Why ‘The “Good Tourism” Blog’ won’t be declaring a climate emergency

The short answer is: It’s not “GT’s” role!

At writ­ing, 26 tour­ism organ­isa­tions and five indi­vidu­als had declared a glob­al cli­mate emer­gency on behalf of the multi-tril­lion dol­lar travel & tour­ism industry.

Among the sig­nat­or­ies is “GT” Friend Susanne Beck­en who, in her declar­a­tion and plan, quotes Greta Thun­berg: “I don’t want your hope, I want you to panic”. 

Dr Beck­en agrees that “we need to pan­ic” but wants hope as well. 

But only hope is use­ful. I don’t recom­mend pan­ic in any situ­ation. And life guards are trained to stay well clear of pan­icky people in case they take every­one down.

Yet giv­en the state of “emer­gency” (or “pan­ic”?) being declared by Dr Beck­en and her fel­low sig­nat­or­ies, the pub­lished plans to date take a very relaxed attitude.

Take aero­plane trips, for instance. Some plans don’t men­tion avi­ation at all. Oth­ers seek to reduce, but not elim­in­ate the num­bers of flights taken for work or for leis­ure or by their cus­tom­ers or by their col­leagues, and will off­set those they do take. 

If there is indeed an emer­gency, I can­not recon­cile how the imme­di­ate dump of green­house gases by a flight can be jus­ti­fied by con­trib­ut­ing to off­set pro­grams that pre­sum­ably have a more medi­um- to long-term effect. Indeed, if there is an emer­gency, I can’t recon­cile how any­thing oth­er than loc­al travel is justified. 

My recently pub­lished “It’s not ‘no’. It’s ‘know’ … a “Good Tour­ism” travel tip for the new dec­ade” offers no cer­tainty about any­thing but sug­gests that if one knows some­thing — and there is always more to know — then one should act accord­ingly. Well, again, I struggle to see how the actions com­mit­ted to by the sig­nat­or­ies are com­men­sur­ate with the grav­ity of a declar­a­tion of “cli­mate emergency”. 

Per­haps it all hinges on the defin­i­tion of “emer­gency”? Per­haps, when para­med­ics rolled cli­mate change into each sig­nat­ory’s Acci­dent & Emer­gency depart­ment for assess­ment, the triage nurses iden­ti­fied oth­er pri­or­it­ies, such as career and busi­ness and life­style? Per­haps, when all is said and done, it is very much like how politi­cians pri­or­it­ise jobs and the eco­nomy and con­sumer spending? 

I assume that the inten­tions of all the sig­nat­or­ies to this ini­ti­at­ive are good and hon­our­able. How­ever, it would be very easy to inter­pret all of this “declar­a­tion of cli­mate emer­gency” stuff very cynically. 

At least one declaration/plan acknow­ledges this: “… as a travel com­pany reli­ant on cus­tom­ers fly­ing round the world we recog­nise that just by pub­lish­ing this policy, we are open­ing ourselves up to accus­a­tions of gre­en­wash­ing”.

Con­vin­cing cyn­ics and those who don’t already buy into the sci­ence of anthro­po­gen­ic cli­mate change will be the biggest chal­lenge to this inter­est­ing initiative.

The “Good Tour­ism” Blog won’t be join­ing these organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als in this endeav­our, because:

1. giv­en the state of the polit­ics sur­round­ing the issue, it is inap­pro­pri­ate for an impar­tial travel & tour­ism industry media out­let to do so;
2. the requis­ite know­ledge, expert­ise, or faith to come to that sort of firm con­clu­sion is humbling; 
3. I believe that one must be pre­pared to act as if what one declares is true; and
4. [Added here after this post] Tour­ism Declares’ meek sub­mis­sion to “sys­tem change” and unspe­cified reg­u­lat­ory author­ity makes the industry vulnerable.

How­ever, I will fol­low the pro­gress of Tour­ism Declares Cli­mate Emer­gency & its sig­nat­or­ies with great interest. And I look for­ward to pub­lish­ing their “GT” Insights should they be will­ing to share them (con­tri­bu­tion guidelines here).

This open invit­a­tion is made in the same inde­pend­ent and open-minded spir­it of free speech and inquiry as its “GT” Insight Part­ner­ship with SUNx — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work, which of course is advoc­at­ing strong action.

Fea­tured image: Illus­tra­tion of woman on suit­case in stormy sea being attacked by gulls. By unknown (CC0) via pxfuel.