{"id":3491,"date":"2011-12-22T09:59:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=3491"},"modified":"2011-12-22T10:23:11","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T16:23:11","slug":"what-is-santas-carbon-footprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/22\/what-is-santas-carbon-footprint\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Santa&#8217;s Carbon Footprint?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3574\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"What are the carbon emissions of Santa's operation?\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/lumps-of-coal.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3574\" title=\"lumps of coal\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/lumps-of-coal.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/lumps-of-coal.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/lumps-of-coal-220x144.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Image by Ethical Ocean (used with permission)<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">What are the carbon emissions of Santa&#39;s operation?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Yes, someone actually took the time to calculate Santa&#8217;s impact on the atmosphere. While we all know he brings plenty of cheer, a new infographic by the\u00a0environmentally-friendly shopping website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethicalocean.com\/\">Ethical Ocean<\/a> shows his operation has a carbon footprint much bigger than a lump of coal.<\/p>\n<p>The group <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethicalocean.com\/blog-issue\/1949\">estimates<\/a> that Santa&#8217;s sleigh trip alone involves over 69 million metric tons of carbon emissions. They actually crunched the numbers on the height of Santa&#8217;s reindeer, the weight of Santa himself (300 pounds), and the payload of his sleigh (nearly 321,000 tons of toys, the top contributor). Over his 122\u00a0million-mile journey delivering cheer across the world, Santa&#8217;s guilty of emitting in one night the equivalent of the annual carbon\u00a0footprint\u00a0of the entire country of Qatar.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt took about a month to complete.&#8221;\u00a0Jonathan Fishbein, Chief Technology Officer for Ethical Ocean, told us.\u00a0Which numbers were hardest to find? \u201cThey were all pretty difficult. It was very hard to research Santa\u2019s actual carbon footprint. So we spent a lot of time trying to figure out each and every number.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why bother doing all of this in the first place? \u201cWe thought this would be a great infographic to release for the holiday season,\u201d Fishbein says. &#8220;People have found it pretty entertaining. It\u2019s bringing environmental issues out to people at a time when they might not be thinking of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And without any further delay, a complete look at Santa&#8217;s carbon\u00a0footprint:<\/p>\n<div class=\"mceTemp mceIEcenter\">\n<dl id=\"\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 645px;\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethicalocean.com\/misc\/issues\/29\/carbon-footprint-santa-infographic.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" \" title=\"Santa's Carbon Footprint Infographic\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ethicalocean.com\/misc\/issues\/29\/carbon-footprint-santa-infographic.png\" alt=\"Santa's Carbon Footprint Infographic\" width=\"635\" height=\"2463\" \/><\/a><\/dt>\n<dd class=\"wp-caption-dd\">Infographic by Ethical Ocean on Santa&#8217;s Carbon Footprint<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, someone actually took the time to calculate Santa&#8217;s impact on the atmosphere. While we all know he brings plenty of cheer, a new infographic by the\u00a0environmentally-friendly shopping website Ethical Ocean shows his operation has a carbon footprint much bigger than a lump of coal. The group estimates that Santa&#8217;s sleigh trip alone involves over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":3574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3491"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3595,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491\/revisions\/3595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}