Christmas shopping habits affect global warming

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Christmas shopping habits affect global warming
Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com
December 15, 2007

Just as the conference in Bali on global warming wraps up with a middling agreement, consumers in the US and Europe are rushing to holiday stores, mostly unaware of how their Christmas consumerism affects global warming. The British independent think-tank, Nef (new economics foundation) has released a report highlighting the environmental cost of holiday shopping.

Many of the must-have presents this season are electronic gadgets, from Nintendo's super-popular Wii to digital photo frames to IPods. Such gifts come with great carbon costs. Nef reports that if one million digital photo frames are sold "their average CO2e emissions for a year would hit 11,000 tonnes — or the equivalent of over 14,000 one way flights from London to New York."

While the conference in Bali focused much of its discussion on industrialized nations helping poorer nations adapt to global warming—since it is those nations that will be hit first and hardest—holiday shoppers in the West are in a frenzy over Nintendo's game system Wii. Nef estimates that "the CO2e emissions produced by each Wii games consol for example — just a single household electrical device - using its Wiiconnect24 stand-by facility, assuming a modest 14 hours playing per week, is over the course of a year greater than, or equal to, the annual carbon dioxide emissions per person in countries such as Burundi or Chad."

The Nef report also highlights the significant carbon cost of purchasing items from China. "Things produced in China generally pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, because China's energy mix contains much more carbon. But even that excludes the carbon cost of shipping them halfway around the world." In 2006 China was the world's third top exporter, exporting 974 billion dollars worth of goods. It is also the world's second highest emitter of carbon.

It may seem that with the housing crisis, credit crunch, and rising cost of energy shoppers in the US would be reining in their spending this year. Yet retail sales in the US rose 1.2 percent in November—double the amount most economists predicted, according to the Commerce Department.

In its report, Nef offers some alternatives to holiday consumerism while still having a meaningful holiday. These include giving the gift of time rather than material items, playing secret Santa so only one gift is given, and reading a book, playing games, or going sledding instead of high-tech gifts. Other possibilities include donating to charity or various organizations as gifts. For the environmentally conscious a year's worth of carbon credits is a great gift or a donation to wildlife or conservation organization.

On its website Nef describes itself as an organization that desires to "expose the problems with the international finance and economic systems and create appropriate remedies", ultimately creating "a new economy that serves people and the planet" by redefining "wealth and progress."

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