Party in paradise, woo-hoo! The U.N. Climate Conference in Bali is in full swing. Delegates are bringing swimsuits, sunscreen, a Grisham novel or two, and:

…47,000 tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference in Bali, mostly from plane flights but also from waste and electricity used by air conditioners at five-star hotels lining palm-fringed beaches.

Uh-oh. I’m all for greening the planet and other catchphrases, but doesn’t that kind of… suck?

No, says Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

“Wherever you held it, people would still have to travel to get there,” he said. “The question is, perhaps: Do you need to do it at all? My answer to that is yes.”

“If you don’t put the U.S., the big developing countries, the European Union around the table to craft a solution together, nothing will happen and then the prophecy of scientists in terms of rising emissions and its consequences will become a reality,” de Boer said.

There’s a reason they call it circular reasoning: Circles are perfect! It’s okay to hurt the environment in the name of saving the environment because if we don’t it’ll hurt the environment. See how beautiful that is?

Not everybody’s as excited as I am, though:

“Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country,” said Chris Goodall, author of the book “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.”

He’d know, because he published a book. That’s the lowest-carbon industry ever!