One of the most insightful bloggers out there is Animal, of Animal Magnetism. Read his latest, exposing the rank hypocrisy of the “carbon footprint” crowd

I can’t abide hypocrites.

And national treasure  Ann Althouse has found a doozy.  Excerpt:

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.

But here’s the giggle line:

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.

So, the loudmouthed climate panic monger says, on one hand, that travelling is, well, basically evil. Funny how the left defines evil. Travelling? EVIL! Calling MS-13 gang members animals? EVILY EVIL! Killing babies as they are born? Not evil, in fact the left embraces such atrocities as “empowerment” 

This Newman – what an asshole.  He whines about the “carbon footprint” he produces, but then blithely announces he’s going to take his family to Europe anyway.  His reason is, effectively, because “fuck you, that’s why.”

I suppose it is OK, even saintly for the left to scream about how we are destroying the earth by travelling while travelling themselves. Maybe they believe their fake moral outrage causes them to be immune from ideological and intellectual consistency? Or, maybe Animal is right, maybe they are just assholes