Christmas Consumption

Strange, isn't it, that our images of Christmas all invoke warmth, lights, huge meals, piled up presents: consumption on a vast scale. All those things involve burning fuel, emitting disproportionate amounts of carbon. Slowly the penny is beginning to drop that we cannot go on like this. Our western consumption has changed the world more in the last hundred years than it changed in the preceding half million years. The Stern report, just released as I write, does not argue the science any longer or even the morals, but looks at the economics. It foresees a world where any release of carbon has to be taxed, where casual travel will be a thing of the past, where our carbon emissions have to be pegged to some 10% of current levels.

Believe me, I don't want to spoil Christmas for you, one of the greatest and most moving of Christian festivals. But it doesn't have to be a season of gross consumption. The first Christmas certainly was not: a poor family were simply grateful for a humble shelter. And what we really value about the season - the warmth of human friendship, the brief respite from the pressures of working life, freedom to take stock - these things need cost very little in money or carbon emissions. Remember that loveliest of Christmas songs: “Enough for him whom angels worship night and day, a breast full of milk, a manger full of hay”. Enough. Happy Christmas!

Ian James is Diocesan Environment Advisor and NSM in the Winkfield Benefice.