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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| "Binge Travel": The New Tobacco?? |
| 2007-05-08 |
| Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides and the man who encouraged a generation of travellers to pack a rucksack and explore the world, has compared the damage done by tourism to the impact of the tobacco industry. What's next, "second-hand flights"? Ellingham now says travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday. He wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. The development he regrets most is the public's appetite for what he calls 'binge-flying'. 'The tobacco industry fouled up the world while denying [it] as much as possible for as long as they could,' said Ellingham. 'If the travel industry rosily goes ahead as it is doing, ignoring the effect that carbon emissions from flying are having on climate change, we are putting ourselves in a very similar position to the tobacco industry.' I never knew travel causes cancer! Thanks for the info! Although the aviation industry now accounts for just 5.5 per cent of the CO2 generated in the UK, it is one of the fastest-growing generators of the pollution. Some experts estimate that flying could treble in the next 20 years. I guess too many of the wrong people are out and about, right, Mr Ellingham? 'Climate change is an issue that dwarfs all others and the impact of flying is key to this,' said Ellingham. 'All of us involved have a responsibility to inform travellers as clearly and honestly as possible about the environmental cost of their journeys. We must encourage travellers to travel less and neutralise their carbon footprint through offsetting. It is hard to say the positive impact travelling has can ever outweigh the damage done by simply travelling to the destination,' he said. 'Balancing all the positives and negatives, I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a "responsible" or "ethical" holiday.' True. Imagine how many trees have been cut down to produce worthless, pretentious, inaccurate travel guides. Why, if we cut down just 5% on them, we could save a rainforest or two... Ellingham is calling for a £100 green tax on all flights to Europe and Africa, and £250 on flights to the rest of the world. He also wants investment to create a low-carbon economy, as well as a moratorium on airport expansion. I'd like a $10 tax on your precious tourbooks, myself. Y'know, to encourage people to get them at the library, to cut down on the amount of them clogging my local landfill. Think of it as literary carpooling. Surely you agree with that, Mr Ellingham? Won't you please think of the Children? (TM) It was 25 years ago this week when Ellingham sat down at his kitchen table and wrote his first guidebook, using his mother's typewriter. Alongside Lonely Planet, Ellingham's publications revolutionised the travel industry, particularly by encouraging young people to explore the world. 'At that time travelling, as distinct from a two-week holiday, was a niche interest. Students went InterRailing, while the more daring would go island-hopping in Greece,' he said. In the past 25 years, he said, there has been 'a huge growth in expectation of what people think they can do on holiday. People have more money. Flights cost a fraction of what they did then.' "Ah, the good ol' days....when people who are NOKD stayed home....and national airlines were subsidized by taxpayers who couldn't afford to fly on them...." Last week Easyjet came under criticism from environmentalists for delaying the launch of its carbon emission offsetting scheme, blaming a market riddled with 'snake-oil salesmen'. Talk about an inconvenient truth...now here comes some intellectual turbulence caused by a huge emission of hot air. Fasten your seatbelts, kiddies. Alongside guides enticing travellers to fly, Ellingham also publishes environmental titles, including the Rough Guide to Climate Change which is nominated for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books award, to be announced next week. Even so, he is keenly aware of the incongruity of making pronouncements about how people should moderate their behaviour. 'I acknowledge that I'm speaking about all of this from an apparently contradictory position but it's a question of working with what's realistic: if Rough Guides was to disappear overnight, I don't think anybody would fly any less. I think it's an entirely ethical position of mine to work with what's realistic by encouraging people to moderate the amount they fly, rather than stop altogether,' he said. 'It's up to people to make up their own minds about how they live their lives.' While determined to encourage people to reduce the number of flights they take, Ellingham admits he has no intention of stopping himself, and he does not expect others to do so either. 'As a "recovering travel writer", I fly less than I would like to, but more than I know that ethically I should. The deal I have made with myself is to limit the number of flights I take to one long-haul and two or three shorter flights each year,' he said. 'I very much respect the purist attitudes of those who say they will never fly again, but it's totally unrealistic to expect the majority to do the same.' The best way to cure yourself of an addiction is to go cold turkey, Mr Ellingham. Stay home and set a real example for the great unwashed. Ellingham is aware of another contradiction in his position. While being hugely destructive, tourism also has so many positive effects that it would be disastrous to the economies of many nations if it were to stop or even be curbed. It has been instrumental in encouraging developing nations to, gasp, protect their environments, especially ones blessed with extraordinary rainforests or coral reefs. After all, no comparatively rich tourist is going to come thousands of miles to see dead animals. But that kind of contradicts everything the "concerned environmentalists" like to spout from the comfort of their Gulfstreams and Learjets. Encouraging people to reduce the number of flights they take, however, is no easy task. Ellingham said he has been horrified by a new travelling trend. 'If there was just one thing I could change, it would be this new British obsession for binge flying,' he said. 'We now live in a society where, if people have nothing to do on a Saturday night, they go to Budapest for 48 hours. We fly anywhere at the slightest opportunity, 10 times and upwards a year. This needs to be addressed with the greatest urgency.' When it's beautiful people and celebrities doing it when surrounded by paparazzi, that's wonderful. Joe Sixpack and his digital camera shots of the kids? Then it's a calamity. Anyone else see the snobbery in that? Slightly OT: If you really feel guilty about your destructive flying habits, you can now purchase "carbon credits" when you book your flight on Expedia, and I'm sure other travel sites are offering something similar. They're kind of like indulgences for the modern age to expiate your environmental sins. |
| Posted by:Swamp Blondie |
| #5 Talk about no clothes, really just STFU. I don't fly at all so I AM BETTER THAN YOU! Ellingham using your own crappy Luddite logic. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2007-05-08 22:19 |
| #4 While determined to encourage people to reduce the number of flights they take, Ellingham admits he has no intention of stopping himself, and he does not expect others to do so either. So...then shut the fuck up why doncha? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-05-08 14:39 |
| #3 If Ellingham feels that guilty about his former travel advocacy, he can take vows of poverty, chastity, stability [staying in one place for life] & silence. What a poseur. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-05-08 13:35 |
| #2 Hey, Ellingham, try walking on your next tour. Sort of limits you to England (unless you can swim the Channel), but you can go to pretty much everywhere in Europe, Asia and Africa. That should keep you busy for a while. And the only CO2 you produce will be from your own breath. Unless you can figure out a way to stop that too. |
| Posted by: Rambler 2007-05-08 11:04 |
| #1 So what the hell is this idiot saying? Fly, don't fly? Tour....don't tour??? I wish he'd make up his mind. Still flies much more than I do, I guess rules are for the little people anyway. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2007-05-08 08:06 |