Chapter 1 is here.
Today's greenwash example: ecotourism, defined by Wikipedia thus.Ecotourism, also known as ecological tourism, is a form of tourism that appeals to ecologically and socially conscious individuals. Generally speaking, ecotourism focuses on volunteering, personal growth, and learning new ways to live on the planet. It typically involves travel to destinations where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions.So places "where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions" shall now be overrun with tourists who need transportation, lodging, food and all manner of daily life support in places where no such accommodations already exist for tourists. And once the locals find out how much money the environmentally sensitive ecotourists will pay for the privilege of ruining the formerly pristine areas, why, the locals will build new roads, new hotels, new restaurants (serving, no doubt, nothing but lentils and soy) and communicatons infrastructure - because what the heck in the point in visiting a place "where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions" if you can't email photos home of yourself standing in the midst of it?
Recently, on behalf of The Sunday Telegraph, I made my maiden voyage as an "eco-tourist". My destination was the Findhorn Foundation, a community on the north-east coast of Scotland that defines itself as "a centre of spiritual service in co-creation with nature". It attracts 14,000 visitors a year, who go to embrace its philosophy of "living more lightly on the planet", achievable by doing things such as sharing cars and building houses with turf roofs. I spent two days experiencing this "light-living" for myself - an excursion for which the environment paid heavily.But you can feel so good about yourself while you're at the banana farm because you're saving the planet. Not!My trip began when a friend drove me from Hammersmith to Luton airport in a gaz-guzzling Cherokee Jeep. There, holding a ticket issued on non-recycled paper, I boarded a flight to Inverness. While it disgorged carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I lunched on a sandwich that had been wrapped in plastic.
On landing in Scotland, I was transported to the commune by the first taxi that became available - a delapidated people-carrier that blazed across the moors amid a fug of black exhaust fumes. The journey would have seemed marginally less eco-hostile had anyone been sharing the seven spare seats. After a couple of days spent eating lentils and learning how to mix organic compost, I returned to London by the same means of transport.
The International Ecotourism Society (Ties) defines ecotourism as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people". It's a heart-warming idea, but one with a major stumbling block. For, as my trip to Scotland showed, when environmental conservation is on the agenda, the words "responsible travel" begin to sound like an oxymoron.
Take, for example, flying, which is one of the world's most polluting means of transport. There are now "earth-kind" hotels and resorts in every corner of the globe - the Bahamas, Kenya, Las Vegas - but even the most dedicated of them rely on the mainstream travel industry to transport their guests. Yet it is a melancholy truth that even the greenest of eco-tourists turns a different shade when he's at 30,000 feet.
The average jet pumps around a tonne of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every passenger it carries from London to New York. With one return visit to, say, an organic banana farm in Peru, you're responsible for more carbon dioxide production than a year's motoring.
Certainly "eco-tourism", as you've oulined it, does come off as oxymoronic. Note though that some of the early eco-tourism efforts were clearly not aimed at offering a lower CO2 emitted vacation but rather as a way of generating tourist business in countries whose principal resource could be their natural landscapes, and as a way to preserve those and raise some cash those countries could sell the beauty and naturalness of said resources.
Your link at the end is poignant. For certain CO2 emissions will rise as we try to cope with greater energy needs of a growing population, by the use of ever more fossil fuels.
I'm a conservationist, not an environmentalist.
At one time, saving the planet was seen primarily as an engineering problem. You did this or that in order to achieve this or that result, and you only did this or that hopefully after some serious study of the results of doing either one. Saving the planet involved math and science.
But math is hard. And doing science that doesn't involve making a computer model as your end result is hard.
So environmentalism became a religion. And not only a religion, it became a religion primarily centered not around saving the planet but rather achieving some mystical link with the planet. It became not about saving the planet, but rather about performing various (largely unburdensome) acts of penitance to make oneself feel righteous with respect to the planet. But of course, the planet doesn't talk to you. So making oneself feel right in the eyes of the planet is really making yourself look good in the eyes of your holier and greener than thou environmentalist friends. Doing that has nothing any more to do with actually protecting the environment.
The green lifestyle is increasingly much worse for the environment than not being green. So count me as not being green and in fact rabidly opposed to it.
Did you just outline a niche market for an eco-friendly / "carbon neutral" airline? I wonder how much the tickets would cost.
I've never doubted that half of the green movement stems from yuppies eager to protect their jaunts up to the local hiking trail in their jeep Cherokees wearing their 200$ hiking boots for a picnic imported cheese and fruits from Chile grown on land that used to be arboreal.
The other half is simply the latest manifestation in a neverending line of liberal survivors guilt.
These two thoughts intersect in its complete unwilling to make any genuine personal sacrifice while calling on government to impose it on the rest of us.
Walk into Whole Foods in Seattle and watch people mow down the produce section.
People will have headed debates over which mango is "more organic."
Think of how much money they'd save by volunteering to work free for two weeks at a sewage treatment plant.
I live in Mexico. This sort of thinking goes on in all sorts of tourism, although the Environmental tourist is probably the most mindless.
The vast majority of Americans that visit sooner or later say, "You know what the Mexicans should do? My answer is always, "So you are down here doing missionary work?".
It is the whole proselytizing, "we know what is best for you mentality" we Americans are prone to that I find most offensive.
TOC: Know-it-alls are irritating, for sure. Seems to me there's more than one kind of offensiveness from tourists. Americans might be know-it-alls and they might succumb to the notion that every problem has a solution. For sure, they (even the non-tourist ones) seem to like to think they have a handle on things before they really do.
So granting what you say, how does that compare to the idea that foreigners are simply inferior and incapable of improving their lives (aka "wogs")? I used to get that from lots of Europeans once we where sitting around drinking and their guards were down. I don't think that's particularly less offensive, even if they mostly don't share that opinion with the subjects.
Have a shot of the Law Of Unintended Consequences anyone? MMMMMMMM, sure tastes good.
The best 'green' vacation would be one where you never left home. With the cost of gas this year that may be the one we take! Or maybe stay reasonably local and see something new.
TOC - I have the same reaction for visitors to my state. We are one of the poorest in the US and the farthest behind in a lot of ways, except the bad ones. "It would be so much better here if was like we did at home." To which I always respond, "Interstate X runs the other way, too."
Which is why I am so defensive when the local illegal immigrants (used to be called wetbacks, but that is racist) tell us that we have to respect their culture. Why? If it was so great why did they leave? Don't like it here? The go the hell back where you came from.
Eco-tourism is really eco-terrorism for the recipients.