Responsibletravel.com, a travel agent that specialises in responsible holidays, has announced that it will no longer give its customers the opportunity to offset their carbon emissions.Nothing to stop people buying them independently of course, but I'll give them credit for being up front about the reasons why they don't think it's a good idea.
“We believe that the travel industry’s priority must be to reduce carbon emissions, rather than to offset,” said Justin Francis, managing director of responsibletravel.com. “Too often offsets are being used by the tourism industry in developed countries to justify growth plans on the basis that money will be donated to projects in developing countries. Global reduction targets will not be met this way.”Fair play to you, mate, though I'm not so sure it's a great business move. If you're successful in persuading your customers they ought to stop being your customers. It sounds a bit like Thomas Cook suggesting that people don't put up with the hell of flying and spend two weeks at home playing Monopoly each summer. I know you talk about holidaying at home or without going long haul but who needs a travel agent to sort out a holiday in Cornwall? I admire your honesty, Justin, but don't be surprised if your staff are all secretly job hunting right now.
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Francis said that holidaymakers should look to reduce their emissions by flying less, travelling by train or taking holidays closer to home, as well as making carbon reductions in other areas of our lifestyles.
“There is no hiding the fact that tourists will continue to want to visit destinations requiring a flight, and that tourism contributes to livelihoods, local economic development and the conservation of the world’s cultural and natural heritage. We will continue to offer a more responsible choice of overseas holiday so that when tourists do fly they can ‘make their holiday count’ by choosing a more responsible holiday.”
Incidentally, the same article quotes Friends of the Earth as saying offsetting creates "... a ‘medieval pardon’ for us to carry on behaving in the same way (or worse).” Sooner or later I was bound to agree with them again on something.
3 comments:
Have you seen the Friends of the Earth piece on 'The ugly truth about biofuels'?
The pennies are dropping.
No, hadn't seen that till you pointed it out, and I'm astonished. Not only has someone at FoE noticed the elephant in that particular room but they've got a sense of humour. For what it's worth I'm not anti-biofuels as such but it does seem crazy to hack down a forest or use a food source to produce them. The Yanks are producing ethanol from corn of all things, just to satisfy green fears about carbon that are far from proven and looking shakier. If you're going to produce ethanol at all why not make it easier and use sugar? I suspect money, probably in the form of farming subsidies, may be involved.
Incidentally, I wonder if anyone at Friends of the Earth has ever considered whether or not the Earth is willing to be friends with them, or if being 6 million trillion tons of rock means it doesn't have an opinion one way or the other. I mean, I try to look after my house and to avoid damaging it, but I wouldn't start an organisation that claimed to be friends with it.
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