As we grapple with climate change, travel journalist Paul Sullivan considers the cognitive and moral dissonance involved in selling destinations at a time when the planet needs us to be traveling less.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H.-C. Dittrich
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It was while recently soaring 10,000 miles above Iceland's famously pulchritudinous interior, looking down through my airplane window at the gentle folds and pastel shades of its rhyolite mountains and the receding white snow atop its glaciers, that I found myself wondering: Is my job as a travel writer morally justifiable any more?
I was on my way to update a guidebook and review some hotels for a newspaper. Excellent news for the local economy, of course, and certainly fun work if one can get it; but reports underlining the devastating impact of tourism on the planet — the majority of which occur via air, car, rail and sea transportation, with the rest coming mainly from the hotel business — are by now impossible to ignore.
Flying in itself makes up a large chunk of the overall percentage. Although a relatively small industry, aviation has a disproportionately large impact, accounting for between 3–7%, depending on which reports you read, of the total global amount of emissions. Yet the industry has no plans to slow down. Indeed, largely free of government regulation — it was given special status and excluded in the Kyoto and Paris climate change agreements — it is set to continue apace, with global passenger numbers expected to climb to 7.2 billion by 2035, almost twice as many as in 2016 (3.8 billion).
And while aircraft manufacturers like Boeing are developing biofuels, there are no industry-wide solutions on the horizon right now.
Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear
From the Great Barrier Reef to majestic glaciers, increasing numbers of tourists are vacationing in places expected to succumb to climate change before it's too late.
Image: picture-alliance/McPhoto/SBA
Transient treasure
Of the 2 million-odd people who visit the Great Barrier Reef annually, a 2016 survey found that 69 percent were coming to see the UNESCO World Heritage site "before it's too late." And no wonder. The IPCC says that even if we manage to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, 99 percent of the world's coral will be wiped out. Tourists can hasten their demise by touching or polluting reefs.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/N. Probst
Bearly there
And what's the carbon cost of flying to remote natural wonders under threat? A 2010 study found that the business of polar-bear safaris in Churchill, Canada, had an annual CO2 footprint of 20 megatons. Most visitors arrived by plane, and while 88 percent of them said humans were responsible for climate change, only 69 percent agreed that air travel was a contributing cause.
Image: picture-alliance/McPhoto/SBA
Art of the apocalypse
Along with the polar bear, one of the most iconic images of climate change must be the dramatic curves of an iceberg sculpted by the warming atmosphere. Gliding between the melting giants on a cruise ship is a haunting experience that tourists will pay huge sums for. In the early 1990s just 5,000 people visited Antarctica each year, compared to over 46,000 in 2018.
Image: S. Weniger/M. Marek
Peak season
You don't have to go to the poles to see vanishing ice. Kilimanjaro's snowy peaks are a striking sight above the equatorial savannah of the national park, which generates €44 million ($50 million) from tourism annually. Many visitors climb to the Furtwängler Glacier — where 85 percent of the ice has vanished over the last century. The rest is unlikely to survive much beyond mid-century.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Schnoz
King without a crown
When Montana's Glacier National Park opened in 1910, it boasted over 100 of the ice features from which it took its name. Now, there are fewer than two dozen. So dramatic is their retreat, that the park has become a center of climate science research. Some 3 million hikers and holidaymakers also visit the "crown of the continent" each year, soaking in the dying days of its ice-capped glory.
Image: Imago Images/Aurora/J. Miller
Paradise lost
The Maldives are the archetypal tourist paradise: 1,200 coral islands with white beaches rising just 2.5 meters above the turquoise waters. In 2017, the president decided to build new airports and megaresorts to accommodate seven times as many tourists, and use the revenue to build new islands and relocate communities. He has since been voted out of office and faces corruption charges.
Image: Colourbox
Saltwater swamps
It's not just islands that are going under as sea levels rise. Wetlands like Florida's Everglades are disappearing too. Over the last century, around half the Everglades have been drained and turned over to agriculture. Now, saltwater is seeping into what's left, making it the only critically endangered World Heritage site in the United States.
Image: Imago/Robertharding/F. Fell
Disturbing the peace
The Galapagos will be forever associated with Darwin, who realized their unique wildlife had evolved over countless generations in isolation. Today, they are besieged by visitors and environmental changes are happening too fast for species to adapt. Ocean warming has left iconic creatures like the marine iguana starving, while UNESCO lists tourism among the greatest threats to the archipelago.
While I was in Reykjavik, locals were complaining about businesses being wiped out to make way for generic souvenir shops, bland hotels and multinational restaurant chains. Local nature was being damaged by overtourism, too.
How to justify our travels in such a problematic context? One immediate response is to reduce personal carbon emissions. This is something many of us, including myself, have already been doing for a long time, including taking the train for most of my personal and professional travels wherever possible (and offsetting the handful of flights I have taken). Yet it doesn't seem enough.
Added to this is my role as the travel writer, which prompts rising levels of cognitive dissonance and moral guilt at being part of an industry that helps local economies, on the one hand, while effectively supporting environmental damage on the other. Again, an immediate response is to green wash articles; to write about trains and not planes, eco-hotels and "woke" destinations. But for all the goodwill of the industry's efforts in that realm, the idea of eco-tourism and even "slow travel" already feel like a contradiction in terms.
'Flight shame' movement takes off
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We need to reduce travel
The conclusion, as far as I can see, is that the travel industry desperately needs regulation, but we should also be prepared to take on some personal liability — let's perhaps call it "ethical travel," as opposed to eco-travel. In the same spirit of the "reducetarian" movements that have sprung up around consuming meat or using plastic, this would mean questioning first and foremost whether we actually really need to travel; hopefully concluding that we don't, at least some of the time; and only after that, considering how we travel.
In one sense, of course, certain travel choices are being taken away from us anyway. Tours and trips are increasingly being canceled or postponed because of a lack of snow or ice, or because places — including much of Europe this summer — are too hot, or too wet. Ironically, this situation has given rise to what is being called last-chance tourism, ironic because the influx of tourists to precarious destinations serves to hasten their demise. This is why UNESCO, for example, officially lists tourism among the greatest threats to the Galapagos archipelago.
Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
Flying in planes is bad for the climate. Do we need to give up flying for our environment? Not if electric planes being developed see success. Here's what the futuristic inventions look like.
Image: Eviation
Small, lightweight and emissions-free
Planes powered with renewable energy don't produce CO2 or other climate-damaging emissions such as nitrogen oxide and particles. They are smaller, lighter and more efficient than planes powered by kerosene. The Alpha Electro from the Slovenian start-up Pipistrel is already proving this since 2015, when it had its maiden flight.
Image: Pipistrel
Hop on the flying bus
Most companies and scientists see the future of electric planes in regional transport. The Israeli start-up Eviation plans to revolutionize commuting with their nine-seater. The prototype Alice can fly for up to 650 miles (1,000 kilometers), and will take to the sky in 2019 for the first time, according to the company.
Image: Eviation
Up, up and away
The flying taxi of the German company Lilium had its first successful flight in April 2017. The five-seater can take off and land vertically, has a reach of 190 miles and travels from London to Paris in just an hour. The goal of the company is for people to one day be able to order their flying cab via app for the price of a regular taxi ride.
Image: Lilium
A mix of old and new
Some plane manufacturers don't dare go all-electric just yet. In November 2017, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens announced they will jointly develop a commercial hybrid-electric prototype. The e-Fan X will be powered by three gas turbines and one electric motor. The companies aim to replace a second gas turbine with another electric motor at a later stage. A prototype is anticipated to fly in 2020.
Image: Airbus
Orange goes green
As part of British budget airliner EasyJet's plans to become more climate-friendly, it has entered into a cooperation with the United States startup Wright Electric. The goal is to develop a completely electric-powered plane for up to 150 passengers. It's not known yet when we can expect to see a first prototype.
Image: Wright Electric
Electric future
Experts believe that we could be flying in electric planes within 20 years. Various prototypes companies are working on have a range of a 155 to 650 miles. But technology is developing at an ever-faster pace. Who knows? One day, we might be able to travel around the world in emission-free planes completely powered by renewable energy. There's hope for all environmentally conscious travel addicts!
Image: Colourbox
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It seems obvious to me that we need to urgently reduce travel. Of course that means economies will suffer, and jobs (including mine), will be lost. And for these reasons, as well as wanting to continue traveling myself, I still hope that things don't get so extreme that we have to stop altogether; that we can find at least some compromises, perhaps in the shape of biofuels or other technological innovations, along the way toward an obvious endgame of planetary stewardship.
If not, and thinking more positively, staycations can restore us to our own landscapes and communities — maybe not a bad thing in an era of political polarization. Perhaps they might even combat the anomie that is the dark side of globalization's utopian promises of ultimate connectivity. Maybe a break from travel could even enable us to appreciate it as a more authentic experience again.
In the end, I suppose I believe it's better to make proactive sacrifices sooner, rather than have them forced upon us later, and that people and economies can bounce back in a way that a devastated planet cannot.
