By Keith C. Milne
Once upon a time, being in a rush, or the act of rushing, used to be reserved for emergencies and special occasions, not a chronic way of being that we seem to have somehow adopted along the way. Life gets extra hectic in the Fall, every year, and we tend to do things the same way most of the time. This includes all kinds of mindless behaviors and traditions that strain the planets resources globally, while simultaneously escalating global warming and environmental pollution. It’s past time to rethink how we do almost everything, including re-engineering the Christmas Holiday.
Many people say Christmas is their favorite holiday, mainly for all the cool stuff they’re likely to receive as gifts. Tradition around this holiday, after all, is to give gifts to family members, loved ones, or anyone you wish. This tradition has grown larger every year, and is now at epic commercial scale proportions. While this tradition can be fun, it is now incumbent upon us to ask ourselves, “at what cost to the environment and our atmosphere, and the resulting impact on global warming. This number might shock you, on average, consumers spend in excess of $800 billion annually for Christmas on gifts, food, decorations, drink, and festivities.
Global warming is really baked into the Christmas tradition: the use of finite resources that cause pollution when mined and used for manufacturing all the plastic goods, stainless steel goods, and the electronics, along with all of the different types of batteries that power them etc. This is not just a phenomenon reserved only for rich industrial countries, it is now global one that affects virtually every single country on the planet.
It is a well proven fact that all of Earth’s resources are rapidly being depleted, and our climate is rapidly changing in ways that will make living on Earth, even in the most minimal and basic way, difficult at best to put it nicely. As far as a continued comfortable existence, well, enjoy what comfort you currently enjoy for as long as you can, because living a comfortable existence in the near future will see comfort quickly getting smaller in he rear view mirror. We no longer have the luxury of just continuing living the way we always have, with most of us living either with some degree of ignorance regarding the issue, or some degree of denial about it, or both.
Resources are being rapidly depleted for manufacturing goods, much of which ends up in one of the (now) six trash gyres distributed amongst oceans in both the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as in the eastern and western oceans all in a relatively short period of time after being manufactured. No ocean is exempt any longer, and it’s completely unnecessary.
What I’ve discussed thus far doesn’t even account for all of the greenhouse gases being spewed into the atmosphere from the trucks involved in mining the raw materials for both commercial and consumer goods, and then getting those raw materials to the factories. This also isn’t accounting for all the greenhouse gases that are also being spewed into the atmosphere from all the trucks, planes, trains, and huge cargo ships globally being utilized to transport the finished goods from all those factories to all their distribution ports around the globe, then even more greenhouse gases from the unloading operations of all of these delivery vehicles and vessels, and then delivering their cargo to stores and warehouses across the land, globally.
Collectively, these millions of vehicles used just to transport the raw materials for making the goods, then moving the goods to ships and trains and trucks, then unloaded by more vehicles, then transported to stores, then to homes, then back to stores for returns, or landfills, or the side of roads, account for an enormous amount of what ends up in our atmosphere that will ultimately keep much of the warmth of the sun that falls on our landscapes trapped, unable to escape back to space as infrared heat. This is why over time, we have begun seeing a rapid rise in global average temperature. This is just for toys and gifts made and bought for Christmas, but we continue endlessly buying and consuming constantly all year.
Not everyone is going to like what they’ve receive for Christmas, and they will say thank you and then discharge more greenhouse gases to promptly drive to return these goods for cash or exchange for other goods. Unfortunately, a large percentage of what is returned cannot be sold again for many reasons. That results in even more greenhouse gas emissions to transport these goods to shelters, and second hand goods outlets.
Sometimes, returned goods are bought in large quantities from individuals for resale online or at home based tag sales. The rest is either recycled, incinerated, or buried in a landfill. But all of these activities involve nearly continuous emitting of greenhouse gases into the air we all share because, until now, we’ve all been using fossil fuel engines to do all of this work with, and we’ve damaged our environment to the point where it is changing in ways that will now come back to haunt and likely harm many of us.
Having outlined our normal, everyday consumption behavior and the chain of carbon emissions that are involved in just one major holiday, helps illuminate why we have a global warming issue that seems to compound a little more every year, with the last several years setting new heat records globally.
According to the Stockholm Environmental Institute, “Our total consumption and spending on food, travel, lighting, and gifts over three days of Christmas festivities result in as much as 650 kg of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) per person – equivalent to the weight of 1,000 Christmas puddings! This is 5.5% of our total annual carbon footprint!” That is a huge percentage for just one holiday. The weight of 1000 Christmas puddings? An output of enough greenhouse gas emissions to equal the weight of 1000 Christmas puddings PER PERSON is unbelievable.
I began this essay with the problem of the stress of Christmas on the planet (and people), but this is only one thing we’re currently doing in a way that is contributing to our own demise at an accelerated rate. The issue as I just presented it points more to the oil and gas industry more than Christmas as one of the true underlying foundational issues.
For example: all of the transportation involved in mining raw materials, manufacturing, and then transporting the finished goods to their final destinations wouldn’t be so harmful to the planet if they didn’t discharge greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That is precisely why there has been a significant push in recent years towards electric vehicles in an attempt to begin to eliminate gas emissions entirely. It has been slow to be adopted due to the high cost, the lack of lithium for battery manufacturing, and infrastructure to support new vehicle owners, such as wide spread public charging stations, as well as fast, affordable repairs by trained individuals.
The other real issue is us, and the way we have grown accustomed to living. Do we really need to go crazy buying all this stuff just so we aren’t the only ones without gifts at gatherings, when at least 50% of what is received ends up being returned and becoming ensnared in the returned goods process outlined earlier?
I say, the time has arrived for us to finally force ourselves to break the habit of having all that we want and can afford to have, instantly, no matter what it means to the planet, and the other people, and all the creatures that live on it. It is past time to become more mindful about our consumption habits, and all traditions that significantly contribute to global warming and pollution.
I don’t think I’m alone in not wanting to have to wear a space suit all the time because of ozone depletion, excess solar radiation, and bad air quality becoming our norm. I don’t want to watch everything green turn brown because of lack of rain, or too much acidity, or no one being allowed to water anything to preserve what little water is left for us to ration.
In a previous post I called for the renewal of Nuclear Reactors in America so that we could finally achieve an all electric or at least a zero fossil fuel existence and economy. Until that happens, there really are tons of little things we can do both as individuals and as communities or even as a State.
For example:
-Anyone who can afford an electric vehicle should buy one as soon as possible.
-Traffic lights should be either on a camera or a buried weight system to minimize how much time drivers spend sitting idle at traffic intersections.
-Where there is adequate room to construct traffic circles, they should be constructed post haste as they keep drivers moving, minimizing wasted fuel and the emissions they output.
-Rethinking our consumption habits and re-gifting, recycling, reusing, or making new things out of some of our “trash” whenever possible.
-Municipalities should make going electric with all of their vehicles mandatory while also adding PV solar panels to all buildings when possible.
-All homes and buildings that can receive adequate sunlight should add photo voltaic solar to these buildings, and there should always be huge tax incentives for people to take advantage of for doing so, and free panels for the poor to ensure they go up anyway.
-Consolidation of shopping trips utilizing ride sharing, perhaps with neighbors to help minimize how many polluting vehicles are actually being driven.
-Reduce meat consumption: Cutting down on meat consumption, especially beef, can significantly reduce carbon emissions associated with livestock farming.
-Expanded use of AI software that can better control commute traffic to minimize idling and traffic jams.
-Much expanded use of traffic circles whenever possible and smart intersection lights, perhaps with AI integration that would minimize how long any one side sits, in order to minimize jam ups and idling.
-Doing away with Christmas in it’s present iteration. Not everyone is religious, and not everyone feels good about mindless shopping for gifts or receiving a bunch of stuff that they now need to manage every year just to prop up capitalistic desire for endless profit over all else. Besides, it’s cold in the winter, the days are short, and no one likes shopping when it’s dark and dreary and likely cold. Since everyone LOVES summer, why not explore moving “Christmas” to June, July, or August sometime. My vote is for early August, right in between Independence Day, and Labor Day.
Rather than have the focus be split between Jesus and Walmart or Amazon, let’s let the spirit of “Christmas” shine through and make it all about simple celebration of our freedom, our health, each other, and the Earth by simply getting together and enjoying food and drink and music and dancing and other G-rated festivities without all the strain on our planet. Why does it have to be about gifts and buying things or church related things that only apply to a minority? We can make Christmas new and improved while also doing the planet quite a big favor. It is something that we could unify over, not only domestically, but globally.
I’m just getting started with this list. There are literally a million little things that we can all do everyday that makes a tiny difference, but collectively, globally, they add up enormously. One example: not leaving your big oversized pickup truck idling for over a half hour when you deliver a package or supplies to a job site while you talk and joke around with people at the site. I’ve seen this so many times I cannot believe it, and the last time was just earlier today, even though it’s against State law to do so.
Christmas is purely a socially constructed holiday by the Christian Religions, and then harnessed by capitalists who have cleverly tied all the purchasing and gift giving to the birth of Jesus and the three wise men. All Christian, all controversial, all largely out-dated and non-applicable to most people so why not separate the two things out, then do away with both of their integration with a holiday we call Christmas and all the damage it levies on Mother Earth?
Christmas isn’t simple, largely homemade, and inexpensive anymore. It’s a happy holiday for some, but a whole myriad of alternative descriptions can also be attributed to this out of control capitalist holiday. The way retailers rollout Christmas earlier every single year is an extremely harmful practice, and needs to be modified hugely for the sake of our planet and the future of our entire civilization.
I wouldn’t write essays like this, particularly calling for a major overhaul of one of mankind’s most beloved holidays. I know I’m not winning any friends by even suggesting it. However, I cannot get past the importance of this issue. It is the single issue of our time for mankind. The damage has already been done and anymore is just adding insult to injury.
Big changes can be painful, but fruitful. Don’t you want to see your grandchildren and their grandchildren have a shot at being still able to live free and comfortably in a healthy environment? That’s what’s at stake, and it’s not some big maybe, or me simply being alarmist. It’s upon us now to make some drastic changes. I’m less hopeful about our ability to unite and do the right things around this issue, than I am about the Earth’s ability to heal itself if we do.
