Are ‘Climate Tourists’ Wreaking Havoc on Fragile Land?

Travel Blog • Joanna Kakissis • 10.03.07 | 10:45 AM ET

Glaciers and sub-zero temperatures have long kept most tourists away from Greenland. But as global warming changes the face of the Arctic—picture glaciers splintering into icebergs and long-buried islands revealed from the melted ice—a new crowd of eco-travelers is heading to Greenland and other previously ice-bound countries to see the ice before it’s all gone, the Wall Street Journal reports. They’re called climate tourists, and they’re stuck in the irony of our environmentally troubled times: “Any trip by train, plane or cruise ship pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and potentially contributes to the warming of the planet,” writes the Journal’s Gautnam Naik.

Since the Greenlanders are actually growing potatoes now, is it the end of the world as we know it? And if we want to see this world before it melts away, does that mean we are part of the problem and headed for a world of “stay-at-home tourists”?

Photo of Kulusuk, Greenland by nick_russill, via Flickr (Creative Commons).