You can also substitute cleaner forms of travel, in whole or in part, for airplanes and road trips. Like a good New Yorker, I gave up my car years ago and now visit family in Boston and Washington by bus, not by plane. The train over those routes is too expensive for my taste, but I did take a very pleasant, T.S.A.-free Amtrak trip from Miami to Orlando earlier this year for $33. It is true that a trip to Paris will require air travel, assuming no crew offers you a ride on a racing yacht. But from there you don’t need to flit around Europe on discount airlines. Take trains. They aren’t just better for the environment, they are also more fun and interesting. You may not get to see as many places in as many days, but dashing from city to city is usually just frenzied bucket-list checking, anyway.

When you do fly, pay a little extra to make it cleaner. Favor airlines that are taking their carbon footprint seriously. No airline is an entirely good actor in this game, but the use of biofuels is up, technology is making planes (gradually) more efficient, and a United Nations-overseen international agreement will eventually require airlines flying international routes between participating countries to cap emissions at 2020 levels and make up the difference through purchase of carbon offsets. For that matter, you can buy your own carbon offsets for your plane seat. These programs have gotten a bad rap but have vastly improved in recent years, thanks to careful monitoring by independent entities. Unless you’re capturing atmospheric carbon yourself, they are a valid second-best solution.

You can also be a better traveler by choosing where your dollars are spent. A little extra research can help find substitutes for overtouristed areas like Dubrovnik, Croatia or Cusco, Peru. Less-visited locales have many advantages, not least of which is that the kindness of locals is usually inversely related to the number of tourists. If you must visit the most popular destinations, go (way) out of your way to support local businesses over international chains, even if that increases culture discomfort and language barriers. If you can’t resist Airbnb (and I can’t, because I don’t like hotel clerks and breakfast buffets standing between me and the people and cuisine of my destination) at least seek out a home that an actual local lives in most of the year — you know, what Airbnb used to be. Such vestiges still remain on the site, if you look hard enough.

Most of this will make travel more expensive — and that may mean traveling even less. Think of it as a progressive tax paid by those lucky enough to travel for damaging the world those who can’t travel must live in. It is a small price to pay. And maybe it will make you feel a little less shame.

Seth Kugel is a former Frugal Traveler columnist for The Times and the author of “Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious.”

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