What’s the True Cost of Travel? Excerpts From ‘The Final Call’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 05.24.07 | 11:50 AM ET
Leo Hickman’s The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of Our Holidays comes out early next month, and the Guardian has posted two excerpts—part one and part two—from the book. Hickman, who is the paper’s ethical living editor, also fielded questions online today, covering issues ranging from the effectiveness of buying carbon credits to why travelers might want to shun Dubai “to send the signal that much of what is going on there is environmentally insane.”
Over at Different Directions, Benji Lanyado responds to Hickman’s excerpts:
Eco-tourism, sustainable tourism, cultural tourism and independent tourism (this is the one that most of us do…no packages, no golf courses, no vast lucre-plated monoliths jutting out of the Gulf of Oman) are, as far as I’m aware, pretty good for the world. Let’s not forget the nasty stuff happening on the outskirts of Dubai, in the coral reefs in Thailand and down a back alley behind a MacDonalds in Tallinn—in fact let’s make sure these things are thoroughly exposed (and Hickman deserves credit for this)—but let’s not start morally carpet-bombing the ‘industry’ as a whole.
Related on World Hum:
* Long-Distance Travel: ‘The Catch-22 of Nature-Based Tourism’
* Q&A with Mark Ellingham: Rough Guides and the Ethics of Travel
* Carbon Offsets for Travelers: What Are You Really Paying For?
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Marilyn Terrell 05.25.07 | 7:07 AM ET
In the online Q&A, Hickman says: “I passionately do not believe that so-called carbon offsetting is the answer, or even part of the answer. It sends out totally the wrong message to consumers that they cay just buy their way out of trouble, and is based on highly questionable science in my view.”
I wish Hickman had elaborated a bit on why he thinks it’s so bad, and what the questionable science is. Isn’t offsetting better than nothing?