Annie Leonard is back with a new video in her ‘Story Of’ series – The Story Of Change: Why Citizens (Not Shoppers) Hold The Key To A Better World.

Living green is a great place to start, but a terrible place to stop says Annie in her latest video.

Annie points out that many of the “going green” tips kicking around the place (including some of those on this site) start out with buying more environmentally products and end with recycling those items. She raises a very valid point – that we can’t buy our way out of this mess; change needs to occur at the source of the problem.

While simple green actions count, we won’t change the world for the better by using baking soda for our cleaning needs, nor will we change it just by expressing outrage on blogs where we are preaching to the choir or confining our efforts to basic clicktivism.

Drawing on recent history where major positive social change has occurred; Annie says these events weren’t based on people perfecting personal choices, but changing the rules of the game.

“Real change happens when citizens come together to demand rules that work,” she says. “Trying to live eco-perfectly in today’s system is like trying to swim upstream… by changing what our economy prioritizes, we can change the current so that the right thing becomes the easiest thing to do.”

All of us have skills that can be used in some way to band together – either physically or virtually – to effect the changes that need to occur in the system to make it work in a way where more socially and environmentally responsible living is the norm; not just *a* way of life, but *the* way of life.

Annie says: “So ask yourself, ‘What kind of change maker am I?’ We need investigators, communicators, builders, resisters, nurturers and networkers”.

At Annie’s site, StoryOfStuff.org, you can learn what type of change maker you might be – and the next steps you can take.

Other “Story Of” videos:

The Story Of Citizens United Vs. FEC
The Story Of Stuff
The Story Of Cosmetics
The Story Of Broke
The Story Of Electronics
The Story Of Bottled Water
The Story Of Cap And Trade