Among the Intellectualoids
Season's Greenies
French toast for Christmas dinner -- and no thank you notes, please.
This is a tough time of year for eco-friendly global planners.
In Copenhagen they tried to put together a deal to save the world's forests while we rode around with millions of Christmas trees tied to our car roofs.
Among the ruses that came out of Copenhagen, they called on rich countries to pay poor countries to not cut down their trees.
In other tree news, Alternative Consumer magazine says we should stop buying Christmas trees and just draw holiday trees on old shopping bags. Here's the green prescription from Alternative Consumer for family fun during the holidays and how the tree should look for the kids on Christmas morning:
"No tree. No driving to the tree lot, watching them saw the tree down, wrapping it in plastic and then driving back home. No driving to Target, buying a plastic tree and driving home. We make a tree mural out of shopping bags and leave a few Sharpies around to decorate with. It's personal, meaningful and 100 percent recycled."
Well, not 100 percent, unless the family went Dumpster diving for some used Sharpies.
Imagine growing up in a house like that and not turning into a guilt-ridden psycho. I say cut down the trees and save the kids from developing a mixed bag of anti-social personality disorders -- things like excessive fear, envy, arrogance, pessimism and an anti-capitalist, anti-American ethos.
"The Rules" in Alternative Consumer for "A Freegan Christmas" include the following: (1) "No cards. Not even e-cards." (2) "No wrapping paper. There's something exciting about opening a wrapped gift, and you can achieve that by putting it in a paper bag -- we all know you have a billion under your sink." (3) "No thank-you cards." (4) "No holiday hams. French toast can replace tired turkey and ham dinners." (5) "No stress."
Maybe it's me, but it seems stressful to get a piece of French toast for dinner and think you're going to kill the planet if you don't wrap presents in old bags or don't just draw your Christmas tree on an old shopping bag with whatever Sharpie colors you can scrounge up from the kitchen drawers without spending a dime.
The problem with live Christmas trees, says Ohio State economics professor Brent Sohngen, is that profit-seeking landowners in the U.S. are knocking down stands of carbon-retaining hardwoods in order to increase the number of less-carbon-retaining pine plantations, increasing carbon dioxide levels, a greenhouse gas.
Sohngen estimates that 10 million acres in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana will be switched from hardwood forests to pine plantations (for lumber and the holidays) in the next 20 years, adding 700,000 tons more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year.
Fake Christmas trees from China (85 percent of the artificial trees in U.S. stores are produced in China) are also not politically correct. Alleged carcinogens are said to be generated during production, polluting the disproportionately poor who live near China's factory sites as well as the workers inside the factories, none of whom are paying members of the SEIU, the pro-collectivist Service Employees International Union.
Down under, the Australian Conservation Foundation estimates that the extra clothes and books that Australian consumers buy during the Christmas season add some 720,000 tons and 430,000 tons, respectively, in greenhouse pollution to the atmosphere per year.
The answer? One kid per family, no pets, no blinking Rudolphs from China -- and French toast for dinner, made, naturally, with eggs from only free range chickens.
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
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David Jack Smith| 12.24.09 @ 9:46AM
We make a tree mural out of shopping bags and leave a few Sharpies around to decorate with. It's personal, meaningful and 100 percent recycled...
...and of course, it looks like total crap. Just like
your life will be, once we achieve all the goals of the mental enviro Nazis.
David Jack Smith| 12.24.09 @ 9:52AM
Forgot to add, they are:
The Greench that stole Christmas
Paul McGrath| 12.24.09 @ 12:47PM
No trees, no meat, no colored paper, no gifts, no new clothes. The ultimate and logical conclusion of all this is that the earth would be better off if I was dead.
Merry Christmas!
Big Leo| 12.24.09 @ 1:36PM
The good news is that when the revolution comes and we destroy all the enemies of reason and freedom, those who have chose to live this way will want to die. It keeps our guilt level down.
Kevin| 12.25.09 @ 2:19PM
You are a wise man, Big Leo.
dcd| 12.24.09 @ 9:50PM
65" TV and a looped recording of a perfect tree. Looks better than the real thing, doesn't take up space in my apartment, and you can't get easier to put up and take down. Virtual is much more convenient.
Pingback| 12.24.09 @ 10:14PM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Season's Greenies [spectator.org] on links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
GerryinMaine| 12.25.09 @ 5:49AM
No exhalations, let alone exultations.
I buy my Christmas trees from friends who plant them and then shape them for years just so they can sell them to people like me.
Scrooge| 12.25.09 @ 9:04AM
"...The problem with live Christmas trees, says Ohio State economics professor Brent Sohngen, is that profit-seeking landowners in the U.S. are knocking down stands of carbon-retaining hardwoods in order to increase the number of less-carbon-retaining pine plantations, increasing carbon dioxide levels, a greenhouse gas..."
And yet the pine trees absorb some CO2 where as Professor Sohngen is a net emitter of gas - the necessary by-product of mammalian metabolism.
I would suggest he, and his like-minded colleagues, descend to their basements, pull the main breaker in their fuseboxes, close their gas valves and fully embrace life in the State of Nature. Then, after life quickly becomes nasty, poor and brutish, they find a cliff and throw themselves. lemming-like, into the sea earning forever our heart-felt gratitude for not only reducing their carbon footprint to zero but also for removing their tedious company from our midst.
Ned| 12.25.09 @ 10:59AM
I second that.
FTM| 12.27.09 @ 7:48AM
Can I watch! Can I watch! Can we put it on pay per view?
Nick| 1.5.10 @ 10:58PM
Why can't our land-use decisions be smart? Why can't we acknowledge our desire to live, and live well, and figure out how to take care of environmental problems that impart costs on our lives on earth (if you don't acknowledge the enormous value in non-market goods and services that we ALL get from the Amazon, Congo River Basin, and other forests in the developing world, then you aren't doing your very simple homework)? Why is that we meet dialogue about how to make 7 billion humans (and growing) live well on this one planet with derision? Honestly, I don't get it.
Marc Jeric| 12.25.09 @ 2:00PM
Environmentalism is a cult of death. "Sustainable population" - means kill off 5 billion people. Outlaw DDT - so far 500 million dead from malaria and other mosquito-transmitted deseases.
Outlaw CFC's to save ozone layer - a total lie; increased cost of refrigeration kills the poor. Just some of many cases of this cult of death.
ses| 12.25.09 @ 2:51PM
yemek tarifleri
Uriel| 12.25.09 @ 2:54PM
Isn't French Toast dipped in eggs?
EGGS!!
Pingback| 12.25.09 @ 11:32PM
Obama’s Festivus… « Time for Thorns links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Gail S| 12.26.09 @ 5:55PM
Here's one plan...check it out:
http://backyardfence.wordpress.....tion-plan/
Merry Christmas to all,
Gail S
Kris| 12.27.09 @ 12:06AM
Marc...not to worry. We baby boomers are gonna be dying off in the next 20 years, so not a problem with your 5 billion people. Also, infrastructure problems (highways, bridges,etc.) will no longer be an issue since there will be fewer vehicles (with attendant pollution) on the roads, and less demand for housing, etc. See? Greening...no problems... We just gotta die... Oh yeah...I'm gonna be cremated, so I guess that's a carbon footprint problem, but my disposal will be miniscule...three sheets to the wind!!! And I hope I will help bring up a flower or two...
FTM| 12.27.09 @ 7:54AM
Further proof that liberalism is a mental disorder. Not to say that elements of conservitism don't resemble a mental disorder. However I will say that liberalism as a mental disorder appear to be the more debilitating of the two conditions.
Case in point, the lady that says that we should use only one square of toilet paper per trip to the john. When I first heard this one I thought she was joking.
bmatkin| 12.28.09 @ 12:06AM
To FTM:
One square of TP per visit to the Can, as they said in Madagascar, "Who wipes?" Back to nature with their lattes, volvos, car toppers, perfectly maintained "wild " cycling trails and all the other green crap that infests the world. (Brought to you by your stolen tax dollars)
There is a big difference between Green Crap (one square please) and being good Stewards of the planet. One is a lie and the other is obvious.
levi's jean| 12.28.09 @ 2:25AM
levi's jeans
cheap jeans
Don M| 12.28.09 @ 11:15AM
I tried a variant of the No Wrapping Paper and used the morning's newspaper for my wife's presents. She's still not speaking to me. Note: that's not entirely a bad thing.
earthrise credits| 12.28.09 @ 8:53PM
Can I watch! Can I watch! Can we put it on pay per view?
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Particularly like your home, hope to have time to talk to you, thank you, bye!