Tourism and climate change

Although seeing new places is a lot of fun, it is a major problem causing carbon dioxide emissions and deterioration of environment. In a recent article in Nature Climate Change Lenzen et al. (The carbon footprint of global tourism, Nature Climate Change, doi: 10.1038/s41558-018-0141-x) estimate that close to 10 % of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions are due to tourism. Since tourism is increasing more rapidly than most other human endeavours, even if improved techologies to diminish the carbon dioxide footprint of a tourist's day can be applied, it is likely that the effects of tourism continue to increase. What is even worse is that many places, which get most of their income from tourism (oceanic islands) are the first to succumb to the effects of climate change. In addition to carbon footprint tourism changes land use, and, e.g., causes erosion in places where human herds flock to see rare animals, not to say anything about the waste produced. So, it is impossible to have ecotourism. The conflict between tourism and nature has been discussed in scientific literature for at least 15 years (e.g. Gössling, S. Global environmental consequences of tourism. Glob. Environ. Change 12, 283–302 (2002)), but the problems have continued to increase. So we should just be happy viewing places in our TVs - for the sake of environment.