> no. >> she's the first woman to win the nobel prize in economics, and it's based on common pool resources. and what she discovered is that when communities have access to resources over time, they're more likely to make better environmental decisions, and they don't overharvest. >> right. she undermined the tragedy of the common theory, right? >> she addressed it and solved it. >> yes. >> and what she says is there are certain design parameters, and those parameters are democratic mechanisms of debating and making sure free riders are not, you know, overharvesting and community

mechanisms of self-governance. >> well, my recommendation for anybody who has an issue about which they're passionate is to practice giving talks to any audience that will take you and ask them beforehand to give you ruthlessly authentic feedback because otherwise all your friends will say, that was great. and when we really need to know what worked and what didn't. before i made this story of stuff film, i went and gave that talk live to a lot of different, very, very different organizations, and i purposely went to very diverse ones and i said, tell me what worked, tell me what didn't. and from the book i also sent messages to all our viewers that we are in touch with and said what do do you guys want to hean the book? really solis fit feedback. solicit feedback. >> i'm interested in your thinking about the dichotomy between people wanting to invest in their own communities and when we do sort of connect with other people, we want to focus on what's in front of us usually

and the fact we live in a completely globalized economy and so many of the decisions we make have impacts invisible to us. what is your experience and thinking about how you get people to focus on things that are far away as you're turning them towards people who are in their immediate environment? >> well, my theory in terms of getting people involved, start with what excites them and what turns them on and is fun for them. for me t garbage. i get that might not be for all of you, but for me that's what it was. doing this work if we don't love it, it's going to be a chore. so i think rather than figure out the single most strategic place to work, find the thing that turns people on. for some it's working locally in their community, for some it's working on international trade agreements. whatever it is, just find the thing that's fun. as we start involving and start exercising that citizen muscle, my hope -- it's more than hope because i know it, my confidence is that it will be more fun.

once you begin on that, they're going to want to do more and more. there's not really any issue that you're not looking at the global system pretty darn fast because of how our food system, production system, everything is globalized. encourage people to start, plead with people to start with whatever part turns them on because it's going to be so much more fun. one of the good things about such a huge, all-pervasive problem is there are so many places to start. we don't even have to do something boring. start with whatever they want >> [inaudible] many of us were pleased to see you on the colbert report this last week. [applause] and when you first came out, the thing that struck me was, wow, annie looks very well groomed. >> do you want to know where my hair was done? [laughter] >> did you use the teachable moment with the makeup crew

about personal care products? >> do you know how many people i've told about the skin deep database? it's unbelievable. the makeup they put on you before tv is absolutely horrible. so i told every single one of them about the skin deep database which i will tell all of you about because it is so great. skin deep, google skin deep, and it lists tens of thousands of personal care products. and it's not just makeup, it's deodorant and sunscreen and toothpaste and everything. and it lists what type of chem chemicals are in it and which ones are the least toxic. that's a great thing to try and maintain a safe, healthy household. when you're in your citizen part, contact the campaign for safe cosmetics and get those toxics out of our products because we are never going to win, we are never going to make this planet safe and healthy and fair by going individual by individual and explaining to them why they should always make the right choice. first of all, that would be a huge drag. second of all, there's not

enough time. stacy, if you could raise your hand in the citizens for safe cosmetics. safe cosmetics.org. i just want to say one extra thing. a lot of the times i meet people who think having toxic chemicals in our products is the price of progress, you know, it's inevitable, it's the result of a weighty, compromised process with the regulators and the industries, and that is just not true. to prove it, look at europe. europe has passed, it has taken this whole range of toxic chemicals out of their cosmetics, yet the companies here think they can't do it. you think we don't have internet? we can find out. we can just ask stacy and find out what's happening. one of the campaigns i encourage people to do is have a why not here campaign? if you can get neurotoxins out of our lipstick in europe, why not here? so skin deep is great, and i definitely educated every single

makeup artist in my news interviews. but really the goal should not be to educate everybody, it chemicalout of those products that we're putting on our body. [applause] >> i'm terry, stacy, and you and i spoke on the aguilar show this morning on the radio. >> oh. >> and my background includes having worked in the white house and the white house science office and some other things. and including ralph nader when i was young and idealistic and i had hair almost as long as yours in the '70s. you are a beautiful person. i'm sure everyone in this room agrees. [applause] with or without makeup, my dear. [laughter] significantly, though, i know the trends, and the trends for this planet and our national society are in serious adverse jeopardy as you, obviously, make reference to. i most applaud your ardor and

the approach you take to try and make a difference which all of us of ethics and conscious and informed must do. but there are so many of our fellow americans who want to remain oblivious to the reality, and that word is to focus on. the reality is that berkeley could establish itself, and i drove up here from santa cruz deciding it was worth polluting the planet with the gasoline i was using to be here. that's an ethical choice. and we have ethical household choices, we have ethical choices as a community. i would like berkeley and santa cruz where i drove up from to announce themselves as, dammit, we live more ethical than oakland. we are superior, we are better informed and shouldn't that be the tack that activists is take is to castigate the glenn beck approach and the approach in addition to having the political reforms? now, my background in washington includes dealing with regulatory

agencies. the atrocious corruption of the fda and even the epa under bush/cheney, and it still continues. the fact that our congress, both parties, are sold out to corporate interests. both parties. we've got to have a significant snuff change to say let us reflect on reality, and do we want to have a country that is for the people and by the people instead of wall street? do you think we should be even more vigorous and perhaps more disruptive, those of us who care to make a difference as well as say i'm more ethical than my neighbor because compare my footprint to rush limbaugh's household footprint, for example? should that be done to, again, focusing on reality? >> i'm all for the getting the corporations out of politics, totally. i'm all for being more vigorous and disruptive, totally. definitely the times call for that. i'm not for the ethical superiority, and the reason is i believe that the problems that we face in terms of how we live right now are structural rather

than individual. i think it's not individuals that are choosing to put endocrine disrupters in the baby bottles, it was the head of dow chemicals or monosantos. it wasn't these individuals who decided to rip up the railways in this l.a. some people are making individual choices that are really bad, like the heads of exxon, the heads of disney, those are the guys whose individual choices are crewing up the planet. -- screwing up the planet. our individual choices are not. the structure right now is set up to facilitate us acting in aless environmental -- a less environmental way. and the best we can do if we want to focus on our individual superiority is get better and better at swimming upstream. it's a drag. for so many people, making the right environmental choice is harder, it's more expensive, it takes longer. i don't think we should be blaming those who don't make those choices when the entire

economic and cultural system is pushing them towards making the wrong choices. it's not their fault, t the structure's fault. [applause] so rather than blame them, let's change that structure so that doing the right thing becomes the new te fault option. -- default option. you have to spend more time and money to do the wrong thing because the mainstream option is living as though we have one planet, living to prioritize sustainability and justice and the kind of decisions that are going against that now are not yours and mine and the neighbors, it's the heads of those big companies putting those toxic chemicals in our products and making electronics designed to last eight months before you have to chuck them. those are the guys you have to change their decisions. [applause] >> hi, annie. i'm wondering how you became such an eloquent speaker. >> because i talk about garbage nonstop for 20 years.

if the nobody listens to you for 20 year, you get really good at what you have to say. he's calling on people, right? >> [inaudible] >> a couple of questions. i don't know why most of the questions and comments are coming from men. is there some significance of that? [laughter] and having said that, my question is it seemed like one of the obvious inferences from what you are saying is the solution to many of the problems are not only how to change the production of things and stuff, make them less toxic, make them less wasteful and so on, but also perhaps diminish the quantity of stuff that is being produced. now, in a world in which we do need to create more jobs, the

obvious, obvious outcome should be, perhaps, more services and less stuff. but more service is still going to be needed in parts of the world and in poor communities which are way below any kind of halfway decent standard of living as you describe in your book. so what are your thoughts on how to deal with this twin problem of gross poverty which depending on your viewpoint and population is being inspired population growth and because of population growth plus everything else and at the same time we have overconsumption, in a sense, with the present system that's pushing not only consumers here, but consumers everywhere. and those who don't have much it's going to be very difficult to tell them, hey, slow down. >> okay. yeah. it's. >> or is that your next book? >> there is never going to be

another book. [laughter] it's very easy for us in berkeley to say the answer is we have to consume less, and it's really important to remember that for a lot of people the answer is actually to consume more. i mean, there's still half of the world's population lives on less than this latte costs, live on $2.50 a day. we've just reached the milestone that one-sixth of the people on the planet, one billion people, are chronically hungry. so absolutely for a huge number of people the answer is to consume more. there's a huge number of people who need to consume more just to meet a level of basic human decency. so that means the onus is on us even more to scale back because we so disproportionately use resources. we have 5% of the world's population, and we use 30% of the world's resources. and other countries increase their material base, then we have a choice of either saying, well, too bad for you because we got here first and we are

whiter, and we have gums, and we get it and you don't which is gross, or we say, hey, we're willing to extra scale back, to extra power down so that we can regain balance in our own lives in terms of health, spiritually and everything and make room at the table for our global neighbors. it's really important. the answer is not less for everybody. for be some people the answer is definitely more. so you said that we're using too toxic stuff. we're also, that's right, using too much stuff. we've got three main problems with our stuff. we're using too much stuff, we're using too toxic stuff, and we're not sharing it well. but the good sing is we're -- thing is there's easy solutions to that. that's both what inspires me and infuriates me is there's no reason we have to have this enormously toxic-based society. a lot of people have asked about if we scale back our production, what happens to all those

workers? so right now in the united states we are the most overworked society in the world. we work longer hours than people in any other industrialized country except maybe south korea. the average u.s. worker works 300 hours more than the average western european worker. 46% of people in the united states have not taken a week's vacation off last year. we are overworked and exhausted, and at the other end we have 10% unemployment. duh, let's just share the workload too. let's have a little more leisure like they do in europe, let's chill out and share the workload. you know why we went do that? health care. because health insurance is tied to full-time employment. there was a study that center for new american dream commission a couple years ago, they found that two-thirds of people in the united states would be happy to work less, earn less and consume less, but they can't because they'll lose their health care. so i list some big ticket items we can change.

i'm all for saving the forests and these individual things, but we need to go to the bigger ticket changes, and one of the big ticket changes i have in there is that we need to choose time over stuff. and there are a bunch of structural obstacles to that, and one is the linking of health care with full-time insurance. so, i mean, with full-time employment. and health care might not be on the radar screen for most environmentalists, if you want to promote a sustainable level of consumption, we've got to delink full-time employment with health care so that every single person in this country gets access to health care. [applause] >> public option. [laughter] >> we'll go ahead and take one last question. >> okay. there's something that you brought up that i would really, really compel everybody to hear again, and that is working