Green Holiday Travel, Adding Up the Cost of Tourism to the Environment
Aug
20
As with anything involving increasing human demand, tourism has an impact. The impact on the environment and local communities from holidays is significant. The World Wildlife Fund says that the impacts of increasing tourism in once remote parts of the world include:
- Huge developments in coastal areas ruining the local ecosystem, particularly plants and wildlife.
- Water use for tourism, including hotels, swimming pools, and golf courses in dry regions, greatly reducing the water supply for local populations.
- Development in natural areas altering the nesting and migration patterns of bird, sea, and animal life.
These impacts put pressure on the tourism industry to develop standards that encourage greater responsibility by tour operators and tourists themselves. The terms sustainable, ethical and ecotourism evolved out of the need to do something to reduce those negative impacts without turning tourists away from areas that badly need the income.
Cutting Down on Rights
The biggest culprit in causing damage to the planet by holiday travel is flying. Air travel is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and those gases are released into the part of the earth’s atmosphere where they can do most damage. A flight from Australia to London produces as many polluting gases as three cars do in a year. Add to those greenhouse gases pumping into the atmosphere the noise experienced by people living below the flight paths of planes and near busy airports, and you can see why many experts think that air travel should be reduced.
While you’re reading this nearly half a million people are in the air over Europe on planes to all sorts of destinations. Flying has become second nature for many people. Half the population of the UK flies somewhere at least once a year and it’s predicted that that level of air traffic will multiply by three by 2040. About a quarter of that travel is for business but that leaves a lot of holiday flights — creating a lot of carbon emissions. All of which means more planes, more runways, more airports, and more fuel. New, modern planes, built using the latest technology, are cleaner, less noisy, and more environmentally friendly, but they are still few and far between.
If you do nothing else to get greener on holiday, cut down on the number of flights you take each year. The first question to consider when you decide you need a holiday is how far you need to travel. If you have to get to the other side of the earth to see friends and relations then doing it without a flight may not be an option — but if you have the choice, and can go somewhere nearer home, think about other forms of travel before you book flights.
So before you fly think about whether or not you really need to make that flight. Everyone who flies can help the environment by reducing the number of flights they take each year.
Counting the costs of budget airlines
Budget airlines have made air travel cheap so people who couldn’t previously afford to fly now can and those who can afford it are flying more often. Because air travel is highly subsidised and there’s no tax on aviation fuel the people buying those cheap flights aren’t paying the full cost of their journeys. If the airlines had to charge the true cost, air travel would fall.
If you have to fly, try to take direct flights. Cheaper flights may go via a third location. Taking off and landing use up more fuel than cruising at high altitude so if your trip includes a few hops you’ll be responsible for more carbon emissions.
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