At the risk of being labelled the Grinch, I have to say that I hate these inflatable Christmas decorations that are popping up on people’s lawns all over the place.
Hate is a strong word. One that I don’t used lightly or often. But in this case, it’s the appropriate word to express my feelings. [Please note that I don't hate the people buying these things, just the things themselves. For those people I feel disappointment, that they care so little about the environment they are leaving for their children, or sadness that they do not yet see the connection.]
Now, why do I hate these things?
Is it because I think they are a bit on the tacky side? I do, but that’s not the reason. No, it’s that I think that they boldly typify the wastefulness of our society, especially during the holiday season.
To illustrate my point, I decided to be a bit of an engineering geek and do the math on how wasteful these things really are. [For those not interested in just how much of a geek I can be, skip past the point form to the bottom of the post.]
- I first went to the depository of all knowledge [the web] and found that these things range from 51.6 Watts for the 4 foot model to 78 Watts for the 12 foot model. As advertised on Gemmy’s [the manufacturer] website, this is about the equivalent of a string of bulbs, so it doesn’t seem like much.
- I then went to web sites for Canadian Tire and other retailers and found pricing for these ranging from $75 for the small model to $250 for the big ones.
- On Gemmy’s web site, and from some newspaper articles, I found that the market for these things [in 2006 alone] is about US$500 million [or CAN$579 million] for the North American market.
- Assuming about 50% of sales for the smallest models and only 5% of sales for the largest, I then calculated the number of units of each size to make up this much in sales. [Excel is a wonderful tool!]
- I know that some people don’t run them 24/7 but everyone in my neighbourhood seems to, so I just used that assumption.
- Multiplying all of this together, I calculated the power demand and kWh per day that we need to produce just to light up and blow up all of those Santa’s, Rudolf’s, Frosty’s, Christmas carousels, frolicking penguins, and on and on.
The answer? 330 Megawatts.
Just for the number of these stupid things sold this year, never mind the last 4 years of sales!
To put this in perspective, this is slightly larger than the natural gas fired power plant that was proposed for Newmarket last year that neighbours objected to because of emissions. NIMBY indeed!
A plant that size would cost the taxpayer in the neighborhood of $400 million dollars.
And what of the emissions? If the power is generated by coal, we would spew out 7.5 metric tonnes of CO2 per day. For natural gas, 4.7 metric tonnes per day.
And yet we are told we can’t meet our Kyoto objectives, we can’t close down coal fired generating plants in Ontario, we can’t avoid spending $40 billion on nuclear plants “because we must keep the light’s on…”
If there’s one thing I hate more than inflatable Christmas decorations, it’s these lame excuses for killing the earth and our children’s future.
