It’s that time of year, the solstice, the shortest day of the year, the darkest, a time to show our love of light in hopes that it will return. Call it Christmas. The market’s shelves are stocked high with stuff, the products of light, sugar, and joy. And we all consume, the American way, each of our lives a little tooth in the gears of the capitalistic machine.

Will we drown in decoration? We got the glitter covered pointsettas at the grocery store a while ago, glitter exploding out of the boxes and gluing itself to our shelf-stocking arms and faces. Glitter is plastic, this comes as a surprise to many. Not because it’s not obvious, I’m sure, just a thought that doesn’t occur while seeing the entrancing refractions of light dazzle our brains.

And speaking of dazzle, it’s amazing the ability of people to ignore a behavior simply because we are in some way addicted to it, or it pleases us. The dazzle of travel, it seems so good, so open-minded and perspective broadening that it must be doing good for the world. It presents well. Glitter sparkles, it can’t be bad.

Life’s Footprint: vapor plus/vs. solid. Air travels effects blend in the invisible atmostphere and are easy to not see. Plastic is very impressive, it contains and protects and lasts a very long time after use. Easy to sweep away to a point, but harder to ignore. Our overall footprint is often seen in more ephemeral substances, fuels and gasses that dissipate, slight chemical shifts in the atmosphere and in the oceans. Overall, add it all up, consumption, ephemeral or physical-seeming, creates the life squashing footprint that is causing the problem. So, in the end, more consumption more footprint. Usually this equals more wealth more consumption. So who needs to change their behavior?

Under the organic sheets and wax paper (If you care -brand), here is what I hear about the travel habits of even the casually rich in America, everywhere probably (the tribe of the wealthy in the world seems to exist as it’s own state, an amorphous country of its own), those with real estate and real estate often to spare.