1 million is equal to What intrigued me about this episode was how the animators had chosen to depict the North Pole. There were none of the cute snowmen, candy canes or colour-matched decorations like we see at our neighbourhood Tim Hortons. Instead, we saw crumbling buildings surrounded by toxic lakes, elves deformed from decades of inbreeding and a sky polluted with black smog from gigantic smoke stacks towering hundreds of feet above the toy factory. The North Pole had been transformed into an environmentalist’s worst nightmare. So we wondered to ourselves, how big of a polluter is Santa? Tasked with producing enough toys for every child in the world, how big is Santa’s carbon footprint? Honestly the man has to produce all kinds of tech-toys and gizmos, and it can’t be easy. With this questi.
When the calculations were all said and done, what we discovered was that Santa would emit 333 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents per year. This is equal to nine times the amount of CO2 produced by the Athabasca oil sands, 25 million metric tons more CO2 than the entire United States of America’s automotive fleet in 2004, or equal to all of Australia’s CO2 emissions in an entire year.So what can be learned from these results? For one, Santa pollutes a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, but does so to meet our insatiable want for material goods. Just take a look around: when Christmas season arrives, stores are full of people spending their hard-earned money to buy more and more gifts.The cost of those gifts is not simply represented by the price on the tag; there is a larger price, too the price to our environment.
The next day Ibrahim (9 years old) and his father, Kamal, poked their heads out of the pile of rubble that was their home to see if escape was possible. This is where the nightmare became a living hell. Israeli soldiers shot Kamal in the chest from about a 100-metre distance; then they shot 9 year-old Ibrahim in the stomach. In a panic, with Ibrahim bleeding badly, Kamal picked up his son and the entire family fled their former home into the street. I asked this question twice, to be very clear, “was there any fighting going on around you, is there any chance at all that the Israeli’s fired at your family by mistake.” The answer came with a wry, tortured smile, “No, one million percent no.” After hearing what happened next you will know why.
