Can responsible tourism sit comfortably with the environmental consequences of air travel?
THIS SUMMER MILLIONS of us will take to the skies for our annual holiday, to rest and recharge. According to the World Tourism Organization, we’re increasingly choosing greener holidays, from organic farm-stay breaks in Donegal to township tourism tours in Port Elizabeth. The market for ‘responsible travel’ is growing at a healthy 3-5%, and as the travelling public wakes up to greener living, responsible travel seemingly has the whole world at its feet. Yet paradoxically, in seeking greener holidays in far-flung places, we are jumping more on planes that produce polluting greenhouse gases and contribute to climate change. According to Future Forests, the amount of carbon dioxide an average car emits in an entire year is less than that produced from one return flight to Australia (approximately 3.74 tonnes). That’s one seat on one plane. Even if you only take short-haul flights from the UK to Europe, putting that in a global context is a frightening statistic: the International Air Tran
