Other players in the travel industry are also working on ways to mitigate some of the damage. It’s now easy to find opportunities to "offset" the carbon cost of traveling (see "Six Ways to Make a Difference" in the sidebar to this article). If you book a flight on Travelocity or Expedia, for instance, you’ll be offered the chance to balance your carbon use through companies that plant trees and build wind turbines and solar power facilities. You can also go online before or after buying a plane ticket and purchase such offsets independently. One leading firm, TerraPass, offers 1,000 pounds of carbon offsets—roughly the equivalent of a 2,000-mile round-trip flight—for $5.99; 5,000 pounds, enough to cover the carbon produced by flying from New York to Tokyo, go for $29.99. Carbon offsetting makes sense, and it’s bound to expand in years ahead. (The Web site www.carbonfund.org estimates that consumer demand for offsets has increased more than tenfold since January 2006.) Europeans can already choose carbon-neutral car rentals from Avis, and British Airways became the first airline to offer every passenger the choice of offsetting. But offsets don’t solve the problem entirely. For now, their price is suspiciously cheap. That’s because so few people are engaging in the voluntary trade of emissions that the companies offering them can purchase carbon credits for very little money. Some of the offsetting actions, frankly, don’t amount to much; this is a field with no regulation or accountability. In any event, if offsetting is ever going to be big enough to make a measurable impact on the planet, then it will need to be mandatory. And good results will need to match good intent, which would run up the cost beyond the trivial range. The European Union is pressing to make international airlines cover the cost of their carbon emissions while flying over EU airspace. The U.S., which comprises 4 percent of the world’s population and contributes 25 percent of the planet’s carbon, is blocking the action.
For the moment, then, these carbon offsets are a decent salve for our consciences—and a real bargain, akin to the medieval practice of selling indulgences. But they will only represent a long-term solution to the planet’s climate crisis if joined by better and better technology and significant, international political action. That will require changing behavior. Which, in the long run, may be the most useful thing about travel: we see other approaches to the good life, ones that we can bring back home.
Consider, for instance, the implications of many travelers’ desire to visit Europe. When we want a taste of the good life, we head to France, to Italy, to Spain: elegance, sophistication, gastronomy. The places that entice us are societies that use, per capita, half the energy the U.S. does. Half is a big number, big enough to make a dent in global warming. The Europeans have no secret technology, of course, but they do have a subtle tilt toward community and away from ultra-individualism. Hence, their willingness to build and maintain cities that draw people in instead of pushing them out toward suburbs. The average resident of the state of Georgia uses a little more than twice as much fossil fuel per year than a counterpart in one of these countries just to get around. The Europeans have built great rail systems and trained themselves to use them, instead of feeling they must travel only on their own schedule.
It’s figuring out differences like these that can make travel worth its environmental cost. We need more ideas of the good life to guide us. And the travel industry is starting to provide more examples, including ecologically minded hotels and vacations offering the opportunity to work on environmental restoration projects. It’s our world—for the moment still rich, diverse, joyfully alive with an astounding array of biology and humanity. We who are here now will determine whether it stays that way—and whether those who come after us will marvel at the same bountiful earth.
The next installment of Travel + Leisure’s global warming series will appear in the March issue.
Comments (0)
Open / Close