10 of the last 10 years were the hottest on record. It’s time. I know so many people that will give lip service to the environment and then think nothing of taking multiple flights per year on the flimsiest of pretexts.
And as all too often happens, people go to poorer countries where they get waited on hand and foot, and then act like they’re doing some giant favor to the locals. All too often these tourist sights end up being an unmitigated natural disaster, not to mention locking the locals out of their own back yard.
And then they’ll turn around and claim they’re “helping the local economy” trying to justify it. It’s colonialism by another name. If they paid fair wages to the workers these vacations would become much more expensive, perhaps prohibitively so.
And wtf is wrong with you, you can’t relax in your own region? Gonna cook the planet because you can’t be happy and relax in your own hemisphere. Y’all need to chill it with the air travel!
You’ve posted in the right place.
“Hey, we don’t have an industry in our town, so how can we get people to stay and provide jobs? Hmm. If only we could attract other people to spend money here in some way…”
Or
“The locals treat locals like shit, let’s blame tourists!”
Or
“We don’t want your kind around here! Go back to your own country!”
Or
“Can’t do shit about the actual polluters, let’s bully some random people instead!”
… You got your shit backwards. Tourists exist because they’re needed or wanted. And the arguments you use are in the same vein as the current US administration. Kick out all the unpleasant elements and make x country great. No clue what happens to the people actually living there until the country becomes great though.
it’s even worse than that: they claim environmental tourism helps the places they visit - they don’t, they raise income inequality and pollute otherwise pristine places with cruise-shit septic flush, trash and introduce all kinds of pollution (oil and exhaust).
Tourism to places like galapagos or the antarctic should be outlawed. it’s fucking gross.
Yeah, I’m not sure there is an ethical tourism. Being a tourist means being an outside viewer of another culture. Even without the financial and environmental costs, it’s still treating these people and places like zoo attractions. Of course I don’t think it’s unethical to travel and experience a culture different than your own, I don’t even think I’m against the idea of vacation. I just think that you have to be willing to be immersed in where you’re visiting. Not keeping it at arms length and behind a lens, but where it has the ability to change you and teach you something real.
Right? I don’t want people to be hermits. If I were a dictator king, everyone would get two tourism passes. Once in their 20’s, and again in their 50s. Take 6 months/a year, learn the language, and live in the community.
Only problem is in the United States to get anywhere you have to use air travel. Do you wanna go from New York to Los Angeles? Yeah, you’re flying it. Otherwise you’re taking a lot of time off from work just for the travel even by car would take you a long time.
So basically, either you’re a hermit stuck in your small section of your country or you fly.
I completely agree
And I’m hypocritical, because I have traveled extensively
Most people, and that includes myself, won’t even enjoy what is available in their own region
How does it make sense to go on a trip to Banff to go skiing, when there’s a slightly smaller mountain 45 minutes away that you just won’t bother going to? There’s 7000 museums in every city; There is natural beauty all around… go!
Go these places first, and once you’ve exhausted what is available next door, then expand horizons
It is. Among other things, in some popular places tourism caused rents to go through the roof. Now local people can barely afford to rent a flat.
Im taking a train instead of a plane this weekend. I am flying on my return leg, but it’s a start to building comfort with travel by train.
Out of curiosity - are you USian, OP? How you describe vacation sounds utterly American to me.
Why can’t people abandon cars and use bicycles and public transportation to go around? Compared to cars pollution, flights are a drop in the ocean. I fly multiple times a year, but I don’t own a car.
Idk. I haven’t owned a car in 12 years, and haven’t flown for even longer. And tourism accounts for 8% of carbon emissions, whereas cars are coming in at 16%.
Skip burgers for a week. Congrats, you did more than skipping your weeklong vacation
Interesting idea…
tl;dr it’s probably more like 1-6 years of burgers.
That’s a total of 3.6-6.1 kg of CO2-equivalent per burger.
This says New York to London:
is equivalent to 587 kg CO2e
So round trip would be 1174kg.
1174/6.1 = 192
1174/3.6 = 326
So you need to not eat 192 - 326 burgers.
The first source says Americans eat 1-3 burgers a week, so you might need to skip 2-6 years of burgers to equal the same pollution as your air travel.
New York to Florida would be 1-3 years, roughly.
I know screen shots from googles shitty AI isn’t the best but…
You’d have to eat a whole shitload of hamburgers to get close to intercontinental air travel. Congrats
Also maybe we should skip the burgers too. Veganism is probably the way to go.
