Dear Leslie, 

Almost all of the money I save goes toward travel — meeting friends abroad, visiting relatives or checking national and international parks off my bucket list. I try to be as sustainable in my personal life as possible, but I love traveling, despite knowing that travel is where some of our greatest carbon emissions come from. Every time I fly now, I feel this guilt and fear, and it’s sometimes hard to balance it with my excitement. How would you recommend proceeding when some of the decisions we make in our personal lives are at odds with our beliefs and goals?

— Wondering Wanderer

Dear Wondering Wanderer,

The tension you’re describing — the pull between loving this world and worrying about harming it — is a sign of a very intact compassion compass. Sometimes, that compassionate awareness stretches us beyond what’s comfortable or easy to resolve.

Don’t dismiss your discomfort, because it’s inviting you to stay awake to your impacts on the planet — but don’t let it shut down your capacity for joy. If guilt grows so heavy that it diminishes your ability to connect and feel alive, it’s lost any usefulness it once offered. The work now is to metabolize your guilt and fear into something that guides you rather than pulls you apart.

You might ask yourself this question: Given what I know, what kind of traveler do I want to be?

That opens up more nuanced choices than simply “Go or don’t go?” Maybe you’ll travel less often but stay longer, explore more locally using lower-carbon methods of transport or prioritize trips that deepen relationships.

You might also focus on destinations where you can make a positive impact as a tourist. In countries like Costa Rica, Rwanda, Tanzania and Bhutan, responsible tourism helps keep conservation efforts alive by funding wildlife protection, supporting local communities and sustaining fragile ecosystems. 

There’s a larger truth in this as well. You’re just one person — and your choices matter, but they were never meant to bear the full weight of a systemic crisis. You didn’t build the fossil fuel-dependent systems that make flying one of the only practical ways to stay connected across long distances or encounter the wider world. Guilt can keep us preoccupied with ourselves rather than on the larger structures driving the harm.

Continue to balance your personal choices with collective ones. To start, you might want to discuss your dilemma with friends and family — whether they’re your travel companions, or people in your life who may have already made different calculations about travel. (In last month’s column, I shared similar advice with a question asker who could well be on the other side of that conversation.) Having a shared understanding with loved ones might help you process your inner tension, while also letting your care for the planet ripple out in community. 

Take some time to reflect, and then settle into commitments that feel right for you. Return to your decision from time to time and make changes as needed. When you feel a pang of guilt, let it keep you honest but not overwhelmed.

Remember: The places you visit, the people you love across long distances and the wonder you feel in national parks aren’t separate from your love for the Earth. They’re expressions of it. Add in a dose of reflection, gratitude and perhaps even awe, and your journeys will strengthen the passion and resilience that allow you to stay engaged in your work. In this way, the same travel that stirs your guilt can also help protect what you love. It’s not a clean or simple solution, but it’s real.

The aim is to stay present for the whole of it — to allow your love for our planet to be large enough to hold grief, responsibility and joy at the same time. Let yourself embrace and enjoy the world wholeheartedly, even as you engage in protecting it.

Holding this with you,

Leslie

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Dear Leslie,

How do I deal with the frustration and anger that comes with having family members and friends who continue to fly and pursue other behaviours that worsen the climate crisis? They know better, yet they don’t act differently.

— Frustrated Climate Activist

Dear Frustrated Climate Activist,

Your anger and frustration are deeply relatable — and they’re happening for good reason. Your values and relationships are colliding, creating a painful rupture where you most long for shared ground. And your anger may be compounded by grief for the loss of species, cultures and futures you know could be better protected if more people, like your loved ones, would take action.

That gap also creates a lopsided moral load. You’re actively confronting the difficult realities of our warming world and responding with care, while you perceive some of the people you’re most connected to turning away from that responsibility. 

Living with that tension doesn’t just hurt — it eventually exhausts the nervous system and erodes our capacity to stay connected.

Before we go further, it may help to widen the perspective. It’s possible your family and friends hold a different view of what personal climate responsibility looks like. All of us participate in some activities that worsen the climate crisis, even if we’re trying to mitigate our impact (or create a positive impact) in other ways. It sounds like people in your life have decided they can’t give up flying right now, but maybe for them, positive action looks like voting for climate-forward policies, reducing consumption or supporting initiatives you don’t see. Or maybe they care about the climate crisis but haven’t yet figured out what meaningful action looks like for them. Begin with curiosity about where they are and how they understand their responsibility. 

But let’s say your family and friends claim to care, but truly are not engaging in any way — you see them strolling past the most critical issues with eyes averted. In that case, their failure to take any form of action may feel like a personal betrayal.

Here’s the hard truth: You can’t carry both the planet and your loved ones on your back. What’s appropriate in the relationships you’re talking about — people you want to stay close with — is emotional detachment without emotional withdrawal. That means choosing where your responsibility for others ends and your boundaries begin. You can continue to love imperfect people while also sustaining a fierce allegiance to caring for the climate. 

You’re not required to be the climate conscience of every encounter and every conversation. 

Try selective honesty. When you’re moved to speak, you might say something like this: “I struggle with [name the specific behaviour], because it hurts to see people I love act like climate impacts don’t matter.” Then step back and let the silence do the work. You may not get the response you hope for, but you’ll know you spoke up for what matters most to you, and it’s up to you to understand when that’s enough. 

People aren’t always moved to change immediately. Your words may land more deeply than you realize in the moment. 

Letting go of the constant urge to convince isn’t giving up. It’s choosing to invest your energy where it can be amplified — for instance, in a like-minded community, an action group or connections with other people who do share your priorities.

This is our work: staying human in a burning world without burning ourselves out. Try to find places where your clarity and commitment are shared — that in turn will make it easier to engage in other places where they are not. Let your love for the living world be fed by relationships that give your nervous system a place to rest.

Holding this with you,

Leslie

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.