Maybe a stupid question--what do christmas lights do

to the environment? If anything?

I know that there are lightbulbs for lamps that take less of a toll on the environment, just wondered--this time of year with so many putting lights on their home exteriors. Is this bad/negative to the environment?

Sorry if this is a stupid question...

:blush:

though they may be an easily renewable resource

We have an artificial--I haven't put any lights on it, wasn't sure if I should bother. Why waste energy?

Last year (our first with a tree), I didn't use any lights on it at all. Just decorated it sans lights. It was still pretty...

Theodore Roosevelt when he became President, decided to set an example on forest conservation by NOT having a Christmas Tree. He had pre-teen and teen age children and all of them wanted a tree. At this point the story diverge. Story "A" goes that the kids smuggled in a tree and when TR found out about it and then walked the kids over to his head of the Forest Service, Pinchot. Story "B" had the kids going to Pinchot directly and taking him to TR. Either way TR was in the presence of his head of the Forest Service saying he wanted to conserve the Forest by NOT having a Christmas Tree and wanted Pinchot to tell his kids why it was important to save trees.

Now Pinchot had traveled the world studying other countries Forest Conservation. He wanted to buy land for Federal Forests so he could better balance not only how the trees were harvested, but also restored. He wanted to cut out clear-cutting and reduce the harm such cutting did even on private lands, but the Chief program while head of the Forest Service was buying land and putting it under Federal Control (more to should private owners how to better manage their own lands but also to do a better job of maintaining forests for future use). While Pinchot first aim was tree used for woods (Mostly on Federal Land) he also wanted to improve how forests and trees on Private land were handed. The later was harder for he could NOT order how private owners could sue their land, but he could developed programs that better the balance between the environment and the needs of the private land owners. The Christmas Tree was the heart of that program.

At that point Pinchot told TR, that saving trees while important is less important than saving FORESTS. Furthermore FOrests are more than trees AND trees serve more purposes than where we get wood from. Water conservation is tied in with trees, pollution reduction is tied in with trees. Furthermore you have to understand how Forests and man interact. All told NOT cutting down a tree may not save a forest, for the tree may than be cut down and just thrown away and the land converted to open field, for such farmland or Pasture land is more valuable to the owner than to leave trees he can not sell grow on that land. On the other hand if that landowner has a REASON to plant trees, he will plant trees and you get many of the same advantages as a true forest. One of the quickest turn-over trees are Evergreens grown as Christmas Trees. This provides a good return on the land AND also provides stability of Trees on the land, but this only happens if there is a market for Christmas Trees. If no one buys Christmas Trees most of the land the trees will grow on will be converted to Farmland or pasture, with the lost of bio-diversity which incur during such conversion.

The only way to prevent this is to encourage Landowners to plant Christmas Trees on marginal land. The best way to encourage such planting is to buy a Christmas Tree. Thus Pinchot told TR the best way he could help the Forests of America was to buy a Christmas Tree. TR respected Pinchot and took his advice and the White House has had a Christmas Tree ever since.

Pinchot:
http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/PA_Env-Her/pinchot_bio.htm
http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/usfscoll/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.html

TR and the Christmas Tree:
http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/O_Tannenbaum/12b-The_White_House_Christmas_Trees.htm
http://partners.nytimes.com/books/98/12/20/reviews/981220.rv021431.html

Other Christmas Tree Sites:
http://agweb.okstate.edu/fourh/aitc/lessons/extras/facts/cmastree.html

Manufacturing artificial trees is a very energy and resource-heavy process. Plastic synthesis, paint manufacture, soft steel wire extrusion, and mechanized assembly are not eco-cheap processes.

If you buy a real tree, you can re-plant it; most trees will survive the process, and those that don't can be recycled in the form of mulch. Four strings of lights at 7½ watts per string will draw 30 watts per hour. It will take 33 hours of continuous use to draw even the first kilowatt-hour.

--p!

except for the Christmas tree market.

so they only grow trees to turn a profit? Very interesting.

I haven't seen as many people with trees on top of their cars as I have in years past--I wonder why. Or maybe some wait and get theirs later...

fast-growing firs to grow as Xmas trees. They had retired out of NYC, bought a bunch of cheap farmland in the Poconos, and decided to use some of it for additional income.

A few years later they joined a church that didn't celebrate Xmas: it was considered pagan. They decided it would be encouraging paganism to cut them.

Scores of acres of crowded fir trees. The owners were in their early 70s when I knew them some 25 years ago and there really wasn't anybody to thin them. Trees were showing signs of stress. I can only imagine what they grew into before the couple's demise 10 years ago. Some logging company probably was hired by the executors to come in and pulp them all.

How very sad. :(

I guess pulping them was sad, and watching them grow stunted. The trees were pretty to have around (even if they were all in neat little rows), and the couple sort of viewed it as punishment for their (former) pagan ways.

And when it got too bad, consolation could be found in the wife's "raspberry cordial", sweetened vodka that had partially mashed raspberries soaked in it for a while. An old family recipe

They may have been fundamentalist Xians of a rather strange sort, but they knew how to have fun :-)

<BogusXmlTag NotDirectedOnlyTo = bliss_eternal/>

Sad?

SAD?!?!?

We're talking about trees, folks. Fast-growing, UN-endangered Christmas Trees.

Not children.

Not unborn Fundamentalist fetuses.

Not even cats.

A tree gets pulped. Big deal. Other stuff grows in the space. And unless we're talking about hundreds of acres of critical woodland, it's no big deal.

Look, I love the environment as much as anyone, but the Christmas tree market is not an ecologically destructive endeavor. A growing tree requires much less un-renewable energy than a manufactured one.

Christmas is a pleasant diversion from a year of anger, fear, and hatred. For a few weeks, people feel better and act nicer. The energy consumed by growing trees and decorating with low-wattage lights is microscopic.

Get a natural tree, some lights and decorations, put on some Christmas music on a low-power stereo player, and get Christmassy. Decorate the whole house with lights if you want to. Have your family over. Go caroling. Have a Christmas dope-and-acid orgy if you're so inclined. The environment will survive your holiday depredations.

If you want to express your ecological conscience, boycott the Xmas Consume-a-Thon mentality. But shed not a tear for the tree that brings you Christmas cheer. It's part of the Circle Of Life. Use it, re-plant it or mulch it, and know that you didn't demand a tree of plastic and steel.

--p!

That use very little power and last for a long time comparred to conventional bulbs.

part of what prompted my question.

Thanks for your response--I appreciate it! :hi:

of strip malls, shopping centers, etc. that add holiday lights. Wow! That's A LOT of energy!

We lose something too with all that light. We lose the stars. We lose the milky way.

When I think of these think of these things I want to repeat Tom Wait's line from another context, "Sometimes my heart beats like thunder, 'don't know why it don' 'splode."

weird little fluorescent tubes now--the ones that just shine like light, but they aren't actually plugged into a source of power. They wrap them around poles, trees, etc.

I've seen those in a few lots and wondered what those do, in terms of energy and the environment...

But they're probably a fire hazard.

Hmmmm....

how much depends on what kind and how many lights a person is using (remember the scene in Christmas Vacation when Chevy Chase finally gets his lights to work and the power plant goes into overdrive?). There was just an article in the Mpls paper about how much juice various lights use. LED's use the least and they last longer.

In a sense, they're not good because they use more energy but I don't know if they do that much harm. Besides, when it's dark by 5pm, they cheer things up.

Where would we all be, if everyone at least got LED and thought more about how many they use and where...

I don't see nearly as many homes decorated with lights as I once did. Not sure if people are guarding energy and the environment or just their own electric bills. LOL!

all that hideous neon. That's how America does sacred, turns the suburbs into Las Vegas on crack.

.

and that one should wash their hands after handling them! Imagine what a couple million strings of those in the trash will do to the ground water.

Yeah, lots of power. Even worse there is the plastic which will not biodegrade. Even worse are the heavy metals in the filaments and wires leading to them, inside the glass.

So, they are terrible, and I have about 15 strings of 100 lights each, all glowing. (OK, many of them are not all working, so I will have to buy more ticky-tacky).

It sucks, what choices we have. It takes a MINDFUL person to choose as best we can.

...much better to use recycled ear-wax candles. Fun to make, too!

the real harm to the environment is all the gasoline used by people driving around to look at the lights.

Holiday lights delay the filling of cemetaries. If only for a short while.

<rant mode=ON>

For two to six weeks of the year, people hang lights that draw about sixty to 200 watts of power. Big frickin' deal. Considering that so many people like them, it's a beneficial use of the energy.

What's your stereo rated? It's tough to find one these days that's rated under 200W stereo RMS.

In my neck of the woods, electricity costs about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour, which includes those hidden costs. My own strings of lights consume just 30 watts (7½ watts per string). If I have them on 8 hours a day for 45 days (which is a HIGH estimate), it's just over $1.51 worth of electricity. For the energy hogs, it's a gluttonous three bucks, on the average, for the indoor lights.

And those who hang outdoor lights? Time to fire up Old Sparky!

I figure I'm spending a buck and a half to contribute to helping people (such as ME) enjoy the holiday. The power drain is small, and the payoff is big. Anything that uses that little power that helps people act in a civil manner can't be all bad.

Please submit all subpoenas calling me before the World Court to answer charges of Genocide, Ecocide, and Mopery with Intent to Flout to:

Yer Ass
c/o Nowhere, Man
Getouttatown, Pennsyltucky
00000½

And let me know when your two-hundred-watt stereo system goes into the trash.

</rant>

--p!

...still sitting in a box from when I emigrated. Do I get a prize for being close enough and not putting it in a landfill? ;)