Okay, this is near pointless argument. The difference is negligible. What difference would it make if everyone used fake or real trees to the environment? Nothing.

I consider myself an environmentalist and yet I drive a gas guzzling SUV - because here is a radical idea: Your personal choices will make no difference to the environment. Why? Because the problems are too big - you've got the industrialization of China, India and other parts of the world. Greenhouse gases are rising too fast for liberal Americans to have any impact no matter how "green" they try to be.

I think the whole "conserve" movement is a waste of time and worse - because it takes our eyes off the real issues: finding alternative sources of energy, setting up effective regulatory systems, etc. It just makes you feel good - but you're not helping.

The inconvienent truth is that you are right.

It's nice to think this way, as it absolves you of responsibility, but it's wrong.

We makes choices every day that affect the environment, and all of those individual choices have collective effect. For instance, the environmental effect of my family's decision to buy a 90% efficient furnace was negligible in and of itself, but it may well influence others to make the same choice when I tell them about it and every purchase encourages the manufacturer to make more efficient furnaces.

The same thing is true of deciding to get the high-mileage car rather than that SUV, the decision to take a subway rather than a taxi, or the decision to buy low-VOC paint when you redo the kitchen. And the more consistently you make pro-environmental decisions, the more impact you have, both directly and indirectly. Going the other way is like saying that you shouldn't turn bother closing the door completely because only a little heat is escaping the house at any given moment. That's certainly true, but if you leave the door ajar for the month of January, you'll notice the difference in your heating bill. Likewise, if you dismiss all the individual decisions about the environment as having only minimal impact, you fail to recognize the cumulative effect you can have by making better decisions over time.

mcusa:

I consider myself an environmentalist and yet I drive a gas guzzling SUV -

Huh, I consider you an idiot.

I agree Randy

To say that an individuals effort is a waste of time would make voting in an election pointless.

We only get one try in life, make yours one you will be proud of.

The alternative is "I'm an idiot but its OK because so is everyone else..."

Regarding the topic of the tree I do agree that the differences are negligable. Putting a tree indoors makes no sense at all. Its not biblical but merely a "tradition". Its not charitable, not healthy and serves no real purpose. Real trees drop pine needles everywhere and can bring pests into the house. Fake trees simply consume resources. Doing something that makes no sense simply because previous generations have done the same thing is just insane.

The tree tradition comes from pagans who believed that some trees had special powers and were sacred. They used to decorate trees but they left the trees outside - and alive. You might think decorating a living tree was silly but theyd probably think the current indoor christmas tree is even more absurd.

Moving the environmental cause forward to a point of true sustainability will require people questioning tradition and doctrine not just finding the path of least resistance.

Think about how traditions get started... Someone some where was the first person ever to bring a tree indoors and call it a christmas tree. Still think individuals dont matter?

Why not be part of a new movement - the outdoor christmas tree movement. Dont bring a tree indoors, plant one in your yard and decorate it every year. The added bonus is more room in the house.

I don't think looking back in life and realizing that I drove a hybrid while the whole planet baked in CO2 is going to make me proud. Some things do make a difference, for example my community is the midst of a drought. Through conservation and water restrictions, the water supply has been adequate (for now). I think that is more akin to voting - the community comes together and makes a difference.

Now let's compare that to CO2 emissions. They are going up so fast that if everyone in America did everything they could (or even eliminated all CO2 emissions) this problem wouldn't be solved. It is a very hard problem to solve but we should be talking about taxing energy, alternative sources, global standards, etc. which would actually make a difference.

i totally agree with the guy who started this thread - certain enviro goals are pointless. it's like saying we should install low flow water fixtures when farming/industry uses NINETY percent of water. better to focus on things that can be worth our time like superfund sites and heavy metals, etc.

Agree with the basic premise of the first poster here and it's an important point. Even as a believer in environmentalism, telling yourself a "just-so" story that ignores the hard data is simply delusional. The truth is that the poster's individual decision has NO effect on over-all emissions and will not do so even over the entire course of his lifetime. To ignore this truth with homilies about "one person can make a difference" is unfortunately pure wishful thinking. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, whether or not it makes a sound is completely irrelevant.

The only real way to "make a difference" is to influence others -- LOTS of others. If we can make environmental responsibility a shared community value, like charity, like kindness, like simple politeness (I know -- wishful thinking on multiple fronts), and make it part of the way we interact and judge each other, then we start to have an impact. Much like the decline in littering in our cities back in the 1980's as people not only abstained but actually criticized/condemned/ostracize­d those who did litter, we could make environmental responsibility an integral part of the way we judge and interact with one another. In that context, personal fidelity to the values is important only insofar as it ensures that the values are not corrupted by hypocrisy and cyncism.

Absent the above -- a visible and SHARED influence to protect the environment -- that author's actions really do not have an impact. Personal action is meaningless absent the social dimension.

Good post, randy....I hope there are enough humans with that attitude to at least do the best they can to do LESS damage to the environment. Whether anyone 'believes' it is enough is really immaterial. How much is 'enough'? One can do only what one can do, it is the collective 'doing' that gets the job done.

Happy New Year.

It's not ONE choice that we make that effects the environment. It's an accumulation of the choices we make every single day. If I buy one plastic water bottle one day, it's true that in the grand scheme of things, the environmental impact is negligible. But if for every of my life I buy a bottle of water that DOES add up to a huge impact. Well, let's HOPE it would add up to a lot of bottles of water!

It's good that you are thinking about finding alternative sources of energy and setting up regulatory systems. In some ways, though, focusing only on the big picture seems to be an excuse to ignore your own personal responsibility. But by far the strongest impact you can have on the world is with your personal choices. Not by silently wishing you could dictate the personal choices of others, but by every day doing your tiny part.

I wonder if this type of logic was used by passenger pigeon hunters in the 1800s. They saw tens of millions of the birds flying in gigantic flocks and could rest easy after an orgy of killing that the several thousands killed that day would not make a dent in the number of birds. I think buffalo hunters used the same logic too. I think we call it the tragedy of the commons...

Wow, I have to say that every little bit counts. How do you consider yourself an environmentalist if you are waiting for someone else to make the change? Did it occur to you that maybe if you changed you're personal choices to be more environmentally friendly that it would have an effect in combination with everyone else who is doing it too? Carbon credits are useless, but conservation is the best option until a renewable energy source is found and actually thinking about the state of the environment actually keeps our minds on the problem, rather than blaming it on other industrialized nations and ignoring it.

Randy, Indy, he's right. Quibbling about what kind of tree to use at Christmas is absolutely pointless. It doesn't absolve anyone of anything. Perhaps he was a little inaccurate saying that personal choices make no difference, as in pouring a bottle of Drano into the lake is a pretty destructive personal choice, but the point is that whether I drive a Hyunda Santa Fe, Ford F-150, Toyota Corolla, or a Honda Civic hybrid, I won't be making much of a difference, if any, in the grand scheme of things.

Guys, so far I haven't seen anyone do this today, but I want to nip this in the bud just in case. Driving an SUV is not evil, nor is it irresponsible. Some of us actually need larger vehicles. Moreover, those of us that do use our larger cars can't necessarily afford to run out and buy a Prius (I could buy an Elantra and an Accent for the cost of a Prius). The biggest differnece isn't environmental, it's economic. For those that drool themselves silly over gas taxes, let me ask you something. Did the environment benefit from $4.50/gal gasoline? Nope. People still, by and large, drove. Gas still burned. Where was the effect felt? In my wallet.

The title of this thread is appropriate. This is a pointless argument, rehashed from last year's posting of the same pointless argument. In reality, the best thing you can do is keep your own house clean. Yes, be conscientious about what you do, but ridiculous arguments about minutia like real or fake Christmas trees and mechanical or wood pencils get us all nowhere.

Hey Hypocrite:

If Clinton hadn't exempted pickups and SUV's from the fleet gas mileage standards, we'd be half as dependent on foreign oil--a half that would have precluded OPEC from manipulating the market. Your choice to to buy SUV shows that you are like the slave owners who claimed to be against slavery.

As for your "none of it makes any difference" nonsense, when I was a teenager Lake Erie caught fire off Cleveland and burned for three days. The papers were full of stories about how it would take ten thousand years to restore the lake. A little regulation and all of the sudden the lake was recovered within ten years.

Conservation is the quickest, easiest way to benefit the environment and lift our dependence on foreign oil. Your personal greed and social recklessness is what is not helping.

I don't know what's worse: your hypocrisies or your defeatism. I think you'd be better suited under some other form of government. A democratic republic requires some virtue in it citizenry--some optimism, some willingness to take personal responsibility.

Red China: that's where you ought to be a citizen: there you don't have to be responsible for yourself. Here you are just an obnoxious moron, reassuring other reprobates that their anti-social self-indulgent lack of citizenship is somehow acceptable. You are all unfit for the the advantages and duties of freedom. If some social benefit requires sacrifice from you then it must be not worth the effort. Thank God your parents, grandparents and great grandparents were better than you.

I consider myself an experimental environmentalist. My specialty is random experimentation with the environment. In an attempt to fulfill my purpose in life, I was changing the oil in my 89 Suburban the other day. I get around 9 miles a gallon in that 455 V8. I disposed of my 6 quarts of oil by pouring it out at a local beach, while hunting for migratory birds. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I poured the oil onto a nest of seagull eggs. Just as an experiment. I photographed the nest that day, and every day thereafter for about a month. Oddly enough, the eggs didn't hatch. My hypothesis turned out to be true. That being, engine oil causes bird eggs to fail to develop.

Now my point in all this can be summarized in a question. Is it better to shoot seagulls or to kill their unborn fetuses with motor oil? Perhaps that is another example of a pointless argument...