Carbon output from tourism increases

Greenhouse gas emissions increase en route from here to there.

As an environmentalist, I am shocked and concerned over what Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and his crew are doing to the EPA and other government agencies that protect our health and environment. If you are reading this, you most likely share my concerns. If you want to stay informed on these issues, there are several sources you can rely on. I check the environmental section of The Guardian every day. The paper also has a section devoted to climate change.

I’ll be suggesting other Substacks that include Trump’s war on the environment in future Green Dispatches, but for now, I’d like to recommend More Than Just Parks by

Will Pattiz

and his brother

Jim Pattiz

. These award-winning filmmakers, who have documented America’s public lands for over a decade, have some of the best coverage of what is going on as Trump assaults the environment.

I have written about the environmental wrongdoing of the Trump administration in the past and will again in the future, when I can adequately cover the topic and when I feel the subject is not getting enough press elsewhere. Until then, I will, as with this post, concentrate on new scientific findings regarding the environment.

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Greenhouse gases from tourism rise worldwide

Travel is an enlivening experience. From the initial planning and packing to the final arrival back home, a trip to just about anywhere can be wondrous. There are, nonetheless, environmental costs to sightseeing and taking selfies in front of the Colosseum, one of them being the greenhouse gases (GHG) generated when we board a plane or take a road trip. A recent study suggests this problem of tourism carbon emissions is getting worse.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications found that global emissions from tourism increased by 3.5 percent each year from 2009 to 2019. In 2013, tourism contributed eight percent of global emissions, and by 2019 those emissions had increased by a tenth to 8.8 percent. During that time, the tourism industry grew by more than twice the rest of the world economy.

We might think of tourism as a smaller, less significant driver of climate change, but over the ten-year study period, tourism’s carbon output increased by 1.5 gigatons of CO2, the equivalent of the annual emissions of all Latin America and the Caribbean.

Frank Sinatra sings his 1958 hit Come Fly With Me. Taking a tour can be lots of fun.

By 2019, tourism had become one of the fastest growing economic sectors over the previous ten years. According to the paper’s authors, this growth drove the increase in emissions. The authors also found the tourism industry lagged behind other industries in adopting efficiency measures, using lower-emission vehicles or lower-watt light bulbs, for example. Tourism is also experiencing a strong rebound since the height of the COVID pandemic.