Eco-Tourism

I'm going to separate this response into two different responses; one part in response to the film and another part in response to the article because they present pretty different issues in my mind.

First, the film. 'Nicely done!' is my first response. I'm pretty impressed with those film making abilities. As far as their argument goes, I have to be boring on this one and say I definitely agree with them. Just like we should consider our economic impact in our everyday lives, we should consider it when we travel. However, like the students in the film, I also would stress the importance of doing research. This is a necessity in any environmentally friendly actions we take in our lives. It is true that there is a movement towards greener lifestyles and as a result, businesses looking to profit from this movement without having to incurr the costs of reshaping their industry are always going to take advantage of labels. Doing our research is important in everything these days from food to travel to beauty products. Knowing what ingredients to look for in foods is more important than a label that says "organic" and understanding what eco-tourism really is and making sure your travels comply is all part of the same equation. Unfortunately, in this market, it is up to the consumer to be responsible. People will travel, this is a fact, so making travels less harmful to the environment is important. But the consumer has to know their stuff and pay attention to avoid being sucked into a label.

As far as the article goes, there are a few angles I'd like to address. First of all, I believe economic insentives are a great way (and maybe one of the few viable ways) of changing behavior and promoting eco-friendly lifestyles, so taxing or increasing the cost of flights is definitely a good incentive. I can also see, however, that flying is a touchy and difficult subject. As was noted in the article, there is no eco-friendly alternative to flying...and no alternative to flying as a mode of transport in general. There is no faster way to get from one place to the other and with this globalizing world, we have become dependent upon flying. The problem with flying specifically is one of history...we have structured our lives around the ability to fly for so many years, it will be much harder to limit flying than to limit other environmentally harmful activities. Knowing that we had the technologies to fly and it could be relatively cheap, families moved far from one another, jobs began moving people back and forth, and vacation became only a fraction of the reasons for travel. For example, I'm from Colorado, but in deciding where to go to school, the question of the environmental impact of flying home was never a big issue. It's quite common to go to school out of state and flying home during breaks is a yearly activitiy for many students. Though I would like to fly less, this would involve transfering schools or not going home to see family and those are both big sacrifice to make. Like those polled in the article, I would much rather eat locally, save on energy, and ride my bike then transfer or never go home for visits. My sister works in Botswana...how do we solve that one? Families, jobs, and education are globalized and breaking down this lifestyle is an incredible challenge. Therefore, I would argue that, although I am usually all for economic incentives to reduce environmental harm, when it comes to flying, I believe it would be better to focus our energies on lowering the environmental impact of flying through new technologies for fuel and whatnot. With this globalized world, people will have to continue flying, so it is important to focus efforts on making flying more eco-friendly. I think this has a better chance of reducing the environmental impact of flying than economic incentives, at least until we find a way to de-globalize our lives.