Your love hurts - the planet and everything on it

So says Slate, making "The environmental case against long-distance relationships."

It's the same GHGs and airplanes thing, just calculated out to show the impact of your relationship on our atmosphere. Which is to say, your cross-country love sucks! Our local love is superior to yours, because it's eco-friendly! (So what if he beats you? It's better for the environment.)

This is what I hate about "green." The merging of environmentalism and popular culture creating superficial data sets and superficial solutions. "Date local!" Slate cries, thus trivializing everything I believe about sustainability.

Earlier today I was thinking about how I dislike the now-popular word, "locavore." "Locavore" smacks of elitism, something Whole Foods would use in its branding materials. A word that's sure to disappear with the end of whatever era we're in. But eating locally produced food should be as cheap, easy, and accessible as growing a garden in your yard - and not hiring a hipster to do it.

To me, the concept of "green" is a paradox between popularizing environmentalism and slowing climate change, and fueling a slightly softer form of yuppie consumerism. In other words, American life as normal, but with some well-deserved guilt.