Of course, I'm reading "If Seeing the World Helps Ruin It, Should We Stay Home?/In the age of global warming, traveling — by plane, boat or car — is a fraught choice."

In the NYT.

This is one of my longtime issues — the hypocrisy of those who purport to care deeply about carbon footprints yet enthusiastically imprint their feet all over the world and encourage (and even pressure) others to do the same.

I like to see how the NYT deals with this subject — the NYT, with all its concern-mongering about climate change and all its travel articles and ads and its need to serve the emotions and vanities of its readers. What are we having today? A little shame, spiced with humorous self-deprecation, along with the usual self-esteem boosting about our progressivism and our love of the good life?

For this article, the author is by Andy Newman. Let's read:

[T]hese are morally bewildering times. Something that seemed like pure escape and adventure has become double-edged, harmful, the epitome of selfish consumption. Going someplace far away, we now know, is the biggest single action a private citizen can take to worsen climate change. One seat on a flight from New York to Los Angeles effectively adds months worth of human-generated carbon emissions to the atmosphere. And yet we fly more and more....

What's morally bewildering? If you believe what the consensus of climate scientists and the proponents of the Green New Deal are telling us, you should never travel. Everything else is morally wrong. If you are bewildered, you're just bewildered about whether you — as opposed to those other people — want to center your life on morality.
Newman confronts the reader with a number: your ride on a 2,500-mile flight releases enough carbon emissions to melt 32 square feet of Arctic summer sea ice cover. His own little family vacation, he figures, melted 90 square feet of Arctic ice.

When I did that calculation, I pictured myself standing on a pickup-truck-sized sheet of ice as it broke apart and plunged me into frigid waters. A polar bear glared hungrily at me.

There it is, as I predicted — A little shame, spiced with humorous self-deprecation. 

When you go on vacation and wonder, Are we having fun yet?, remember Newman's visualization.

Newman quotes a professor — a philosophy professor, relying on climatology reports — "The average American causes through his/her greenhouse gas emissions the serious suffering and/or deaths of two future people." If you can, visualize those "future people" glaring at you. (You won't see the NYT article that invites you to think about abortion with a visualization of "future people" with faces that reflect what you are inflicting upon them. The glaring polar bear face is about as intense as the visualizations get. )

On to the subject of cruises. They're even worse than jet planes! 3 or 4 times as much carbon (plus some serious pollution from sulfur oxides). Then there's driving, which is the best option, environmentally, but, as Newman puts it: "most long trips are out of practical driving range." Here's an idea: Don't go on a long trip! I thought we were talking about the equivalent of WWII. You know, WWII really interfered with European vacations (though many Americans did get a European trip out of it).

There's a lot of material about carbon offsets that I won't try to summarize. The short answer is: You're kidding yourself if you think you can buy your way out of your carbon sins. "Offsets... encourage a break-even mind-set when what’s needed to avert disaster is to slash fossil-fuel consumption immediately."

How does Newman bring this thing in for a landing? He's still taking his family to Greece and Paris this summer. His reasoning is pathetically emotional: "We’re going because last year we canceled vacation to come home and watch our dog die. We’re going because the New York City public high school application process was an ordeal." Why not rent a car and drive your spouse and teenager to a state park in upstate New York? You can hike and sleep in tents.

Mostly we’re going because of things we saw last time we were there. The tiny beach at the base of the towering cliff. The playground where the little children played past midnight while their parents and grandparents sat chatting. Chubby partridges pecking around the ruined temple of Poseidon.

So you've already gone, but you want to re-see what you've seen, because somehow the way they do it in Europe is more to your taste. I'm sure there's a tiny beach with a towering cliff at one of those state parks I linked to.

Before we go, we will buy enough offsets to capture the annual methane emanations of a dozen cows — that’s several times what is needed to balance out the carbon effects of our flights. May they help keep a polar bear afloat.

See?! He ends with the polar bear, the beast that's so cute in your imagination and in the delightful illustration that accompanies this essay in the NYT. Newman presents himself as the model for the NYT reader's miniature moral reasoning. You mean well, you'll buy an indulgence, and you have such exquisite taste. Chubby partridges pecking around the ruined temple of Poseidon. Can't you just walk through Central Park and be fully aware of the pigeons?

(My use of the words "fully aware" is a deliberate reference to my favorite passage in my favorite movie, which I quoted in 2013 in a post titled "If you really care about global warming, stop all unnecessary travel.")