“Travel is a force for good!” So reads the slogan of one of the world’s biggest tourism operations, Expedia. But ‘good’ for who?
Definitely good for Expedia’s profit line, and probably good for individual travelers who are revitalized through exposure to amazing new places, people and experiences. Good for the global economy? Undoubtedly yes, but good for the planet itself? Not so much. And in the spaces between these tourism ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ we hear the seductive siren song of BAU (business as usual) and maybe begin to appreciate just how forceful BAU can be.
Growth on growth
International tourism is held up by many Earth scientists as one of the markers of the Great Acceleration, that time since the 1950s when human activity took off, often exponentially, and became a global force. Fertilizer consumption, water use and paper productions are cited as evidence of the Great Acceleration, and so is the growth in international tourism.
Prior to the 1950s, international tourism hardly existed. According to The World Counts, in 1950 there were around 25 million international tourist arrivals. That grew to 166 million by 1970, and 435 million by 1990. From 1990 to 2018 numbers more than tripled reaching 1.442 billion. By 2030, 1.8 billion tourist arrivals are projected. Currently there are over 1.4 billion tourists arriving at their destination every year equating to 45 arrivals every single second! And every movement sees more carbon being released into the atmosphere.
That’s a lot of movement generating a lot of economic activity. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, prior to the pandemic, Travel & Tourism (including its direct, indirect, and induced impacts) accounted for over 10% of all jobs (334 million) and 10.4% of global GDP (=US$ 10.3 trillion). International visitor spending amounted to US$ 1.91 trillion in 2019. Things cooled down during the pandemic and its associated lock downs but have pretty much rebounded as the pandemic’s impacts abated.
Payback
Indeed, that rebound even has a name – ‘revenge travel’. And revenge travel (also referred to as revenge tourism) is all about payback and taking that trip that was lost due to the global pandemic. It’s about spoiling yourself, indulging in that which excites, lifts and revitalises. Go on, you deserve it after the deprivations of forced lockdowns and closed borders.
And as those borders reopened, tourist numbers surged worldwide, with ‘wellness tourism’ being a growing component in the mix (wellness tourism accounted for US$651 billion in 2022).
But wait a sec, who or what is ‘revenge’ being taken on?
Think about it. It’s payback on the implicit deal we’ve made with BAU. I accept the doctrine that my society can grow and grow, consume and consume, change the biosphere and allow countless species to go extinct; and BAU promises me a holiday overseas to replenish my batteries and cope with the pressures of life.
We know it’s a shonky deal. We can see cities and countries starting to falter under extreme weather, and rising costs on everything from water to food. But, if you’re part of the rich developed world, like most of the OECD countries, we won’t ask questions or pay too much attention to the growing chaos around the world. That’s the pact we made with BAU. BAU has has served us well till now, BAU will see us through; don’t ask questions.
And we believe it’s our ‘right’ to take that big trip which we’ve worked so hard for, that we need to just keep going.
And then a pandemic hits, lockdowns stop international travel, and the world order has seemingly reneged on the deal. The pandemic ends and it’s time for payback in the form of revenge travel!
Travel costs the world
We know carbon emissions are the bogeyman in the emerging climate crisis yet when it comes to our own emissions for travel, there is no great outcry that things have to change. According to UN Tourism, in 2016, transport-related carbon emissions from tourism contributed to 5% of all human-made emissions and were set to increase to 5.3% by 2030.
In Australia, when we go overseas we tend to travel to the other side of the planet, and that makes us particularly culpable. New research looking at all scheduled passenger flights worldwide suggests that policies focused on super short-haul flights would have very limited climate benefits. Flights of less than 500 km account for just over a quarter of all flights but only result in 5.2% of fuel burnt. Long flights of 4000 km or more, on the other hand, account for just 5.1% of flights, but 39.0% of fuel burnt!
Of course, that also means people coming to Australia to delight in our tourism treasures, are also doing so at enormous cost of carbon emissions. Indeed, a recent report put out by the Zurich Insurance Group highlighted the impact of climate change on the Australian tourism industry. It says: “We are already seeing the impact of climate change on tourism. We’ve seen tourist attractions destroyed by bushfires, tourist sites made inaccessible by floods, man-made attractions damaged by hail, airports closed because of extreme winds. Climate change is not only a risk to Australia’s natural wonders, it is a risk to the 500,000 jobs created by tourism and the $170 billion of tourism spending each year.”
There’s a deep irony in this equation but it’s rarely made explicit.
In any case, ask an economist how we should solve this problem and they’ll say: “simple, put a price on carbon”. People travel, travel creates carbon emissions, people need to pay the true cost of that activity.
Take that message to our political leaders, however, and they’ll say it’s not simple at all; indeed, that solution will cost more political capital than they have to spend, and they invariably put those decisions off for future governments to solve. For starters, consider how upset the tourism sector would be if prices everywhere hiked up as we paid the ‘true’ cost of travel; and then think of the lobbying pressure it would bring to bear on our vot-counting pollies.
Feeling good
So, instead of governments doing the ‘right’ thing, the responsibility is half-heartedly thrown back on the shoulders of tourists themselves. ‘Do the right thing, offset your travel emissions by contributing to the airline’s carbon neutral schemes’. I say half-heartedly because most of these schemes are voluntary and are increasingly being found to lack integrity.
Dutch courts have recently found that the airline KLM has misled customers with vague environmental claims and painted “an overly rosy picture” of its sustainable aviation fuel, a court has found. The Dutch greenwashing decision found 15 of 19 of KLM’s claims about its environmental ambitions were misleading.
And Australian airlines are little better. Claire Snyder, the director of Climate Integrity, recently said “Australian airlines should be paying close attention” to that decision. Her group’s analysis of Qantas concluded the airline “has no comprehensive, full-costed or independently verified plan for reducing their emissions in line with a scientific pathway”. Heavy reliance on the ongoing use of offsets was of particular concern.
Which, in some ways, is a relief for the travelling public because it’s always a stretch to pay for a flying holiday so why waste money on a carbon offset surcharge when it’s just corporate greenwash?
Feeling better
Though, for many travellers, this is a bit of a bummer because the whole point of travel is discover/uncover/recover a better self. For these people, maybe ‘regenerative tourism’ is the answer. According to the website Sustainability for All, regenerative tourism advocates a sustainable way of travelling and experiencing other places. Its objective is for visitors to have a positive impact on their holiday destination, leaving it better than they found it.
How is this achieved, it’s simple: offset your emissions, only use responsible tour operators, buy from local businesses, clean up and restore the environment, and work together with social projects that need help.
It’s simple.
As always, simple solutions to complex problems rarely do anything beyond allowing us to stop thinking about the problem, which would ruin our holiday.
0 Comments