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Sustainable Tourism: A Dilemma?

9/5/2012

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This is an article that I have written for Carbon Credentials and is also published on its website.

 
TUI Travel Plc (First Choice, Thompson, etc.) launched their 3-year sustainability strategy last week and it makes for an interesting read, and indeed was the catalyst for this article. According to the strategy, travel and tourism is the main source of foreign exchange in a third of developing countries but is responsible for only 5% of global CO2e emissions.

Tourism in some way helps redistribute wealth from richer nations to poorer ones and the aviation industry acts as a conduit in the process. Revenue received from tourists helps (hopefully) to improve the economy of the nation being visited and should eventually improve social elements such as education, healthcare, etc.

However, these benefits come at a price: environmental pollution caused by the tourists. The most significant probably being carbon emissions from aviation, which presents a dilemma. On the one hand tourism should be actively encouraged and promoted to help improve the economies of poorer states and nations, but on the other hand it should be discouraged to combat climate change.

The mantra of the Bruntland Report, which has been embraced by the TUI Travel Plc strategy, is central to managing this dilemma: do more with less. And from January this year, that is precisely what the aviation industry will have to do as a result of its inclusion in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS). The industry’s recent growth rate has considerably increased its carbon footprint and its projected growth has been cited as one of the reasons for its inclusion.  For example, Government’s perhaps rather ambitious expectation is that the industry’s contribution to total UK emissions will rise from 9% in 2005 to 29% in 2050.

The cost of the EU-ETS to passengers is estimated to be negligible in comparison to the total ticket price (circa €9 or £8) but is likely to increase as the scheme progresses[1] – this cost arises from airlines having to purchase allowances for the carbon they emit throughout the year. But if airline companies adopt the same strategy as TUI Travel Plc and seek to reduce their aviation emissions by 6% over the next 3 years then this cost should be stabilised if not reduced.

Despite the objections of some non-EU based firms, it appears that including the aviation industry in the EU-ETS could help drive sustainable tourism. But it will require more firms like TUI Travel Plc to tackle the dilemma head-on by embedding sustainability into their corporate DNA and moving beyond compliance.



[1] EU ETS and Aviation, SN05533, House of Commons Library, www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05533.pdf


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The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect: An Overview

4/7/2012

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There seems to be much confusion (at least on Twitter) over the term The Greenhouse Effect, so I thought that I would write a blog article that addresses the issue (or at least tries to).  So here goes.

The Greenhouse Effect is a natural phenomenon that baffled the greatest minds of the 19th Century. The influence of the atmosphere on surface temperature was first considered by Fourier in ~1820 and he determined that the surface temperature on earth should be much lower than it actually is. He concluded that the atmosphere must, therefore, act like a blanket. We now know that this blanket-like behaviour is due to quantum phenomenon (see my post on microwave ovens below) – this is The Greenhouse Effect and keeps the planet's surface temperature at ~25 degrees Celsius, rather than around 6 degrees as Fourier would have expected. So without The Greenhouse Effect things would be very different here on the 3rd rock!

Now, Climate Change and Global Warming are occurring due to The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect, that is, the impact that elevated levels of greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic activity are having on the surface temperature. So the question that needs to be addressed is how can the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect be mitigated? The answer is simple in concept but much more difficult in practice: decrease the rate of emission and/or increase the rate of absorption of the gases. If the rate of absorption is greater than that of emission then atmospheric concentrations will fall – however, stabilising the rates will only serve to keep the concentrations rising linearly as oppose to exponentially! This last point is subtle, but very important yet seems to be so often overlooked (Peter Senge has written a great synopsis on this in his book The Necessary Revolution, which is well worth a read!).

So the Greenhouse Effect supports life on earth. The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect is what we as a society need to combat if Global Warming is to be mitigated. The problem is that requires a paradigm shift in how as a society we function.
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    MjC

    Sharing my views on climate change, global warming, and systems.....

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