“Green” Tourism
My thanks to 2GreenEnergy associate Annemarie Osborne for introducing me to a wonderful organization: International Coalition of Tourism Partners. I had extended Skype calls with people in Istanbul and Brussels late last week, and signed us up as a “media friend.”
The group acts as a promotional vehicle for hundreds of destinations worldwide, while stressing “Green Growth,” i.e., low carbon and environmentally sound development. From their website:
We will provide guidance and education to help you devise policies and programs that create progressively more sustainable travel and tourism communities, companies and related visitor actions. We will also (help) clearly identify your government’s carbon commitments, as well as provide a constantly growing set of global good practices at country, community and company levels.
Great going, folks. I’m proud to support you in any way possible.
….create progressively more sustainable travel and tourism communities, companies and related visitor actions.
Vacations involving travel will inherently raise the carbon footprint of the individual taking the journey. Even if you walk or bicycle to your destination, you will be consuming more food and generating more CO2 that the couch potato.
There are many good reasons to travel that can increase knowledge and promote a green life style that is more sustainable than our current rush to mass extinction.
The problem as I see it is government sponsored travel that removes the incentive for the participants to save energy and scarce resources. For example, our fearless V.P. in Washington spent 1 night in a London 5 star hotel and needed over 100 rooms for his entourage. I don’t care how green you make the hotel. It had a dirty environmental impact and sends mixed messages to those who are finding ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.
We should be concentrating on telecommuting for government business, not seeing how we can rape the taxpayer one more time.
Both political parties have taken part in this gang rape of the environment and the taxpayer.