To answer some other comments (thanks for your interest, although I would REALLY rather see this discussion going on in my blog where ALL the readers of the original post would see it) --
Yes, it's a long post. I figured that was better than making TBEX people and other witers/bloggers looking for "my follow-up post about TBEX" look through 5 different posts. And I wanted to minimize the distraction to the vast majority of readers of my blog who are looking for travel news and advice, not meta-discussion about travel blogging (and who are likely to have already read some of my views about all of these issues, which I've explored previously in more depth in my books, blog, etc.).
SXSW Eco asked for, and I gave them, permission to record and broadcast or webcast my talk. I don't know what they will do with the recording. If you know other venues where these issues could be discussed, please urge them to include them on their agendas. Jeff Greenwald of Ethical Traveler has also been interested in this, and we tried to put together a forum on air transport, environmentalism, ecotourism, and ethics in the Bay Area last year, but we weren't able to make it happen.
I've considered putting together a proposal for a book on "Peak Travel". But I'm busy, and making a living, and researching and writing such a book would mean putting several current projects (and income streams) on hold for perhaps 2-3 years, realistically. I don't think I could justify the investment of time without a larger advance than I'm confident such a proposal would draw.
@GreenGlobalTrvl - You are missing the point, as you (and Dr. Honey) did in the conversations we had at TBEX and on which I reported in my TBEX follow-up article.
I didn't "propose that we get rid of air travel." I stated what I believe to be facts, as Ron noted in his comment here: (1) that air travel has substantial negative environmental impacts, and (2) that increased fuel prices, carbon taxes and/or offest or emissions trading costs are likely to make it vastly more expenseive.
If there's anything that's "not realistic", such that "the global economy would collapse", it's failing to *plan* for this highly likely future of much more expensive air travel.
Some people will get rich (or richer than they are now) by anticipating and investing in the post air travel (or greatly reduced air travel) future and the changes it will require. Some people will get poor (or poorer than they are now) by failing to do so.
If people want what is currently defined as "ecotourism" or "fair trade tourism" on the ground to survive those changes in transport modes and costs, and their consequences, you should take the lead, immediately if not sooner, in foregrounding these issues, trying to figure out more sustainable and less air travel dependent forms they can take, and getting the necessary infrastructure and policies (e.g. long-distance high-speed rail, longer vacations to allow people to travel by slower means, and repurposing of cruise ship fleets and shipbuilding to marine passenger transport) to enable that.
As I've said elsewhere, "If we want our children and grandchildren to be able to travel the world, what are we doing now to see that an infrastructure of trains and mass transit and even passenger ships is put in place before the oil runs out and the era of air travel ends?"
I haven't seen a visible presence of self-defined ecotourism organizations in lobbying for Amtrak funding, for example -- NARP has been pretty much on its own. And nobody is talking about transoceanic passenger shipping.
"Alternative fuel sources" for airplanes are a pipe dream, at present. It would be highly speculative risk-taking to rely on them to become price-competitive with fossil fuel without diverting land, water, or human labor from food production.
I don't accept a definition of ecotourism (from you, from TIES, from Dr. Honey, from CERT, or from anyone else) that excludes the ecological impacts of air travel and other transport to and from the destination from the total assessment of the trip. I've been making that criticism, consistently and in print, even before it was included in the 1st edition of my first book, for 20 years. I stand by it.
Do I accept advertising for air travel on my Web site and blog? Yes. Do I clearly label and disclose it as such? I think so. (If I can do better, please tell me how.) Do my advertisers have any say in what I write? No (as I think is apparent from my frequent criticisms of airlines and travel agencies, and my outing of their dirty linen).
Did I fly to Cancun? Yes. Did I claim that my trip constituted "ecotourism"? No. Did I claim that any of the air travel dependent tourist facilities in Cancun are on the whole (weighing transportation in the balance) "eco-friendly"? No. Have I been completely upfront with my readers that this is an issue, and about my ambivalence? Yes:
"For many years, I've devoted myself to encouraging people to travel more, especially to the most different places from which, I still think, we have the most to learn. Many of those, of course, are places we currently have no way to get to except by air. Am I wrong to encourage types of travel that require air travel, or to choose to fly myself?
"I flew 5,000 miles from San Francisco to Geneva [to an industry conference on aviation biofuels ansd sustainability] and back, at my own expense, as part of the process of trying to find a way out of my own internal ambivalence:
"I'm not a climate change denier, and I believe that there are practical and ethical limits to growth. I think people should avoid flying where there are other less environmentally harmful alternatives. ("Less harmful" is a more honest characterization of any powered transport than "eco-friendly".) Much air travel is wasteful, even perhaps ethically "wrong".
"But I haven't stopped flying. I continue to believe that long-haul travel, even by air, can in particular cases have a net positive effect on the world, mainly through the secondary effects of the permanent changes it can bring about in our worldview, which result in changes in how we go on with our lives.
"Does this make me a moderate on this issue, or merely a hypocrite? Am I alone in asking these questions, or in making a serious effort to find the answers?"
I've also said that "Given that getting there by air is an unavoidable ecological cost of long-distance travel, ecological responsibility in travel means both minimizing the avoidable environmental costs and trying to make a positive contribution in some other way to offset them. That's what ecotourism is supposed to be about."
We are not going to reconcile the contradiction between air travel and what is currently called "ecotourism" by not talking about it.
says, "My comment was based on my discussion with Edward at TBEX, in which he suggested that we, as Responsible Travelers, should actively discourage people from using air travel."
That's not what I said, or what I have ever said, in that or any other conversation or any of my writing.
Bret, I'm prepared to believe that you aren't *trying* to misrepresent what I said. But the fact that your mind twisted my saying "We should recognize the high probability that air travel is going to get a lot more expensive, and that the *cost* will discourage people from flying as much", into, "We should discourage people from flying," is indicative of the extent to which you have closed your mind to even *considering* the issue I was actually raising.
If you are really "all for including the environmental impact of transportation in our equations", then you should start working to get it incorproated into green travel certification metrics -- not just in theory but in practice -- so that those metrics are applied on a trip basis (not to components such as hotels or ground services in isoloation), and so that tours that include long-distance air travel for short stays don't get certified as "green" or labeled as "ecotourism".
Other changes such as longer vacations (e.g. European vacation lengths in the USA) would enable travellers to use slower means of transport to distant places, and justify higher costs of air travel by amortizing them over lengthier trips.
That's more "practical" and "realistic" than drinking the aviation industry's propaganda Kool-aid, cooked up to rationalize exclusioon of aviation from emissions trading or carbin taxes, about a future of "sustainable" limitless growth in air travel, (1) at levels several times greater than today (growing air travel in China, etc.), (2) fueled by drop-in replacement biuofuels, (3) produced in quantities several times greater than current jet fuel kerosene extraction and refining, (4) at comparable cost to current kerosene prices, (5) without diverting land, labor, or water from food production.
You say that, "I don't believe that a 'post-air travel' world exists." I think it is highly likely to exist. Not for ethical reasons (I think few people will change their travel behavior much for purely ethical reasons) but for economic ones.
The issue for us, I think, is what we can do to make that future the best one we can. The negative impacts of increased air travel costs on local "fair trade" tourism service providers who currently depend on long-haul air travel to deliver customers will be less if they start planning now than if they -- and their allies -- keep our heads in the sand.
(Not sure what's up. I just wrote a long reply here that disappeared whern I tried to post it. I'll try to reproduce it below.)
@GreenGlobalTrvl says, "My comment was based on my discussion with Edward at TBEX, in which he suggested that we, as Responsible Travelers, should actively discourage people from using air travel."
I never said that. Not in that conversation, or any other conversation, or in any of my writing or speaking.
Bret, I'm prepared to believe that you wrote this in good faith, and that you didn't intend to misrepresent what I said. But the fact that your mind heard, "Air travel is likely to get much more expensive, and increased costs are likely to discourage people from flying as much," as "We should discourage people from flying", is, unfortunately, indicative of the extent to which you (and, I think, many others who feel personally invested in "ecotourism" as an economic development and fair trade strategy and as having other benefits on the ground) have blocked out any consideration of what I did say and the issue I raised.
If you are "all for including the environmental impact of transportation in our equations", then you should be lobbying to get that incorporated into "green" travel and "ecotourism" certification metrics, in practice and not just in theory, so that trips are evaluated on a total trip basis, and that trips that involve loing-distance air travel for a short stay at an "ecotourism" destination aren't certified as "green".
Other changes such as longer vacations (e.g. European-length vaacations in the USA) could make is easier for travellers to use slower means of transport, or to justify higher air travel costs by amortizing them over longer trips.
That would be a lot more "practical" and "realistic" than drinking the aviation industry's propaganda Kool-aid, cooked up to justify excluding aviation from emissions trading or carbon taxes, about a future of "sustainable" infinite growth in air travel, (1) to levels many times those at present (increased air travel in China, etc.), (2) fueled by drop-in replacement biofuels, (3) produced in quantities many times those of current jet fuel kerosene extraction and refining, (4) at prices comparable to current kerosene prices, (5) without diverting land, water, or human labor from food production (i.e. burning food for jet fuel).
I'm not sure how many people in the aviation industry really believe that's likely, rather than promoting this purely for propaganda and lobbying. I don't think it's "impossible", but I don't think it's likely (and especially not likely at costs comparable to current fossil fuel costs).
At most, it's the sort of highly speculative investment that I would risk a small portion of my capital on, if I were a really rich venture capitalist who could afford to invest in many such highly speculative ventures in the hope that the one that pays out, pays out big enough to cover the losses on the vast majority of losing gambles at this risk level. Countrres with economic monocultures that are dependent on airborne tourism (and there are some of these), and that don't plan and prepare for increased air travel costs, are taking a hugely risky gamble with their economic futures. The sooner the changes start, the less painful they will be.
I'll let you know. If SXSW Eco makes the video available to people other than those registered for the conference, my guess would be that it would be here on their Youtube channel, and not live but after the fact. It looks like they've been selective about what they've posted from prior events, though -- mainly keynotes.
I'd welcome a disussion forum, online or offline. But I don't have or want a Google account. Google is evil; more generally, my interactions with other people are no business of Google or any other third party.
Could we use some other service that doesn't archive, data mine, and monetize its records of our group discussions? There are free conference telephone services like that, or Skype if you want video.
You can watch Youtube videos without having a Google or Youtube account, logging in, accepting cookies, or allowing Google to log your viewing (other than by IP address). Can't do that with Google+.
I'll be, ironically, on a plane tomorrow en route to a talk at Cornell (and after that to Austin to SXSW Eco). I tried to work out a way to make the trip by train, but there's no Amtrak service to Ithaca.
The canonical starting point for such a discussion would have to be Jeff Greenwald's "The Size of the World", a book that was originally a series of dial-in modem dispatches (by most criteria, *the* first travel blog!) to the GNN online portal (an early competitor of Compuserve et al. created by the partners who publish both the O'Reilly computer books and Travelers Tales, later sold to AOL) from a trip around the world entirely by surface transport in 1993-1994. Jeff later founded Ethical Traveler, as well as continuing his travel writing, working for NGOs, and doing travel story-telling as solo performance art in theaters. I'm disappointed Jeff has never been invited to speak at TBEX.
Exemption of aviation fuel for international flights from most taxes is, unfortunately, enshrined in some international treaties, and thus especially difficult to change. But that is far from the only unwarranted government subsidy to civilian air transport. See this list.
The original article (not mine) about going a year without flying is quoted in this story in the Guardian contrasting the Boeing keynote at SXSW Eco with my talk at the same event on "Peak Travel":
Guardian Sustainable Business: Boeing investing in UAE effort as detractors warn of peak travel
I was told that podcasts of the recorded talks will be made available online by SXSW Eco. I'll post links to my talk, and the Boeing keynote, as soon as I get them.
The Guardian has a report contrasting the Boeing keynote at SXSW Eco with my talk at the same event on "Peak Travel":
Guardian Sustainable Business: Boeing investing in UAE effort as detractors warn of peak travel
I was told that podcasts of the recorded talks will be made available online by SXSW Eco. I'll post links to my talk, and the Boeing keynote, as soon as I get them.
Text of my talk at SXSW Eco:
Text of my talk at SXSW Eco: Peak Travel: Envisioning a post-air-travel age
Excellent questions indeed. My initial answers:
"1. Do you accept that there is 'an unspoken dividing line between 'travel writing' and 'foreign news' ?."
Yes, unfortunately. It works both ways: "Travel writing" isn't expected to deal with "hard" news. (That much has been talked about here and elsewhere). But less noticed is the flip side: When mainstream media need to cover travel-related hard news, they don't even think to assign it to "travel writers". One good example was after 9/11, when there was a lot inept writing by general assignment beat reporters assigned to cover "travel security" stories but without the background in the field that some (not all, but some) travel writers have and had.
"2. Is it ethical to write about the Maldives and just cover the experience in the tourist resorts while omitting the bigger picture in the Maldives?"
Yes, but only if if the story is about "travel to resorts of a particular sort in the Maldives" and isn't misrepresented as being about travel in general in the Maldives. Luxury resort travel is a legitimate (sort of) niche, just as packaged tours are a niche, but neither is representative of travel in general.
"3. Should a travel writer include Amnesty International's position on countries such as Chad, China, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Senegal when writing about those countries?"
I don't think anyone needs to, or should, always include the opinion of any specific organization about every destination one writes about. But I do think that (a) local conditions and issues often influence the travel experience (and my readers really like it when I explain *why* things in travel work a particular way in a particular place) and (b) anyone with any pretensions to ethics should consider social issues.
FWIW, I think São Paulo is underrated in more ways (and maybe more important ways) than as a tourist destination. At least in the USA, most people have no idea how large or wealthy or globally significant it is. as a a visitor, I think it is one of those cities (like Los Angeles but maybe more so) that is hard to get to know without being introduced by a local.
Personally, the country where I'm most consistently angered by the failure of travel writers to mention human rights issues is Bhutan, where before finally allowing a modicum of democracy the monarch carried out ethnic cleansing against other ethnicities by declaring them "foreigners" even if they were born in Bhutan, rendering a large proportion of the population stateless, then expelling them. Most of them spent 20 years in refugee camps in Nepal. Many have recently been granted asylum in the US (a wave of successful asylum claims ought to be a red flag of past bad actions), but really most of them would still rather return to their homeland of Bhutan and the issue is not "resolved".
Of course, those who visit Bhutan today don't see or hear form those who were expelled. And if they asked questions of their government minders, they would be denied visas or expelled. But they shouldn't write about he "benign" monarchy or the "peaceful" state of affairs in Bhutan today without doing the minimal research that would make them aware of the evil back story to the present "harmony".
A good idea, but I'd also -- and perhaps even more -- be interested in:
- a directory of blogs about each country, including in order of priority (a) blogs by locals, (b) blogs by locally-resident expats, and (c) blogs by foreigners about their visits to that country
- a directory of films depicting life in different countries (preferably written & directed by locals)
"The aviation industry very well understands that Earth's atmosphere is a reservoir that has a limited capacity to safely absorb emissions."
What a crock of B.S.! If the industry understands that, they have certainly not admitted any such realization.
When I asked leading representatives of the aviation industry (at a 2009 summit on aviation and the environment) if they thought there was a limit to how much air travel is sustainable, they unanimously and unequivocally said, "No". The chairman of the board of IATA told me flatly, "I don't believe there should be any limits on growth".
@umarket - I'm glad that you are trying to call travellers' attention to *some* of the implications of their choices. But given the percentage of many travellers' budgets that is spent on airfare, I think there is a significant danger that failing to address the (un)sustainability of mass long-haul air travel will result in distorted decision-making. I would encourage you to propose to WTTC that they include an article on air travel in the series you are writing. Personally, I would be reluctant to participate in a discussion of travel sustainability that didn't include this issue, since such an event or publication, or my participation in it, could divert people's attention away from this issue or be taken as implying that it isn't one of the most important sustainability issues in travel. It's also, frankly, stupid for businesses and government tourism promotion offices to ignore how "peak air travel" is likely to impact their future activities.
@nerdseyeview - Continuing our face-to-face conversation last month (thank you!), I don't go so far as to say that, "Travel is not sustainable", but I do say that travel as we know it is not sustainable.
The question for me is what those of us who think some kinds of travel can have beneficial effects on travelers' attitude and subsequent behavior, but who also think travel as we know it is unsustainable, can do to encourage travellers to choose more sustainable modes of travel.
As a writer, that certainly includes being honest with my readers about the impact of my own travel, and encouraging my readers to take a wholistic perspective on the impact of their travel choices. I claim no purity or virtue in my own choices, only full disclosure. I fly a lot, and while I've never owned a motor vehicle and prefer to travel by bicycle, roads in the USA were paved for bicycles, not for car. There's nothing eco-friendly about asphalt.
Is it irony or is it hypocrisy that the same players in the travel "industry" who are most committed to "packaging" multiple travel services into a single salable travel product (a symptom of the commodification of travel, another of my pet peeves) are often those most resistant to taking a wholistic view of the environmental or other impacts of the whole package?
I think it's a legitimate question whether isolated things like not changing the linens daily in a hotel are more greenwashing or "feel-good" measures that distract travellers' attention from the real impacts of their trip (e.g. flights), or whether they are symbolic first consciousness-raising steps. A legitimate question, but I don't have much hesitation is answering that it's almost always the former.
"Carbon offsets" for flights at least direct some attention at the central problem, even if they have the same moral calculus as the sale of indulgences. Claims to "carbon neutrality" based on such offsets remind me of my father, who thought he was contributing to "zero population growth" because he offset having had three children by contributing to Planned Parenthood so that other people would have fewer children.
The discourse of recreational travel too often takes for granted that further is better. Travellers boast about having been to more distant and remote places. There's a genre of writing about place that's based on staying in one spot, and developing a nuanced appreciation of it (e.g. Walden), but little about exploring diversity close to home.
"Near" doesn't have to be familiar: One of the joys of bicycle day trips is learning about the diversity of neighborhoods and communities off the tourist routes, but within a few tens of miles of my home
What's up with the New Yorkers who've never taken a walking tour of Harlem, much less visited Harlem on their own, but take a township tour when they're in South Africa? Or the Japanese who do go on a guided tour of Harlem when they visit New York, but have never visited poor neighborhoods in their home city? Where are the guidebook writing guidelines for a series that require authors to cover the range of communities in the area covered by each guidebook? Try to find a guidebook to California that gives directions to the Mexican-American downtown in Santa Barbara, for example. It's a mile or two away from the anglo downtown, and most guidebooks don't even mention that it exists. Or the difficulty I had finding the Muslim quarter in Vienna. I wanted a place to explore that wouldn't be closed down on Christmas Day, but Christian Viennese denied there was any such place. I guess they never thought about where all the Turkish "guest workers" live...
Where is the travel culture that presumes a preference and value for the local over the distant on environmental grounds, like "locavore" food culture, and what are we doing to create and promote it?
This is an extremely problematic piece that completely fails to engage with the issues that have determined conditions in Kashmir. It's kind of like asking whether Chinese occupation has improved conditions for tourists in Tibet or East Turkestan, without asking about what the relationship is between the occupation, tourism policy, and the tourism industry.
I don't accept the argument that we shouldn't travel to places where self-determination is being denied (e.g. US colonies like Puerto Rico, American Samoa, etc.) or where other human rights abuses are occurring (which would rule out the entire USA). Nor do I think that visitors necessarily have to focus solely on these issues, although I would hope that tourists and travellers would be sensitive (and that travel writers would sensitize them) to their potential role as citizen journalists and witnesses to human rights.
But I do think that travellers, and to an even greater degree travel writers, have some responsibility (how much may be debatable, but certainly some) to pay attention to how tourism relates to human rights abuses, whether our spending financially benefits the oppressors, and whether our presence will be misused by them for propaganda purposes.
This article falls short on all these counts.
@wandering_j - +1 "The Mainstream media does not have an interest in encouraging people to travel independently." Nor does the travel industry: The ultimate competition for any tour or guide is the possibility of independent, do it yourself travel.
"The pain that rich people will have to undergo to meet our climate goals is much less than that which the poor will have to undergo if we don't."
Honest words that rarely get heard on such a visible stage, especially with respect to air travel. But the response shows that the travel industry and governments still have their heads in the sand.
The Boeing spokesperson asks for MORE government subsidies for the aviation industry, and says (with a straight face) this will REDUCE the climate impact of air travel. Which says a lot about how much the aviation industry takes government subsidies for granted.
@eurapart - I've edited the title of this thread on Outbounding as you suggested. Obviously, I didn't upload this to Youtube and can't control how it is titled . I agree that it wouldn't likely be found by the title it was given on Youtube. That's why I posted the pointer here on Outbounding.
Here's a start to discussion: The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores, by Julian Spector, City Lab (The Atlantic): "International shipping and aviation emit as much as entire wealthy nations, but they’re not bound by the COP21 deal...."
And on whether it's realistic to expect biofuels to solve the problem of air travel and global warming, see my own earlier essay on Peak Travel:
"How realistic is the prospect for "sustainable" biofuels, on which the aviation industry has staked its hopes?...
To meet the needs of aviation, sustainably, biofuels must be:
- A high energy density drop-in liquid replacement for kerosene;
- Produced in quantities many times those of current jet fuel extraction and refining (to support air traffic many times present volumes, as the industry projects, driven largely by growth in air travel and air cargo transport in China and other developing countries);
- At prices comparable to current kerosene prices;
- Without contributing more to climate change – through energy inputs and the production and refining process – than it saves compared to fossil fuel;
- Without diverting land, water, or human labor from food production (i.e. burning food for jet fuel); and
- Available at full scale soon, before we run out of oil or pass the climate change tipping point.
That's a tall order. It might turn out to be possible, but I don't think it's likely."
We can applaud, but how many of the participants on Outbounding have acted on this? Is it hypocritical (yes) for me to like this without acting on it in my own life?
"Related, did everyone read this post on TBEX and its elevation of sponsors as the lynchpin to your business model"
Thanks, Pam, for your interest in this other post of mine. It's being discussed in a separate thread here.