and good relationships are hard to find.

Go forth, say six Hail Marys, and fly no more.

We'd all have someone to give butterfly kisses.

As a fellow environmentally-conscious person in a long-distance relationship, I laughed when I read YoungSmith's article. I thought it was some kind of Swiftian take-down of environmental extremists. I guess the joke's on me.

The Wizard of Oz proud. Never leave Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. Never look for your heart's desire in the Emerald City.

Geez, what a romance killer.

but from an environmental point of view, the author is correct. It plainly is bad for the environment for you to be taking the plane to visit each other all the time. The time you spend on line instead of your community DOES take away from your involvement in the place you live. This isn't a matter of emotion, it's just a fact. We all have our ways that we are good and bad environmentalists--if I had to use cloth diapers, I would never have had kids. Other people just can't get away from the handy disposable water bottles. But yes, long distance relationships are indeed very anti-planet friendly. There is another alternative besides jetting a million miles and breaking up that I notice you don't mention though--if you're really concerned about the environment AND about your relationship, why don't you consider moving in with each other?

So they end up producing stuff like that. I'll stay with romance, wherever it happens to be!

Hi Bigguns! I've noticed your religious comments on Jesus and the Republicans, and I see you're now absolving people. If you ever thought about getting ordained, consider the Universal Life Church: they have free online ordinations ;-)

http://www.themonastery.org/

It sure does suck when reality contradicts our personal stories. I regularly meet people who consider themselves environmentalists and yet terrorize innocent pedestrians and cyclists. If you are a regular traveler by plane or car, you are not an environmentalist (assuming you are not physically disabled). You may be a wonderful person but you are not an environmentalist. Get over it.

I'm sorry, but this is pure unadulterated bullshit!

The last thing we need is for Americans to be more provincial, more pathologically unaware of anything beyond their noses and the values of the family they were raised in.

Dot dash dash,

Dot dot dash,

Now I'm grabbin your ass.

Maybe this is finally a use for VR technology. Set up a market of "Physical Intimacy Tokens" and exchange your long-distance lover for a local surrogate.

The Internet could hook it up, I'm sure.

for me, the internet has opened up opportunities that just never existed in any place I've lived. I look around me and all I see is the married for however long townies, and little " friendship cliques" doing their little shallow, excercise routines. that and store clerks good for a minute chat if you're lucky. and so, maybe this is why long distance relationships seem to be the way to go?

everybody lives such a busy life in many cities and suburbs and you can go out locally, but still will find that people can be impossible to get to know. somebody I once knew came up with a great idea; to make computer software with built-in simulated sexual features. maybe they based this idea on a real world where nobody can commit to one another in person unless they've known each other for what seems to be a lifetime and then some.

of course at least you can meet somebody online, and then, maybe if it works out; pack up and move off to that place?

I finally read the article. This sounds like an idle Friday think piece, probably written by Tracy on her laptop while waiting in the terminal for her flight to Alberta. What the hey.

Thinking about one's carbon footprint is a healthy way to gain perspective, but it gets a little self-absorbed when you question every life decision that way. (This criticism is aimed more at the Slate author than at Clark-Flory.)

You could always offset the long-distance problem by making up for it in other ways. For example, when you're not with your far-away squeeze, don't bathe, and sit in the dark a lot. Get a few nightlights and strategically place them around the apartment, but unscrew all the other lightbulbs.

Do you use a heater? Don't. Wear a parka around the house. Wool socks. And since you're dating a Canadian, wear a toque.

No need to bathe! Not in your home town. Saves on water. Instead of washing dishes, use a paper plate -- the same paper plate, repeatedly. When it is no longer recognizable as a plate, recycle it.

If you're not dating a Canadian, try to date somebody on a convenient train line. Trains are environmentally friendly and, for bonus points, phallic.

When doing things learned in the Kama Sutra, attach your hips to a pump generator to create extra electricity that feeds back into the Great White North's power grid.

It sounds like this criticism hit a bit of a sensitive point. It's a pretty value-neutral observation to note that people who fly a lot are doing more damage to the environment than people who do not fly a lot. The fact that business travel does more damage does not make that observation less true. [Another observation is that telecommuting is about as satisfying from a business perspective as skype-sex is from a relationship perspective: it'll do when it's all you've got but it's so much better when you can just get in a room together and take care of things....]

Is that justification for telling people how to live their lives, whom they should love, and where? I don't know. Maybe. A lot of the environmental movement is about convincing people to make changes in their lifestyles; not engaging in an LDR is certainly a change.

I also can't help but observe that this is a rich environmentalist's problem (although a moderately wealthy environmentalist could probably save enough off biking and gardening to pay for a flight every six weeks); I wonder how much that is a sore point? Poor people kind of have to date local, or else date virtual, more or less.

Ultimately, however, I don't think it helps anyone to attack others for not doing [ACTIVITY] locally. Instead, we should talk about how we make our choices and how we can make better choices, accounting for all the different values we have to balance. Love, carbon footprints, provincialism, community - there's a lot in there.

I will say, I never consider the environmental impact of my romantic entanglements when deciding whether to proceed. But I'm a lousy environmentalist and value lots of things over minimizing my carbon footprint.