Cognitive Dissonance

I am going to leave a few tons of carbon in my wake when I travel to Germany later this month. This seemingly completely contradicts my personal covenant to tread lightly.

All my biking, all my bus riding, all my solar share and personal solar production, all of it, will be thrown out the window with one single airplane trip. I will contribute more carbon (.18 kG per mile) than I have saved over the past year and a half.

I suppose it's a good thing that I've never fully embraced global warming...otherwise, the cognitive dissonance would be paralyzing. For now, it's just a little nagging that's going on inside my head, but I can deal with that. I haven't embraced global warming because it's a ridiculous thing to worry about while we continue to build local living arrangements that mandate that we will squander all the remaining carbon stores presented to us. Regardless of whether anthropomorphic warming is true, we are mandated to convert that stored carbon into diffuse carbon dioxide. Yep, we're gonna burn every fucking drop of oil we can before we accept that it's the commuting thirty one miles one-way to an office-park and back and it's the filling of our homes with imported merchandise that's a source of global warming.

Or...recreational trips to see a thrash metal concert in a foreign country. I have long touted my use of recreational oil. How can this dissonant tune be muted?