Travel, Tourism and Climate Change
The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Report states that 5% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions come from transport in the tourism industry. In 2019 there were around 40 million flights worldwide an increase of 5% from 2018, and an increase of over 300% from 1990. At this rate, even if the aviation industry meets its own unrealistic (self-imposed) climate change targets, it will still be responsible for 12% of the global carbon budget for 1.5C by 2050. This needless consumption of resources on a struggling planet is unsustainable and ultimately unethical.
In contrast, the ‘slow movement’, and ‘slow tourism’ in particular, are interesting fields in which to explore travel and the climate crisis. Modernity is characterised by acceleration, interconnection and mobility. Slower initiatives, such as flygskam (flight shame) and the new pilgrimage movement, subvert the cult of speed. Modern pilgrimages can be seen as reactions to the troubles of the epoch and a search for vanishing ideals.
Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Movement explains that ‘slow’ means being in control of the rhythms and tempo of one’s own life. Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness describes the slow movement as a ‘cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better’ and an attempt to ‘fix our neurotic relationship with time’.
Browse the books below and consider some alternative attitudes to travel and time, to fast and slow, home and abroad.
– August 2024
Non Fiction
Why Travel Matters: A Guide to the Life-Changing Effects of Travel by Craig Storti
‘When you travel, you have a choice: You can be a tourist and have a nice time, or you can be a traveller and change your life.’
For centuries travel writers have celebrated the life-changing effects of travel. Craig Storti presents a road map for becoming a true traveller with insights from greats such as Robert Byron, Freya Stark, Bruce Chatwin, D.H. Lawrence, George Orwell, St. Augustine, Mark Twain and more. ‘The essence of travel is encountering difference.’ says Storti.
‘I’ve not read anything like it before. It shifted my perspective on the world and helped me see familiar terrain in unfamiliar ways.’ – Nick Hunt, author of Outlandish and Where the Wild Winds Are.
Zero Altitude: How I Learned to Fly Less and Travel More by Helen Coffey
In recent decades, private jets have become status symbols for the world’s wealthiest, while quick and easy flights have brought far-flung destinations within the reach of everyone. But at what cost to the environment? Around the world, flying emits around 860 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, and the aviation industry continues to be one of the planet’s fastest-growing polluters.
Part climate change investigation, part travel memoir, Zero Altitude follows Helen Coffey as she journeys as far as she can in the course of her job as a travel journalist – all without getting on a single flight. What I liked most about this book is that it is full of the joys of travel, the excitement of discovery and gratitude for the opportunity to see the world in a different, more rewarding way. In the final chapter Coffey argues that ‘slow travel’ is not just better for the planet – it really can change how you see the world. ‘Keeping both feet on the ground can provide the most exhilarating opportunities for adventure.’
Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel by Shahnaz Habib
Airplane Mode asks: what does it mean to be a joyous traveller when we live in the ruins of colonialism, capitalism and climate change? The colour of one’s skin and passport have long dictated the conditions of travel. For Shahnaz Habib, travel and travel writing have always been complicated pleasures.
Habib threads the history of travel with her personal story as a child on family vacations in India, an adult curious about the world, and an immigrant for whom roundtrips are an annual fact of life. Tracing the power dynamics that underlie tourism, this book asks who gets to travel, and who gets to write about the experience.
“A memorable and unique travelogue that explores what it means to explore the world through the lens of colonialism, capitalism, and climate change.” Adam Vitcavage.
The Responsible Traveller by Karen Edwards
A useful pocket-sized guide to sustainable and ethical travel. The Responsible Traveller provides practical ways you can make changes that result in more thoughtful and rewarding travels. There are discussions on such topics as responsible travel, the environmental impact of tourism, modes of transport, carbon offsetting, ethical tour operators, wildlife experiences do’s and don’ts, ecotourism, respecting indigenous land and culture, responsible photography, and slow travel.
‘A good starting point is to read about the history of the place you’re travelling to beforehand’ says Karen Edwards.
To The Ends of the Earth: A Grand Tour for the 21st Century by Richard Weller
This book takes the reader on a 21st century ‘Grand Tour’ of 120 of the most pertinent places in the world today. This grand tour is not about escaping reality, but confronting it. The places are divided into six chapters: Paradises, Utopias, Machines, Monsters, Ruins and Instruments.
They include: The Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, Steve Jobs’ Apple Park in California, a national park in Costa Rica, the Green Wall in Central Africa and the border wall between Israel and Palestine.
The Idle Traveller: The Art of Slow Travel by Dan Kiernan
This charming book asks us to reassess how and why we travel. As we stress out in departure lounges and take cheap flights to somewhere warm are we really travelling at all?
Dan Kieran argues that we need to glide rather than fly and presents various persuasive arguments for slow travel including, avoiding airports, ditching the traditional guidebooks and reading books written by locals or travellers who have lived for some time in the place you are visiting.
‘If you find yourself heading in the opposite direction to most of the people around you it’s usually a sign you’re going a more interesting way.”
Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between The Wars by Paul Fussell
‘I am assuming that travel is now impossible and that tourism is all that we have left.’ An elegy for the lost art of travel, Paul Fussell’s Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars is a celebration of the British writers who memorialised the years between the two world wars as the last great age of travel: D.H. Lawrence, Grahame Greene, Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and Robert Byron.
‘An absolutely dazzling continent of sociology, literary criticism, cultural history, biography and amusing anecdote, so borderlessly fused that we hardly realize what great intellectual distances we are covering.’ – The New York Times
How To Travel Guilt Free: Essential Tips for Ethical Travellers
How can you indulge your love of exploring the world without damaging it in the process? Wanderlust’s travel writers have 100 tips to make your adventures greener. From where to go, how to get there, what to take and what to avoid, How to Travel Guilt Free will change the way you approach your travels.
Tips include: Take fewer trips but stay longer, Take the train, What about a ferry?, Take the road less travelled, Leave no trace, Use reef-safe sunscreen, Eat local (slow food), Embrace local cultures, Learn the language.
A Guide to Slow Travel in the Marches by Les Lumsdon
Why go abroad? Why not explore what is on your doorstep? This book by slow travel expert Les Lumsdon is a guide to exploring the border of England and Wales. To Lumsdon, slow travel is simply a way of travelling that gives opportunities to meet local people and discover places that they enjoy; getting a deeper sense of a place than ‘fast travel’ allows. Slow travel essentially means journeying on foot or by bicycle, train or bus.
The Guide is structured around eight key towns – Welshpool, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Church Stretton, Ludlow, Hereford, Llandrindod Wells and Abergavenny – which can act as bases for exploration, with suggested tours from each using trains and buses. Each section includes a guided walking tour of the main town, with places to look out for or to step inside, followed by descriptions of suggested journeys to places worth visiting in the surrounding area, with walking tours of the destinations also included.
Slow Travel and Tourism by Janet Dickinson and Les Lumsdon
In this definitive book on slow travel and tourism, Les Lumsdon and Janet Dickinson set out to define ‘slow travel’ and discuss how some underlying values are likely to pervade new forms of sustainable tourism. The authors present a series of case studies from around the world, featuring travel by train, bus, cycling and walking.
Slow Travel and Tourism will be of interest to all those interested in improving the sustainability of tourism and enhancing tourist experience. It is a very well researched book that provides detailed information on tourism, transport and mobilities.’ – Susanne Becken, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment, Society and Design, Lincoln University, New Zealand.
Local by Alastair Humphreys
After two decades of grand expeditions spanning the globe, adventurer Alastair Humphreys embarked on a project to get to know his uninspiring corner of England through undertaking weekly microadventures within one local map. Armed with curiosity, his camera and a selection of apps, Alastair set out to traverse the 20km area on foot and by bike, noticing and researching everything he encountered. From winter frosts to summer meadows, ancient woodlands to housing estates, farmers’ fields to fly-tipped rubbish, Alastair embraced his local map in meticulous square kilometre segments.
What emerged is a chronicle brimming with humour, history, emotion and insight. A story about slowing down and opening your eyes to the wonders and issues in plain sight on your own doorstep. A reminder that you don’t need to burn carbon travelling the world to find connection, perspective and inspiration. You just need to look closer to home.
Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt
In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out in a pair of hobnailed boots to chance and charm his way across Europe, ‘like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar’, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Seventy-eight years later, Nick Hunt followed in his footsteps.
His first book recounts a seven-month walk through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey on a quest to discover what remains of hospitality, kindness to strangers, freedom, wildness, adventure and the deeper currents of myth and story that still flow beneath Europe’s surface.
‘A glorious book, rich with insight and wit. He set out on an homage to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s legendary tramp across Europe in the early 1930s, but his journey became – of course – an epic adventure in its own right. Magnificent.’ – Robert Macfarlane
Poetry
Poem of the Month
A Bumper Year for Medusas by Claire Collison
The elegant prose poem, A Bumper Year for Medusas, from Claire Collison, highly commended for the Gingko Prize 2022 and featured in their anthology invites us not just to contemplate how we travel but what we do when we spend time in enticing locations replete with risk and adventure. It lulls us into that sweet spot with its long vowel sounds and repetition of the L sounds in wheels, thills, pulls.
With vivid imagery, weaving between past as memory, the present and an uncertain future the poem asks us what responsible travel is, suggesting it’s the decisions we make minute to minute and hints at the danger of the changing environments we discover as the world warms.
Claire’s practice encompasses visual art, writing, educational facilitation and engagement. Her first poetry pamphlet, ‘Placebo’ was published in 2022. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet.
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for contributors to our growing collection of literature to explain and explore the climate and biodiversity emergency. If you’re a writer or poet and would like to share your work or ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com for prose or poetsrebelxr@gmail.com for poetry.