Want to understand Cap and Trade? Watch this

December 3rd, 2009

I have to share a little secret: Since the July launch of my Eco Etiquette column for The Huffington Post, I’ve breathed a sigh of relief with each passing week that no one has yet taken me up on my offer to explain the difference between cap and trade and Cap’n Crunch. The carbon cap and trade legislation being hammered out on Capitol Hill is so complex, and the source of such heated debate, that to distill it into 800 words or less would be a head-scratching task, to say the least. Thankfully, someone else did the work for me: I’ll now only have to refer inquiring minds to The Story of Cap and Trade, a new 10-minute video from Annie Leonard and the other brilliant minds that brought us The Story of Stuff.

[Click here to watch video]

All in all, the video does an excellent job making sense of an issue that only 1 in 4 Americans understands, though it lacks some of the light bulb moments I experienced after first watching The Story of Stuff — but maybe I’m just more jaded now. (The first time I saw that now-famous takedown of consumerist society, I thought: Planned obsolescence? Companies are really that evil? But then again, that was before we bailed out Wall Street firms with our taxpayer money only to have them turn around and hand over $140 billion in bonuses this year.)

–Jennifer Grayson