Destination Dispersion: CO2 Much Tourism?

Goal: To break the wasteful, destructive clotting of over-hyped tourism destinations and overrun public parklands. Vamigrés will not blindly swarm (like lamoid lemmings) to crowd into the usual, low-hanging tourist traps, but disperse widely in terms of place and time, all year round. And will avoid overrunning popular destinations: for instance, being blind to Venetian concerns that beloved Venice is ‘Venishing’ under a flood of rising waters and gondola loads of selfie tourists.

Update: Now comes the latest Nature Climate Change study that finds tourism accounting for fully 8% of global carbon emissions, growing at a 4% rate per year. NCC claims that commercial tourism produced 4.5B tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2013 alone, with air travel on the hook for one-fifth of that total. 

Their study calculated tourism-related emissions both by destination and countries of origin: China, Germany, India and the U.S. (1B metric tons, coming and going itself) the largest culprits. NCC factored in transportation, accommodations, food, energy, supporting infrastructure, etc.—right down to swag and souvenirs. Their astute recommendation? If you must go, take less polluting flights.

But Vamigré says, just take it elsewhere, when by any alternative means available. For it’s not travel that’s the problem, it’s the toxic tourism. So we will fully embrace, celebrate so much more of the world, not feebly seal off from it—thereby transcending the trap of polluting tour buses, of getting VamoSpanked and Shafted in mind-numbing pseudo-destinations, plastic theme parks and faux experiences.

No longer bound by prescribed holidays, hostage to tourism special interests; no longer being the tourism industrial complexes’ unwitting cash cow. We will explore not merely Disney’s America, but our own USA, then make our own way about the globe. Why louche and lose it in Las Vegas’s Luxor Casino? When we can hit the Extraterrestrial Highway to Area 51, for example, or a cave hotel in rural Idaho.

Moreover, we will not simply glorify the settings themselves so much as the uniquely human experiences therein. Little wonder casinos and theme parks are but stifling tourist ghettos. We real travelers know better. We recognize a true travel experience when we see/sense one…and when we don’t…

In the process, tracking where we go, where we don’t, where we choose to go instead. Where we could, where we couldn’t; where we should, where we shouldn’t; what and where we ought to consider, or blow off altogether for issues of taste and tourism toxicity; where we wouldn’t imagine going, but where we might, even in our wildest worldly (and other-worldly) dreams—and when is the best, most opportune time to do so.

That is, primo aside trips, back roads, back-door destinations, better off-track bets. The outer fringes, smaller towns; inn-ovations, cafe course corrections and organic, natural local fare; more obscure, quirky festivals and intimate, smaller stage events. Beach-long coasting and balls-out competitions—and so forth—catch the drift? Then it’s high time to catch our wave.

Faithfully taking that extra step, that sure-footed, spontaneous chance—all in the spirit and service of our peerless Vamigré way…Ándele!!!

+ FTI: DESTINATION: DISPERSION. Hawaii, Lei or Nay?