The end of travel?

A recent news story states that the Great Barrier Reef has suffered its third mass coral bleaching event in five years. Clearly, this is terrible news and highlights the fact that we should no longer be thinking about the environmental crisis as something that will be visited upon our children or grandchildren, rather an event that is happening right now, before our eyes. This should result in a realization that we do not have time for incremental change, slowly negotiating the reform of our existing democratic-corporate institutions; rather, we need a profound and immediate shift to a Total Green Future, by any means necessary. But there is another line of thought that emerges from thinking about the Great Barrier Reef: the nature of travel.

If you’re over 40 years old you probably grew up hearing about the Great Barrier Reef as a natural wonder of the world. For most of us, it was a very long way away, and many of us would have had it on our list of places we wanted to see before we, well, died. Some of us were lucky enough to see it during its glory days. We can no longer see the Great Barrier Reef at its best, which suggests that now is the time to start thinking seriously about what other places are on our bucket lists, because the clock may be counting down to when it is no longer possible to visit them. Some of those places will be ruined by the environmental crisis during our lifetimes, but there is another issue to explore here: even if we act swiftly and implement a Total Green Future, you are still probably not going to see those places on your bucket list. How so?

A recent study published in Nature Climate Change shows that “between 2009 and 2013, tourism’s global carbon footprint has increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GtCO2e, four times more than previously estimated, accounting for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.” 8%! Clearly, the way we currently undertake leisure travel is unsustainable (as is business travel, but that’s another article). In an earlier TGF article, we asked the question, “how much should be reduce consumption?” The answer given to that question — purely as a thinking exercise, as of course the scientifically-verifiable answer changes from situation to situation — was 90%.

So in a Total Green Future we will probably have to reduce our leisure travel by about 90%: but even that results in a noticeable figure on the table of global greenhouse gas emissions, so maybe it’s 99%. That sounds incredible at first, but we do not have to go that far back in time to see a profoundly different attitude toward travel. Again, if you’re over 40 years old you probably have memories of some very different expectations. For all but the wealthy, international travel used to be quite rare, and inter-continental travel was often a once-or-twice-in-a-lifetime experience right up until the early 90s.

Furthermore, travel doesn’t even provide the pay-offs today that it used to in the past. Boomers, and even GenXers, had a genuinely different life experience through travel: it was difficult and often dangerous, and required exploring your limits and finding out something new about yourself (not that this was worth the environmental destruction, but it was at least something). Travel today looks very different: a generation of people traveling to nice hotels with a suitcase on wheels, guided by the internet, and in constant contact with people back home via the exact same social media feeds they experience back home. Is such travel enjoyable? Sure. But is it as valuable? That’s contestable.

Unfortunately, you will not see many of the places on your bucket list. If we continue on our current path, the reasons for this will be the environmental decay of those places, accompanied by the economic, political and social turmoil that will make travel increasingly difficult. And even if we implement a Total Green Future you probably won’t get to visit those places because it will not be sustainable to do so. In a Total Green Future, motorized travel will probably be reduced to places that are relatively local. If you want to experience more distant travel you might be required to dedicate yourself to walking or cycling, or saving up Energy Credits for many years to have a literally once-in-a-lifetime experience.

In a Total Green Future, saving places will mean not going to places (at least until we invent genuinely clean modes of transport). But that’s ok, because by doing this we actually get to have a future.