[Note from the Goose - personally, I think Beck is starting to come off the
handle. I hope he gets the help he needs.]


Glenn Beck's Bioneers Obsession
By Spencer Windes on Sep 24, 2009

Annie Leonard must be doing something right...
Glenn Beck's Bioneers Obsession

Annie Leonard

We’ve never seen Glenn Beck at the Bioneers Conference, but we’re starting
to wonder if he’s been coming under an alias.

For the second time in a month, Beck has chosen to attack one of our Bioneers
alumni. First, of course, he went after Van Jones, one of our favorite keynote
speakers from previous years. Now, he’s got Annie Leonard in his crosshairs.


Annie’s become an internet sensation over the last year as her short video,
The Story of Stuff, has become a viral hit. In addition to being passed around
through the nets, folks have taken to showing it in all kinds of situations,
including in classrooms.

The Story of Stuff is a concise examination of the consumption cycle and its
unintended consequences. It focuses the spotlight on the processes we don’t
see when we swipe that credit card at Wal-Mart. From extraction to disposal, it
serves as a healthy reminder that our planet has finite resources, a fact that
is increasingly at odds with an economic system based on growth.


This, of course, is exactly the kinds of inconvenient truths that Beck doesn't
want floating around in the atmosphere. To him, all criticism is aimed not to
improve, but to destroy. Pointing out the environmental flaws of our current
economic model, one that rewards cost cutting and the efficient destruction of
nature, is never a way to seek a new and improved sustainable economic model,
but rather, a stalking horse for some debunked nineteenth-century theory.
Communism, or socialism, or maybe Lamarckian evolutionary theory.

Even when he concedes that Annie is right about something, like the toxicity of
brominated flame retardants, Beck is less interested in changing a clear and
present danger, and more interested in laying blame on the very people who want
to find a better way. Try and follow this chewy chunk of logic:

Beck-Look, here's the â€" here is the problem with this. What they seem to leave
out here is they're making it evil capitalism, but I don't know the capitalist
corporation that's saying, "Hey, let's make these flame retardants"; nobody was
screaming for the flame retardants.

I can guarantee you, if you look back, who was trying to make all of these
things flame retardant? The government! The government was the one that is
forcing everybody to do these things. It is the government.

Annie’s point, that it’s a good thing pillows don’t burn, but that we
shouldn’t follow the cheap and easy way of using toxins to prevent it, is lost
in Beck’s rush to herd his sacred cows.

Which comes to the whole problem with pontificators like Beck. There is a
discussion to be had on how best to build a long-term sustainable and safe
future. There are even differences to be aired on the very subjects Annie
addresses. But he’s not interested in having a discussion. His attack-mode
style is the opposite of what happens at Bioneers, where issues get aired
passionately, but with a depth and clarity missing from the 24-hour networks and
their increasingly carnival-worthy capers.

Annie will be with us this year at Bioneers, where she will have the chance to
respond to the Becks of the world, and explain, in the same cheerful, reasonable
and concise way she does in The Story of Stuff why we should care about the
damage wrought by a consumer culture. What I’m sure she won’t do is spend
her time slandering, slithering and spinning her story.