Like most reasonable human beings, I love travel—for vacation, leisure, and adventure. (Travel for work can suck it.) I love travel so much I wish I was French and could take the whole month of August off and travel. But, then, I also wish I was Brazilian so I could take the whole month of January off and travel in another hemisphere’s version of a French August. To my eyes, anyone who doesn’t love travel is a pure lunatic.
And yet, travel has got me in a guilt vice. Every time I clock miles in a car or take an airplane to someplace cool—someplace that will fill my phone with needless photos that I rarely look at—it inches the planet closer to climate catastrophe. I ask myself: Is this trip to Morocco or Miami worth it? Was my stroll through Paris or my drunken stumble through Berlin worth the cost of emission? I’m that kind of bleeding heart liberal.
My guilt isn’t unwarranted. Tourism is responsible for anywhere between 5 to 10 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. In 1960, we had about 70 million international tourist arrivals; today, we have about 1.4 billion. In 2019, we know better and yet our appetite for travel is insatiable.
It’s jerk-offs like me, with our bucket lists and our penchant for Instagram, who trash places like Iceland and Amsterdam. Okay, I’ve never been to Iceland but I’m definitely the type of person who would go to Iceland, research it incessantly on TripAdvisor, and learn how to order coffee in Icelandic like a schmo. I’d like to think I wouldn’t directly trash the place, but the schmoes who do never think they’re going to.
I’ve seen the signs in Cinque Terre where hiking trails are closed because the terre of the Cinque Terre can’t handle foot traffic and rain at the same time. I’ve seen cruise ships deliver thousands of people onto the narrow streets of Venice. The city goes from crowded and acceptably touristy to overrun and menacingly touristy in mere minutes.
My liberal guilt gets activated not only about the jet fuel and single-use water bottles but also the fact that my mere presence is making the beautiful place I visit a little less beautiful. Dubrovnik, the ancient Croatian city of Game of Thrones fame, may lose its UNESCO World Heritage designation if it doesn’t start curbing the effects of tourism. But how easy will that be? It has a population of 40,000 but had more than a million travelers in 2016. (Well, maybe the GOT finale will curb some of that travel enthusiasm).
I recycle. I compost. I buy produce from the farmers’ market. I even use cloth napkins. I try to do my part, even though I know that everything individuals do is on the margins.
The real change must come from governments and major international efforts.
So I’m not a totally delusional snowflake. I know we need major intergovernmental global action. I know that my cloth napkins can’t hold an iceberg together. I know, I know. But, still, I don’t want to let myself off the hook.
Every time I get on a plane, I know I’m part of the climate change problem. But then, once I’m on that plane, I fasten my seat belt, dive into the in-flight entertainment (invariably I cry at a rom-com), and by the time I land, I’m too excited to order coffee in Italian to think about my complicity.
So here’s my promise to you, dear reader. I’m going to do my little part on the margins. I’m going to buy carbon offset credits when I can. I’m going to engage companies whose mission includes reducing their carbon footprint.
I mean, the Hilton New York has a cogeneration plant in Manhattan! Royal Caribbean cruises are using purification systems to clean up their emissions! Other cruise companies are using biogas! I never knew what biogas was but it turns out that dead fish carcasses are so much more useful than I thought they were!
The world is full of ways that I can assuage my guilt if I just read beyond the first five Google results, if I focus on the quality of the travel and not the quantity, if I take trains. Maybe we can all take a beat to think about how we travel before we hit the road.