Responding to "disgusted"

In the previous post, you'll see some of the environmental concerns people have about housebling.

We do share some of these concerns, and that is precisely why we are urging houseblingers to move to LEDs and renewable energy. If every housebling were LED-based and supplied by renewable energy, the impact on the environment could be negligible. Short of festive lighting being made illegal, we don't see any other workable solution.

Of course, there are many more, persistent and culturally embedded environmental violations that need to be addressed as urgently. Thousands of heritage sites are bathed every night in gigawatts of floodlight; millions of Brits jet abroad every year; we continually build more roads for smart cars to zoom up and down. None of this is really necessary.

Houseblinging, however, is such an easy target. Could it be that, amongst certain classes, the use of environmental indignation is the convenient way to express contempt for the ordinary urban Joe who's having a bit of seasonal fun? Does the cultured, frequent air traveller to Italy or Nepal, for example, draw the same vitriol?

The popular (oh my, isn't the very word 'popular' an admission of guilt?) practice of decorating houses with festive lighting has been growing recently, but entirely without the help of houseblinger.com (which is in operation for its first full season this year). It is our hope that the site's presence and simple advocacy for environmental concern will actually help rather than hinder progress towards sustainablilty