 Screenshot of NatGeo offering Prediction Market: What do you think about Ethical Travel? We developed our first prediction market to glean some collective wisdom on the issue. In the first iteration, our friends and advisors made these predictions: - The Obama administration is most likely to implement ethical travel standards before the end of 2012, but no sooner.
- National Geographic will once again offer an around-the-world jet trip in 2010.
- A major travel site will offer an ethical travel calculator before the end of 2010, but no sooner.
- There is a 55% chance that travel industry creates phony standards.
Now we want to know what you think. Please take a couple minutes, register at Inkling Markets, share your view, and glean the collective wisdom of our crowd. Air travel is the most damaging form of travel when it comes to global warming -- yet most of us “social change agents” depend on it for our professional work. It’s time to stop avoiding the practical and ethical dilemmas.
A travel catalog we just received offers the well-heeled customer a 3-week trip "Around the World by Private Jet." Cool, even at the price of two Prius hybrids. But, not so cool when you calculate the carbon production--not mentioned in the marketing, not built into the cost--of the Boeing 757 jet carrying 88 passengers in “VIP-style leather seats.”
And it's downright outrageous when you realize that the "unforgettable expedition, traveling in ease and comfort” to “the world's most treasured and legendary natural and cultural wonders" is offered by the National Geographic Society, the very same people who produced a video with the UN Foundation about the "devastating effects" of climate change; produced a photo gallery, "Pictures of a Warming World"; and in April 2008 produced a special edition of National Geographic about climate change, including an article, "Carbon Diet," about three families trying to cut their energy use.
How much carbon will the Society's global circumnavigation spew into the atmosphere? Some 4.5 million pounds, or 2,250 tons, by our estimate--equivalent to the annual carbon production of over 22,000 Ethiopians.
In a "Dear Traveler" letter at the front of the catalog, National Geographic Society CEO John Fahey urges readers "to consider these extraordinary travel experiences not as a luxury, but as an investment in yourself." What happened to the carbon diet the world needs us to adopt?
We don't think this is a case of hypocrisy. It's a much more serious problem than that. It's a case of a fundamental disconnection between our knowledge about climate change and our behavior. We know there's a catastrophe coming, but we don't change our behavior. We know that the crisis is caused mainly by the industrial and life-style consumption that we take for granted. Even by those standards, a global plane ride to visit Easter Island, The Great Barrier Reef, Tibet, and the Pyramids is conspicuous consumption at a remarkable level.
All of us are guilty of lagging behavior change. Last year when our organization hosted a meeting of its partners we tallied the carbon production from the air travel alone: 42 tons. That was a shocker! So we paid for mitigation, but knew that was only a Band-aid. And we decided to cut back on air travel by holding meetings on the Internet and just saying no to some of the invitations to conferences and summits. It's still not enough change, but it's a start. This spring when we met in Chicago it was at headquarters for Center For Neighborhood Technology -- the city's first platinum LEED building.
A friend of ours who has plenty of money keeps saying that you have to make sustainability personal, not just political. A little shyly, he describes one of his behavior changes. Whenever he's in a hotel overnight he only uses one towel and one plastic-lined waste basket. It makes him feel good to reduce waste. We tried it—it was hard to do, but it can be done. But you have to be thoughtful, unlearn behavior, and cope with the change. Of course, getting to the hotel on an airplane creates far more environmental damage than the waste produced in the room.
The least wasteful behavior change is not to go on the trip in the first place. But many of us depend on air travel for our livelihoods. “Just saying no” can cause serious economic consequences – especially for people working on a consulting basis, as we often do. And it would put an end to the “convening-for-learning” processes that foundations and other change-oriented institutions use to assemble many from far-flung points.
Instead of avoiding or living with these dilemmas, it’s time to develop and adopt “ethical travel” standards for social change agents to use to decide when to travel and when not to travel. We’ve begun developing our own version, but are looking to a broader community to advance the process.
Here are some initial principles we’re organizing our thinking around:
-
Only travel by air when it is essential for:
-
Building of social capital for future collaboration (across space)
-
Working on large, complex problems with a large number of people
-
Set an annual limit for air travel miles
-
Create and use robust on-line, video-interactive conferencing tools
-
Send carbon mitigation capital to regions that use less than 2 tons per capita per year
What are you and your organization doing on this issue? |
