Travel writer to travelers: Don't travel

Bits of posts in a recent travelwriters.com thread:

“I'm pretty worried about global warming, what with the report published today (Feb 2) by scientists who met in Paris. Some of my income comes from travel writing, and I'm worried that if I encourage people to travel, they may be adding to a problem that will ultimately cause misery all over the globe.

...shouldn't travel writers be doing their bit - however small - to discourage people to indulge in activities that might add to the problem, such as air travel?”

- Petra

I get updates from travelwriting.com a few times a week. Most of the threads tend to be of the I-hate-editors or the why-ain’t-I-making-it-as-a-travel-writer variety. This post is the first to suggest that travel writers should discourage travel.

Heck, why not stop writing too? All those trees dying with each word printed and computers eating up electricity.

If you continue to read the post, it eventually turns to “cow farts” and their impact on the environment. No matter what the issue, any time “farts” are debated you can be sure there’s a person in the debate with a level head.

Here at Touron Talk we, and by we I mean me, recognize global warming and its potential apocalyptic results. We also, much like the “fart” debater, like to keep a level head about these things. We’re not going to get preachy about travel ending poverty and hunger, and promoting world peace, skipping, and international Kumbaya-ing. But we do think travel does much more good than harm.

So, cows keep farting. Travelers keep flying. We’ll just have to find other ways to combat global warming. Oh like, I don’t know, maybe driving vehicles that get a bit more than 8 miles per gallon and flossing our teeth.

Wait flossing doesn’t help slow global warming? Well, in truth, it’s inconvenient all the same.