If climate change is this big existential emergency, what’s the New York Times doing saying you can fight it by shopping early for Christmas? The idea is that “you’ll avoid the need for expedited shipping, which often means more trips, and less-efficient ones, by delivery trucks. And, it’ll be easier to consolidate your items into fewer deliveries. Best of all, you’ll probably give more thoughtful gifts.” And thoughtful is good. But if the whole problem is so trivial it can be significantly addressed by avoiding expedited shipping of whatever chichi items Times readers exchange, we’ve been panicking for nothing. Which flies in the face of warnings of a catastrophic 3.2 degree rise unless we cut emissions by 7.6%/year coming from… um… the New York Times.

Climate alarmists need to decide whether we face an apocalypse, in the face of which no sacrifice is too great, or a minor challenge for which modest changes like machine-washing your laundry in cool water will suffice.

Otherwise the suspicion will arise that the New York Times is, like some crooked Renaissance Pope, selling its readers indulgences, in which combining your Amazon purchases in a single bundle lets you keep flying to exotic spots to look at glaciers that supposedly aren’t there any more.