Al Gore, Are You Out to Destroy Travel Literature?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 07.17.07 | 10:46 AM ET
We know you’re out to save the planet, but have you given any thought to how your campaign to reduce emissions will affect travel literature? What’s that? You haven’t really considered it? Well writer Steve Coronella has. “[L]ately I’ve been wondering whether Al Gore has signaled the end of travel writing as we have come to know it,” Coronella writes in the Cape Cod Times. “Will the long-haul literary excursion become an indefensible extravagance in the face of global warming and the accompanying public outcry that we all need to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ to combat it?”
Coronella cites two of his favorite road-trip books—“McCarthy’s Bar” and “Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball’s Minor Leagues”—as examples of the kind of books he fears might not be written in an all-green future.
“These two tomes depend, respectively, on an old Volvo with a dodgy exhaust and a reconditioned RV with a dubious MPG ratio,” he writes. “In the current climate, authors Pete McCarthy and David Lamb might even be discouraged from embarking on such irresponsible journeys in the first place. At the very least, they’d be chastised for their recklessness in any reviews that might appear.”
Would they really be chastised? I can’t imagine most critics these days taking them to task for a road trip. But some travel writers are reconsidering the way they travel, as we noted earlier this year.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea from our headline, by the way, Coronella doesn’t accuse Gore of setting out to destroy travel literature. And Coronella points to examples of travel books that wouldn’t likely come under scrutiny for their authors’ environmental impact, such as Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.”
Meanwhile, when Gore visited San Diego recently for a speaking engagement, local media reported on the details of his contract, which included his travel concerns. How does Gore like to roll when he’s picked up at the airport? Suffice to say, he doesn’t request old Volvos or reconditioned RVs.
“The car will be a sedan, NOT an SUV,” the contract reportedly stated. “In addition, sponsor will make best effort to use [a] hybrid car for Vice-President Gore’s transportation in the city of engagement.”
Related on World Hum:
* Should Travel Writers Discourage Flying to Reduce Global Warming?
* Q&A with Leo Hickman: In Search of the True Cost of Travel
* Long Distance Travel: ‘The Catch-22 of Nature-Based Tourism’
Photo by World Resources Institute Staff via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Diana 07.17.07 | 2:02 PM ET
Not only does Al Gore travel a lot, he also uses a private yet. Even though he claims to offset all his transportation, he is doing more damage than probably 50 full-time travel writers combined. No travel writer I know even flies first class, much less uses a private jet. Most travel writers also use public transportation at least some of the time.
Both Gore and writers rack up a ton of flying miles a year in the name of work. Gore’s travel just has a much higher impact.
Don’t get me wrong. I think An Inconvenient Truth did more to increase awareness of global warming among the general public than decades of reports in the print media. But Gore’s lifestyle choices can be a bit hypocritical.
Eva 07.18.07 | 4:52 PM ET
I don’t know that that’s entirely fair. Do ex-Vice-Presidents really have an option of flying coach? Don’t these people still get death threats every day? Or have I just seen one too many Hollywood movies about heroic secret service agents and wilful First Daughters…?
Every time another story comes up about the damage done by flying, I keep waiting for someone to tell me what’s being done to fix the problem, not by name-calling but by finding a way to make flying less harmful. We can only reduce our flying habits so much - and sooner or later someone is going to have to come up with a solution that doesn’t involve guilt-tripping people who fly. Sure, someone in the UK can resolve to take a a train from Newcastle to London instead of an Easyjet flight, but my family is spread out from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. Obviously I feel bad about my “carbon footprint” (I’m sure it’s enormous - I have yet to take one of those handy online measurements though) but what am I supposed to do? Skip every wedding and funeral for the next 20 years?
It will be interesting to see how all this affects things like the classic road trip narrative… I’m looking forward to the first “I drove around the world in a prius” type book.
Diana 07.19.07 | 3:53 PM ET
“I don’t know that that’s entirely fair. Do ex-Vice-Presidents really have an option of flying coach?”
First class is not very shabby at all. Tons of politicians and celebrities fly first class. I don’t think Gore is controversial enough to receive death threats, but I could be wrong.
I agree with your comment on train travel. It is very easy to do in Europe, and can travel overland or by boat all over the continent and to Asia and Africa, but almost impossible if you live in the US and travel overseas a lot. To reduce flying domestically, our government needs to subsidize train travel and not only extend and improve service but also make it affordable.