Dear editor,
I will, no doubt, be accused of being “a real Grinch,” or worse, for this… but it should be said.
If we are seriously concerned about climate change, global warming, and leaving a good environment to our children, why are people buying “live” Christmas trees? A misnomer if there ever was one. As well as grossly hypocritical.
Why are you paying exorbitant rates for a now-dead tree that was removing carbon dioxide from the air before it was killed on your behalf?
Once you haul it home and, three weeks later, haul it to a gas-powered wood chipper, or the landfill, you will have needlessly added more carbon dioxide to the environment. Nice going “environmentalist.” Does the word “hypocrisy” come to mind?
Once the tree is in your house in a pot of water you spend inordinate time covering its natural beauty with mountains of garish plastic lights and ornaments. All products of a wasteful misuse of copper, petroleum-based chemicals, and minerals. Again, adding to, not reducing, global warming. Then, for three weeks, you power it all up with electricity too often generated by coal or gas-fired power plants.
Would it not be far better to donate to reforestation projects than killing trees for ceremonies Christians appropriated from others?
It would certainly be less hypocritical.
Merry Christmas.
Gary Korpan