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Viral Video 'The Story of Stuff' Is Full of Misleading Numbers - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

Misleading: "Where I live, in the United States, we have less than 4 percent of our original forests left."

• The U.S. Forest Service reports that 33 percent of the nation is forested, and that the number has been stable for about 100 years. It sounds like Leonard is saying that 96 percent of our forests have been cut down, but what she's really saying is that some trees have been cut down at some point in the last 400 years in nearly every forest.

Misleading: "80 percent of the planet's original forests are gone."

• The U.N. reports that 30 percent of the earth's land surface is forested. Though many areas have been logged, the film seems to imply that 80 percent of forests are now gone, which is untrue. Though still a substantial environmental problem, the U.N. reports that the rate of deforestation is going down.

False: "Of the largest 100 economies on earth now, 51 are corporations."

• According to a 2002 study at the University of Leuven in Belgium, that number should be about 37. And even the largest corporation is tiny compared to some of the world's biggest economies — Exxon, the biggest of all, is 1/200th the size of the U.S. economy. The error came about because environmentalists were comparing the sales of corporations to the GDP of nations, which aren't comparable.

Misleading: "75 percent of global fisheries now are fished at or beyond capacity."

• According to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, 24 percent of the fisheries they're monitoring are over-exploited or depleted. Fifty-two percent are being fished at or near capacity, which means fish stocks aren't going up, but they won't necessarily go down either.

Do some research on Annie Leonard, she has a definite agenda.