Another year has turned and, as the festive song “Home for the Holidays” has it, it feels like nothing’s changed. Atmospheric CO₂ continues to rise, the Amazon rainforest continues to be felled, and vulnerable people around the world continue to be abused by warmongers and tyrants. Many people I know working in Sustainability are seeing reduced resources and commitment, with a focus on reporting compliance which is one of the perverse outcomes of the attempts to do good through driving transparency in companies’ activities. All this at a time when the impacts of climate change are becoming progressively more obvious, but the media (with some honourable exceptions) seem collectively intent on burying the bad news. Anyone who has been watching the sci-fi drama series Silo (based on a series of books launched in 2011) cannot have failed to see the irony. The diversion runs deep, with LinkedIn recently hosting a staggering quantity of hot air around the relative merits of real and artificial Christmas trees. Setting aside the inevitable virtue signalling from some of the contributors, everyone seemed to be missing the point that the tree almost certainly isn’t the real issue. The boxes of ephemera wrapped in plastic piled up beneath them, the miles travelled as people visit family, the wasted food, the additional consumption of chocolate driving deforestation and biodiversity loss, and so on it goes.

Actually, I haven’t seen a study comparing the relative impacts all those things, so I am just making an educated guess, but I doubt that the trees will turn out to be the worst impact. Also, interestingly, although I didn’t have the energy or inclination to read the whole thing, I didn’t notice anyone offering many options beyond artificial or natural. No tree at all is an option, and one that would have a zero footprint, or alternative decorations using cuttings rather than a whole tree. A potted natural tree returned to the garden at the end of the holiday period was mentioned by at least one of the contributors, and one that could be carbon negative if done well. Western traditions are not the only contributors to this consumption, other parts of the world have their own and perhaps those in midwinter may share an ancient common root in celebrating the passage of the shortest day. We don’t need to worry about whether the sun will return any more, as we now have science to explain astronomical phenomena, so maybe we can dial down the over-consumption. In fact, and deeply ironic given the impact of that over-consumption on climate change, not being warm enough is becoming progressively less of an issue.

So far, so bad. But I’m not Scrooge (at the beginning of the story, of course) or the Grinch, so there is something positive to add here too. The good news is that we don’t need actions from governments or corporations in this arena, we can take action for ourselves, and we can do it right away (or at least for the next consumer binge in our part of the world). Gifts that don’t contain more unnecessary stuff (the capacity of the UK self-storage sector has tripled in less than 20 years), no immediately disposable items like plastic wrapping paper, catering that considers leftovers (not just the infamous turkey curry) and the impact of supply chains for things we barely notice that we are consuming. After all, by and large, we manage without individually wrapped tiny chocolate bars for the rest of the year. Such products were the subject of another thread on LinkedIn following a suggestion to Mondelez about allergen listing which was met with an unbelievable level of smug patronising. Some shortage of Christmas spirit as well as humility there, it seemed. All that said, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that every unbought gift means that someone in a factory in a low-income country may be losing some of what little they earn. Sorry – a bit of bah humbug at the end after all.