The Story of Cap and Trade

Task: “In your opinion, how should the industrial design community react to the climate change solution discussed in this movie?”

The Story of Cap and Trade depicts a fundamental flaw in society – the pursuit of wealth over the environment. Abusing the environment to gain wealth seems to be a common trend today in a society where we are governed by how much we’re worth. The emissions trading scheme or the carbon stock market occurring in the U.S. is predicted to burst like the subprime mortgages market, yet no one has stepped in to stop this. There needs to be a governing body willing to stand up and address this issue and utilise the nation’s resources to develop a better system.

“The future of our planet is at stake.” It’s something that we’ve all heard of, even in the movies, and I feel that I was uninterested and unmotivated by this movie in particular. However, my view of the industrial design community and its role with climate change is that there should be a greater focus on addressing this issue, especially with stronger government support. There is a clear lack of government intervention and it’s a fundamental reason as to why nothing is being done to avert the damage to the environment. Design is leading us to a new era where there is hope of recovering from the damage done by polluting corporations. More efficient and innovative ways of manufacturing products are emerging and should continue until further changes are met.

As I felt that there wasn’t a clear motive for the film, there isn’t exactly a solution that the industrial design community have to work towards. The message I received after watching The Story of Cap and Trade was that society should work together to find a better solution to solving the climate change problem and that no one had done that yet. Perhaps, the responsibility of the design community is to concentrate on developing a system that envelopes society as a whole in order to create awareness, understanding and force change upon them to stop climate change. Therefore, the industrial design community should react with careful hostility towards climate change and have a prudent outlook on possible solutions at hand to tackle the issue.

There really weren’t any quotes I found worth discussing or enlightening. After viewing The 11th Hour and Waste = Food, nothing surprises me with society and its lack of respect towards the environment. Although, the blatant cheating by large corporations to gain offset permits should be stopped and further cheating should be monitored by changing the lax restrictions currently in place.

As for the film itself, I honestly found it to be a cheap attempt at making a relatively boring social issue into something fun and educational. But it fails to achieve what it sets out to do. It is basically a classroom lesson with facts and figures accompanied by poorly drawn animations that I suppose attempt to look cute and hold the viewer’s attention for the duration of those dismal 9 minutes.