Except for recycling batteries, everything seems possible in 2014

As a trip back to New York prompts one Abu Dhabi-based academic to look back at 2013 and towards 2014, she tries to balance her carbon footprint.

This year, when we made our annual trip back to New York to see family for the holidays, we took batteries with us. Dead batteries.
No, the bestowal of dead batteries is not some bizarre New York gift-giving ritual, or at least it's not among the New Yorkers I know. But in Abu Dhabi, it's almost impossible to recycle dead batteries.
A friend suggested that we drop the batteries into an empty water-cooler jug until the jug is full and then bury the whole lot in the desert. The batteries can't leach into the ground because the plastic won't biodegrade and thus voila, problem solved. We opted against fill-and-bury and instead brought the batteries back to the US, where we can bring them to a dedicated recycling site.
Yes, perhaps it's a little ridiculous, and I fully appreciate the irony of flying back to New York, itself a huge carbon footprint, to do something eco-conscious. But we were flying back to New York for the holidays anyway and so carting along our batteries became our own personal carbon-offset programme.
I have no carbon offset for my other holiday splurge: my Christmas tree, which is both green and decidedly ungreen: the tree was grown in Nova Scotia, shipped fresh to Dubai, then driven to Abu Dhabi. And now it stands in my living room, wrapped in lights, smelling of pine, and sprinkling needles all over the floor (that long journey took its toll on the "fresh" factor). It's a beautiful tree with a carbon footprint the size of a small country - and an indication of how hard-wired traditions can become: Christmas, in my family, has always been more of a secular holiday than a religious one, and is supposed to smell like pine.
Winter in Abu Dhabi means gloriously clear days and spectacular sunsets, but in New York it means frigid temperatures and evening darkness starting around 4PM. The holiday lights strung around the city send small beacons into the dark, but it's hard to sustain that ephemeral thing known as "holiday cheer" when you've just stepped into an ankle-deep slush puddle and an arctic breeze is blowing down your neck. But just as the tradition of a pine-scented Christmas sticks in my bones, so too does the tradition of bringing together the far-flung at holiday time. And thus it is that we pack ourselves off to the US, bracing ourselves against the cold to bask in the warmth of family and friends.
Maybe it's the cold wind, or maybe it's the thought of the new year waiting in the wings, but as I've got older, the holidays bring with them a shadow: mortality looms, as inevitable as the Earth's rotation.
Friends have been ill recently and others have suffered some profound losses; it is no longer possible to celebrate without also pausing to acknowledge what, or who, is missing. Even in Abu Dhabi, which doesn't suffer from New York's late-afternoon winter bleakness, loss hangs in the air as we move towards the new year.
That shift to the new year marks a pause, it seems to me. There is a sense of a collective intake of breath while we take stock and reflect on where we've been and where we're going - or would like to go. If you're like me, that pause lends itself to resolutions and promises to walk more and eat less, pay more attention to the news and less attention to "Downton Abbey", to think more about others and less about myself.
The new year becomes a blank slate on which we hope to inscribe better selves. That hope comes with the fervent belief that maybe this year will be the year that our ambitious plans to do 50 press-ups every morning, or give more money to charity, or whatever the goal may be, will last beyond, say, February.
But now, in the double vision of late December, looking back at 2013 and forward at 2014, anything seems possible. Anything, that is, except easily recycling batteries in Abu Dhabi. So if your ambitions for 2014 involve being more eco-conscious, let me know: I'll be headed back to New York to see grandma again, and would be glad to tuck your used batteries into my suitcase.
I think, however, that next year I'll satisfy my need for pine-tree smell with candles and buy a fake tree for the living room.
Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi
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