I’m not criticizing your campaigning. I’m criticizing your actual consumption.

You just finished telling me how wealthy westerners have to sacrifice to save the Earth; what exactly is sacrificial in your family’s 13+ intercontinental round trips? OK, fine, you’re sacrificing in other ways, by being a vegan for example. But those ways are grossly swamped by the level of your other consumption; you’re saying “look, I drink diet Coke, so it’s not relevant that I also eat four pounds of cookies every day.”

It kind of is. Your total energy use is absolutely enormous. You’re waaaaaay over at the right-hand side of the energy bell curve, even factoring in you skipping McDonald’s and not driving the Tahoe.

If you were a plutocratic Republican who didn’t believe in AGW, fine. You’d be consistent, at least. But you’re doing this while telling other people “hey, you guys should use less energy!” In fact, you’re doing this while thinking that (however regrettable), it’s OK that poor people are getting it in the shorts because of high energy prices, because it means that rich people like you will have to consume less. Well, when does that part start?

Like I said before, you’re telling me there’s a crisis. But your own behavior doesn’t show it. Why shouldn’t I conclude that you’re a huge hypocrite who doesn’t practice what he preaches?

And offsets aren’t marriage annulments; it’s a compensatory scheme that makes a good deal of sense and has real potential to do good.

You’re conflating personal totals with the total carbon load on the planet. Yeah, air travel isn’t a huge proportion of the total, total. But it’s a huge proportion of YOUR total. You can be as vegan as you want to be, your carbon budget is still huge.

The typical American – meat-eating, SUV-driving, “turn it up to 76, Marge, it’s cold in here” American – is thought to use 16.64 tons a year. You’re doing two Bubbas, personally, at least, just on the air travel portion of your pleasure trips. Your wife is doing another two, at least. You guys could be CORPSES for the remainder of your time, and you would still be blowing through the carbon equivalent of 16 ordinary citizens of the world, just on plane travel.

Oh, well, you buy offsets. That means it didn’t happen.

Robert, come on, you ought to know that going vegan does more for the environment than restricting jet travel. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014.html

Animal agriculture: “accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide”

Jet travel: 2% of carbon emissions, less than a quarter of what comes from animal ag. A jet-setting vegan is doing more for the environment than a home-bound carnivore, though of course a home-bound vegan would be doing even more.

We buy carbon offsets for all our trips, too, in addition to living vegan.

Oh, and I teach European history primarily; my doctorate is in English Medieval history.

She’s in AFRICA? As in, transatlantic flight putting out a billion tons of carbon dioxide, Africa?

And you are hoping to visit SIX continents personally?

I don’t know what your wife does. Maybe she’s a doctor and she’s going around doing surgeries in primitive villages, and her travel is necessary, life-saving work. I doubt it, but maybe.

But I do know what you do; you’re a college history professor. Your bona-fide occupational requirement for transcontinental travel is nearly zero. You teach American history, for crying out loud. What, you need to hit China to check? “Yep, this isn’t America either. Now on to Australia!”

Six round-trip tickets from New York to London amounts to 35.39 tons of carbon emissions, according to the calculator here. That’s the equivalent of having six large SUVs on the road full-time, or owning six large single-family homes in California on the grid. You’re using up the resources of two or three full-size, energy-belching, Gaia-smashing American families just on your personal pleasure travel.

How can you possibly justify spending such enormous quantities of environmental resources?

To paraphrase Glenn, I’ll start believing you think there’s a climate crisis when you start acting like there’s one.