Green Living Contradictions

It seems that when working towards leading a sustainable lifestyle often I am ending up in some sort of contradiction.

Let me give an example. I live in the US since over a a decade. My immediate family lives in Europe. As I do want to be in touch with them I call regularly or send emails. Once in a while I really like to see them in person. For a while I was visiting about every 2 or 3 years. Since a while I have been visiting once a year, due to two realizations. One that traveling will become harder and harder because of shortages in fuel and increasing prices. The other that we all have only a limited time to live and I’d like to spend time with my family now, while we are all mentally present and can communicate, talk and share what we feel and think. When I moved to the US I did not think about that to see my  parents and siblings I will be far away and will need to make long trips to be with them.
This is one example of many, where on one hand I am reducing my ecological footprint and on the other hand make all that effort in green living irrelevant, in the above exmaple by what I am doing when taking an airplane for traveling. This realization has been quite difficult for me and I don’t see a near term resolution.

In the above example there are a number of things I can do to mitigate this to some degree, inlcuding reducing the trips, staying in touch over the Internet using emails, video calls as well as offsetting my carbon footprint. All that is fine and helpful, but will not reduce my use of fossil fuels, reduce all the pollution flights are causing, directly or indirectly. Eventually, as long as technology does not change radically, flying will have to become the rare exception for all of use to choose as a means for transportation.

There is at least one important lesson I have been learning from this situation. Looking at my dilemma has taught me to not make this a moral issue of good and bad, wrong and right, etc. but to look again and again at why I make the choices I am taking and evaluate for myself each and every time if this is still the right choice. This also made it clear to me that we all are in some areas of our life in a time of transition, from the way we are doing things right now to a way that is more sustainable and to not judge others for the conscious choices they are making.