Environmental Costs of Traveling

The theme that many rich country tourists have little interest in the social and environmental impacts of their visits to nations in the global south is one that I have also seen occur frequently, but I think that this is a more generational trend, to a certain extent. Many people that I know who travel to the ‘global South’ for vacation are my grandmother’s friends, my parents friends and those who did not grow up in a world where environmental degradation and the threat of global warming from plane emissions were major themes. The majority of individuals in my generation that I know traveled to the global South were on AU AltBreak trips, where many of the themes are social justice, environmental issues and/or human rights issues. I do not think that traveling to the global South for vacation is necessarily a completely bad thing – in fact, I think it does help bolster some countries economies, but I also do not think it is going to change. Reading over the article about British citizens’ general refusal to fly less grasps this concept that traveling/vacationing is sort of a privilege, and while I don’t agree with it, I feel that many Americans are going to continue traveling wherever they want because they have the money and do not think about the environmental impacts.

I agree with Kristen about eco-tourism – it is a generally good concept, but it has become more of a corporation-focused initiative, which takes away from the original point. I think that traveling to environmentally fragile places is also not a good idea – I do not understand how increasing travel to these areas will have a low-impact on that environment. Humans inevitably destroy nature. The fact that this can harm the locals to these areas is even worse than the fact that corporations and foreign investors take much of the money from eco-tourism ventures. I think that the main ways that travel does more good than harm is in scenarios such as AltBreak trips, where you go to an area to learn about its culture, talk to its citizens and learn about the actual area, instead of seeing the inside of a resort that looks like any other resort you can find along the coasts of the United States during summer. This way, individuals become more aware of what they have, what others don’t have, and how their choices impacts others, even thousands of miles away.

As far as plane travel goes, I’m undecided on whether the environmental costs of traveling should be included in plane travel. As an individual who has a completely irrational and horrible fear of flying, and tries to avoid it at all costs, I still flew over 40 hours since March, mostly all of which was school-related and internship-related. I know that I had to fly back and forth to Washington State twice for my internship, and had the environmental costs of that been included, I’m not sure that I would have had the internship in the first place (ironically it was with the Dept. of Energy, and they paid for my travel). In a perfect world, there would be much more R&D into biofuels or other types of renewable fuel that could power planes, and we wouldn’t have to worry about this, but until this happens, there’s nothing we can do. Also in a perfect world, the environmental costs of flying would be included in airfare, but this would have negative impacts as well. Participation in programs such as AltBreaks, social justice trips or other related-trips that work to build schools, homes, etc. in developing areas would most likely not happen, leaving a lot of areas without help that they depend on. NGO’s are not financially strong institutions, but they do a lot of work in developing countries. If there was even more money put into travel for them, then it would be even harder for these NGOs to do their work. Then again, maybe I’m just being selfish and trying to justify why there should not be environmental costs of flying factored into airfare. I love to travel (not fly), and if the environmental costs of flying were added into airfare, I probably wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.