Is Travel Doomed?
Posted: October 29th, 2008 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Habits, Travel, top | Tags: travel ecotourism sustainable tourism pollock icarusfou |I’ve been trying to answer this question lately, and it was one of the things that pulled me into the Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference that has been running in Vancouver this week. Well, that and Anna Pollock.
In an industry characterized by a boggling degree of blah blah blah , Pollock is a real sparkplug. She heads up The Icarus Foundation , a non-profit that is working to make Canada a climate-friendly destination. The group published a report earlier this year that tried to get a handle on the staggeringly huge challenges facing the travel sector. Pollock pulled data from that report in a lunchtime keynote yesterday, and threw out a few challenges and nuggets, including:
- To come even close to meeting a 30 percent reduction of carbon before 2020, the tourism industry must somehow head off the release of 2.2 billion tons of equivalent CO2. She called this “one hell of a weigh-loss program.” Indeed. I’m afraid it simply means parking jets, folks.
- So anyway, the industry needs to do this even as global international arrivals and departures crest the 1 billion mark. And more airplanes. “In 2007, there are 19,000 airplanes in the sky,” she says. “But by 2027, we are talking about 35,800 airplanes. That means more airports, more freeways, more parking lots, more aiport hotels, more kiosks, more hamburger stands.”
- We are moving from an industrial age to a networked age. “We have a swarm model — complex adaptive systems, small simple agents with limited intelligence, local decision-making capability, and a communication path to nearby peers that can outperform a large centralized processor. It is robust and flexible.”
- Enough, already, with all the nomenclature, it’s a distraction. Ecotourism, sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, authentic tourism, aboriginal culinary tourism etc etc. “We are so busy looking inward and trying to define what makes us separate that we are not uniting and solving the big issues.”
- Simplify the Message. “Guests don’t want to know if the place meets 1,0001 criteria. They are on vacation. Use plain language, like ‘good tourism’ or ‘tourism cares.’”
- Incentivize: “The destination that makes the brave decision to only market ‘green’ suppliers will win in the next five years. Encourage every guest to embrace an ecological mindset.”
- Stop Building: “See the value in non-development,” Pollock urged. “Start to see the opportunities where not developing a piece of pristine land will pay you more than developing it. I can see a time where you will be paid to become stewards, but only if you show leadership now.”
- Slow Down: “Stop trying to do too much too quickly. ‘Slow travel’ is going to see some of the fastest growth ever seen,” she said, noting the irony.
- Engage the Locals.
- When Appropriate, Go Virtual: “Some people will choose to experience places in a virtual way,” Pollock said. “This community should not see that—or telepresence—as a threat. It may be our biggest ally.”
Also, I hadn’t seen this YouTube visualization of global aircraft arrivals and departures over a 24 hour period. Pollock briefly threw this up on the screen. There are a couple of these simulations out there, but this one is just fascinating to watch:
I am convinced that the jet age will inevitably begin winding down in the coming decades. It’s hard to imagine, but passenger aviation will return to the days where it was a rare experience, the purview of the affluent. Setting aside peak oil, I could imagine air travel becoming a socially taboo behavior as the “relocalization” trend pushes ever-deeper into mainstream consumer behavior. Frequent flier cards could eventually become anachronisms, like slide rules.
High-end video conferencing will solve some of this. Imagine a new category of business that provides very-high-quality and secure telepresence services to companies, a kind of virtual conference room and post-meeting “bar” for socializing and networking, available by the hour, for less than it costs to fly.
But all that won’t deal with the carbon-age hangover that is the personal relationships we maintain all over the globe, with family and friends. These people will still want to visit each other for many decades to come, and even after high-speed rail networks finally, inevitably spiderweb across North America, there is still that damn ocean in the way for many. Remember, you can’t hug over Skype.
Airbus A380 thumbnail photo credit, Rich Eason. 747 image by Wolfgang Binder.
What would HG Wells do? He’d be astounded. Huxley too; He’d be proven correct, in a way. Leonardo’s ‘flying machine’ with wings… The Wright Brothers, seem so sweet right now. Innocent eras all.
It’s late now, but I am reading this and thinking about it
I watched this video earlier today (the 24hr global flight plans) twice and sent it on to my friends/family. All enjoyed it and were amazed at different aspects of the thing.
We are all jetsetters now.
I didn’t consider the effects of all that jet fuel, being more concerned with the waste from the washrooms falling in my yard. (or worse.)
I am an english Montrealer and, as such, have family and friends sprinkled all over the globe.
*(no need to go into any more detail re: why, as we all know, and it gives me an instant headache)
No, you cannot hug over Skype and there are those I miss deeply, and would love to hop into a horse and buggy and call on. But they’re in Switzerland or Thailand or Toronto etc….
Solution?
I certainly can’t come up with one.
Too sleepy.
Yet even fully awake I see a sorry scenario, as a bit of a fatalist.
Our world is designed to self destruct and humanity is committing global suicide. Atrocities upon our species and won’t stop.
I look at it from the old tried and true vantage point of a ‘being from another planet’ (hopefully a smarter one)
I can see this blechy thing we have going on down here, and am unable to see a way to stop this powerful machine of greed and politics grind to a halt because of a smattering of ‘greenies’. Minimiliized by terms.
We know them all… ‘tree-huggers’, being my most hated. I don’t need Skype to hug one of them.
I remember a geologist boyfriend telling me that the world, the earth itself, will survive, but we won’t. We inhabit a thin outer crust that has destructed and repaired itself over geological time. All on it’s very own.
Some sorry comfort in that thought.
All we can do is keep trying. It’s for the generations to come that we try; pray that somehow this machine can be stopped.
Thinking about Quebec politics seems … ludicrously silly in light of the BIG picture.
Keep watching, keep together on this. Try to raise a generation with some awareness. I don’t see this, I am sorry to say.
China scares the s–t out of me… and that’s just ONE thing.
OK.
Sleep.
I’ll read this in the morning and perhaps feel stupid.
JEK/artist and almost green
Nice once, as usual.
Bring back the blimp and the era of wind-powered sail. It’s already on its way, as I am sure you are well aware. Make the trip getting there half of the fun again. There will still be a need for conventional air travel, but on a reduced scale.
More and more people in Europe especially opting for vacations closer to home, and not for financial reasons. More taking the train.
In my chats with certain people in-the-know in the travel industry (ranging from Virgin airlines to eco-tourism companies), it is clear that not many actually have enough foresight to see the emerging shift in travel patterns and the need to realign their business to focus on such…
But yes, my biggest concern is the issue of close family and friends spread all over the globe.
Matt, Malindi
There’s a good article in this week’s MacLean’s magazine about the “New Frugality” and how living on less will eventually make us happier: http://www.macleans.ca/business/economy/article.jsp?content=20081022_87650_87650
Leaving aside for a moment the fact they blatantly stole the idea for the article from James’s post of last March: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2008/03/17/NoCool/
…
I think as this culture takes root in North America we’ll see two things happening:
1) People will find themselves having more free time, which by extension means they’ll have the time to take a train to the Grandma’s house (as opposed to flying).
2) “$5 / gallon” (or more) gasoline will raise airfares to the point where people living in the ‘New Frugality’ culture won’t fly anyway.
Interesting post, but travel will never be doomed. There are too many people like me that see the world, not as an arbitrary set of barriers, but rather one big playground.
No doubt the way we travel will change and evolve, as it has done over the past 100 years or so, but many humans are driven by an insatiable need to explore…we get restless.
On a small scale airlines are starting to look into alternative fuel
sources, which is a good thing, but I’m sure more can be done. I don’t want airlines planting trees, I want them to be partners in developing alternative fuel sources.
While weight will always be an issue, when it comes to aircraft manufacturing, can we develop some sort of thin solar panel that
would help power some of the airline’s functions, such as lighting, air conditioning, and other things that tap into the aircraft’s current fuel source. Is there a way this energy could be stored, so the plane won’t necessarily need to rely on terminal power once it reaches its destination?
Can we look at building aircraft differently, so that they can towed to
the runway on a consistent basis. I know that United Airlines used to tow its B747, when servicing Chicago-Hong Kong, because is the distance and headwinds enroute. Obviously, with longer range aircraft this isn’t necessary, but would there be a benefit to a tow all the time?
Is there a way to decrease congestion at some of the world’s busiest airports? A year ago, while enroute to Zurich from New York, our aircraft, and dozens of others, waited for more than 90 minutes before we could depart the ramp area, only to be told that we were 15th in line for takeoff–all the while our engines were running.