Eco-Tourism

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the blog question for this week, "are there ways to travel that do more good than harm?" To be honest, after watching the video in class and thinking about the way that tourism functions in the world, I am having a very difficult time imagining how to travel in an eco-friendly way and still have vacationing benefits.

First of all, there is the issue of transportation. People vacation to take a break away from every day life and spend a week relaxing. This ussually means flying to a far-off location and in turn, using a lot of fuel. I read "The Image" by Daniel Boorstein earlier this semester and one of the things that he discussed is that modern traveling does not serve the same purpose as it did in earlier centuries because the journey to the destination is so simple and mindless. While I had some problems with Boorstein's analysis of the value of modern traveling, it is something to think about. What if we didn't fly to a destination but instead had to take a long slow journey by some other form of transportation. Would the end result even be worth the journey? Maybe that would benefit the environment but it really is disheartening to think that the best way to travel in a "green" way is to not travel at all.

Could other elements of the vacation offset the damage of flying? As far as adding the cost of environmental impact to the price of a trip goes, I can certainly understand how the extra money would deter travel and pay for environmental improvements. At the same time, I have a lot of questions. How would we go about assigning a price to environmental degradation? What if only the U.S. imposed this fine - would it be effective? Could this sort of policy really change people's feelings about travel or maybe just encourage them to spend more on the plane ticket and less on other parts of the vacation?

I tried to think of other ways to offset the environmental costs of flying to a tourist location. Eating local food, maybe? Then again, the video in class showed that local produce does not find its way into hotels. Perhaps the hotels could commit themselves to being eco-friendly in their practices. These sorts of scenarios, however, really do require an entirely new paradigm for not only travel but global economics, trade, corporate competition and social structures.

I guess what I am trying to say is that this week's discussion question has stumped me. Even though I am hopeful that there is a way to travel in an environmentally sound manner, I can not even fathom the paradigm in which something like that could be accomplished.