If you want to leave the world better than you found it, which will help you leave your legacy better:

To inhale deeply on a cigarette and blow the smoke in a baby’s face

or

To fly somewhere on vacation?

Blowing smoke in a baby’s face seems worse, doesn’t it? I bet none of you would do it.

But flying hurts more babies more grievously. It pollutes billions times more. It displaces people (and wildlife) from their land. Funding it will fund more extraction. Flying homogenizes once-diverse world cultures. It separates families and tears communities apart in the name of bringing people together. The list goes on.

I picked flying, but I could have said buy an SUV, set the temperature above around 68F (20C) in the winter or below 78F (26C) in the summer, buy factory farmed meat, have more than one or two children, or any number of options.

These things lower Earth’s ability to sustain life far more than blowing smoke in a baby’s face, yet you would never blow smoke in a baby’s face and you probably fly annually, maybe monthly or more and consider it good. Many of you buy carbon offsets, which increase extraction.

Your mind playing tricks on you

You can tell how much more harmful flying is by how much your mind is now trying to convince you, rationalize, and justify flying. Maybe your mind is trying to say how your flying actually benefits more than it harms. How you can’t help it, your hands are tied, How I’m missing its value. Whatever it takes to stop you from feeling like your doing something billions of times more harmful than something you would consider too inhuman to do.

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