NY Times: Don't Feel Guilty about Spewing Carbon on Your Vacay

I debated putting this into another thread but here's the NY Times Travel Section telling their readers that they shouldn't feel guilty about their latest trip abroad:

Quote:

So, O.K. How bad should we really feel? Well, first of all, no self-flagellation required for that week in Italy. It is true that your round-trip flight is probably the biggest single contributor to your carbon footprint this year (unless you moved from a studio apartment to a mansion or quit your job for the Nature Conservancy to become a coal lobbyist). But shame is the wrong emotion....

Yes, never mind that we have 11 years to doomsday. Did you know that travel decreases racism? However, he does advise people to cut back perhaps on mileage:

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Start by cutting back on your overall travel mileage. Do you really need to take that many trips a year? There are platitudes aplenty about travel — it inspires, it educates, it reduces bigotry. But not all trips meet those standards: Consider an educational exchange program in Vietnam compared to a week at a resort in the Maldives.

Seriously? Go to Vietnam instead? Wow, way to reduce the old CO2! Now of course he endorses lots of ways (like carbon indulgences, I mean carbon offsets) to get over feeling less ashamed. So go ahead and book your flight:

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Most of this will make travel more expensive — and that may mean traveling even less. Think of it as a progressive tax paid by those lucky enough to travel for damaging the world those who can’t travel must live in. It is a small price to pay. And maybe it will make you feel a little less shame.

It does come off just a tad elitist, doesn't it?

Now, you know how it is, if the Times still has a travel section, I'd bet you it's because it pays for itself in advertising revenue. So they have a pretty obvious conflict of interest here. And no surprise, they have come down on the revenue side.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2ZnlauN