With the science of the “climate crisis” increasingly in doubt, a decade of satellite data defying the link between rising CO2 and rising temperatures, and the U.S. thawing from a harsh winter, the New York Times this week fell back to the real reason for going green: It’s virtuous.

In a Tuesday editorial applauding California’s government activism, America’s paper of record wrote that “no state has done as much to sponsor, legitimize and reward environmental virtue.”

Arguing the state’s role as moral policeman, the Times celebrates California’s enforcement efforts: “It passed laws governing automobile air pollution in 1966. Since 1982, it has compensated utilities for helping consumers become more efficient. And in 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure requiring homebuilders to offer buying solar panels.”

“Obviously there will be costs associated with all this virtue,” the paper continues, “(but) given the alternative of a less hospitable globe, these seem to be small sacrifices.”

But is the Times really willing to sacrifice to its ideal? Liberals hardly have a corner on “virtue,” after all. Given the illegitimacy crisis in America’s inner cities, is the Times willing to endorse the “virtue” of enforced sexual abstinence before marriage? The “virtue” of not drinking? Of banning gambling? Should government enforce the “virtue” of not making papers from trees?

Like its interpretation of climate science, I suspect the Times’s read on moral rectitude is hardly objective.