Give me the choice between a worldly, well-travelled person and a provincial with a small carbon footprint and the choice is easy.  Bush or Obama, friends?

Let's not let carbon rule all our moral judgments.

Give me the choice between a worldly, well-travelled person and a provincial with a small carbon footprint and the choice is easy.  Bush or Obama, friends?
Let's not let carbon rule all our moral judgments.

What precisely does "worldly, well-travelled" mean in the age of cheap yahoo air travel, McDonald's, Nike, Walmart, and the rest of it?

So much for that parochial moron Thoreau, hmm?

"I have travelled a good deal in Concord."

to fund my Detroit-based bf's move to Seattle.

While I appreciate furthering the concept of "going local," I don't s'pose the author of the Slate article has actually suffered through a long-distance relationship. Don't you think we want to be in, say, the same time zone?

What's a bus-ridin', vegetarian gal to do?

...if you can find me a smart, SINGLE 30-something guy in Washington, DC (worst male to female ratio in the country) who doesn't want the mainstream white picket fence lifestyle I will consider this "dating local" thing.  And probably award you a medal of honor to boot.

Seriously, it's not as if anyone chooses to not meet anyone local.  

Russ:

I assume you're being perjorative when you say that:

What precisely does "worldly, well-travelled" mean in the age of cheap yahoo air travel, McDonald's, Nike, Walmart, and the rest of it?

The breadth of perspective that I personally find so refreshing about Obama isn't because he's eaten at McDonalds, shopped at WalMart or owns a pair of Air Jordans. It's because he's lived in a muslim country, is the child of parents from wildly different cultures and appears to have assimilated a breadth of perspective that one can only get from a breadth of experience.  As against that, the thing that I find so frightening about Palin is that she truly thinks that living in Alaska gives her an instinct into the Russian psyche (much as Bush took some odd pride in the lack of stamps in his own passport before he took office.)  

The world is vastly richer for those who have the financial luxury to see it.  (And I'd beg to differ that airfare is cheap.  It's bloody expensive nowadays!)  And the challenges we face in a globalized world require folks who can bring a richer, global perspective thereto.  Thoreau was a nice guy and a good writer, but I wouldn't put him in charge of our foreign policy, energy policy, economic policy or even running a company that requires a global perspective.  

Apropos of the initial post, it is also vastly richer for those who don't have the financial luxury to travel, but were fortunate enough to marry someone from a different culture or geography to broaden their own worldview.  

This is all wildly off the environmental theme of Grist... but that's why I said it's nuts.  Being an ethical, contributing member of society does sometimes require you to release CO2.  (I will confess that I am personally exhaling and consuming electricity as I type.)  Sometimes, that's not a net bad thing.

I wasn't really meaning to criticize you personally for what you wrote, but what you wrote is a sore point for me.

I guess detractors would call me a "luddite", but I don't think having the money to fly around the world means a damn thing.

On the contrary, there's the evident fact that flying all over the place has not lifted vermin like Bush or Palin out of the cesspool into which they were born one bit.

The reason I pointed out Thoreau (whom I'd happily pick over any of this globalist scum) is to point out how spirit and art and intellect have nothing to do with gutter material measures like miles flown.

I'm with you that having money doesn't mean a damn thing.  But traveling does.

Pangolin,

The way to thwart it is to make fuel expensive enough that people don't choose to do it.

And to those who don't object to causing environmental destruction for this ridiculous purpose:  Long distance relationships, with some rare exceptions, were unheard of until internet dating came along (another reason to hate computers!).  We're not talking about once-a-year spring break trips here, we're talking about constant long distance travel.

It's cheap and yields no offspring.  Infallible birth control.  Doesn't conception lead to an exponentially rising world wide carbon footprint.

Virtual love, it's pefect.  Now if someone would invent a sensory communication device, wireless broadband connected of course!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Wolverine, have you ever lived anywhere you didn't have all that much in common (much less enough in common for the possibility of real intimacy) with the people around you?

Wolverine:

Long-distance relationships have existed since the age of the conquistadors. We just see each other more now that we have planes.