by Gordon Clark •
I love to travel.
While the destinations have not been as exotic as for some of my friends, I have nonetheless been pretty lucky, and seen some amazing places on this beautiful planet. From the Canadian Rockies to the Swiss Alps, from the Burgundy valley of France to the Piedmont region of Italy, from Venice, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Paris to the Caribbean, the American Southwest and the Pacific Northwest, my adventures traveling with my wife and friends have provided some of the greatest times of my life.
And yet, as I contemplate stepping on to a plane again for some future trip, I am haunted by Dr. Faustus.
Faustus, you might recall, is a classic morality tale. First published by a theologian in Germany, it was translated into English and became the source of Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. It is the story of a brilliant scholar who, after reaching the limits of human knowledge and experience, makes a deal with the devil: if he is allowed to live "in all voluptuousness" for twenty four years, he will deliver his soul to hell.
The deal struck, the first thing Faustus does is take a sightseeing tour of Europe, courtesy of a flying chariot "burning bright." He performs miracles, and demands "pleasant fruits" from "all corners of the new-found world," such as summoning fresh grapes from the southern hemisphere in the middle of winter.
Sound familiar?
Although written four hundred years before our current predicament, Dr. Faustus is an apt metaphor for climate change. (With a nod to radical English thinker and writer George Monbiot for the concept.) Fossil fuels are humanity's deal with the devil: the power in them allows us to do all sorts of miraculous things, including travel overnight to distant lands, and to live "in all voluptuousness" in our consumer society. We have built our civilization upon the burning of fossil fuels, and right now that's looking very much like a Faustian bargain.
As you'd expect of any deal with the devil, it's a damn hard one to get out of, and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to our love affair with travel - and especially travel by airplane. Good folks who install the right light bulbs, recycle, bike whenever they can and own a fuel-efficient car usually don't think twice about their carbon footprint as they step on to a plane.
Which is probably a kind of selective denial, because when you do think about it, you realize that airplanes put out a staggering amount of exhaust (including not only carbon dioxide but also nitrous and sulfur oxides) at a time when our civilization's goal must be to dramatically reduce such emissions. Air travel in the U.S. accounts for 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. transportation and almost half of worldwide emissions from aircraft, and it's on the rise. Moreover, emissions at 30,000 feet, directly into the stratosphere, have a much graver impact than those generated at ground level.
Yet what a guilty pleasure to try to give up. Even organizations that vigorously advocate walking and biking and hybrid cars won't suggest you stop or cut back on flying. Maybe for the same reason that Al Gore didn't mention the huge climate impact of the global meat industry in his otherwise comprehensive film, The Inconvenient Truth. I figure the guy just really loves his steak.
Of course one can still get to these far-flung places in far less environmentally destructive ways. Trains and ships use a fraction of the fossil fuel planes do. You just have to be prepared to take longer, and to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
Which suggests that changing our mindset is as important as changing our mode of transportation - and this includes realizing that what we want is often right here at home.
The American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously asked how people would respond if the stars came out only one night every thousand years. Why should they be any less wondrous for their regular appearance? His contemporary and friend Henry David Thoreau noted that "men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives."
But it doesn't have to be that way. "There is ripe fruit over your head," Thoreau added, before going into full rhapsody. "Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature... rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense!" Experiencing the very real beauty and profound wonder in our immediate surroundings is not as difficult as we might imagine, once we start practicing.
For instance, I'm told the bioluminescence of some bays in the Caribbean is magical, but it can't be any more magical than the firefly display that appears outside my front door on cool June evenings. The Atlantic Ocean, Chesapeake Bay and surrounding waterways provide endless opportunities for relaxation and recreation, and while the local Appalachian mountains may not have dramatic snowcaps, there are hikes as beautiful and fulfilling as any I have ever taken. And then come the colors of fall - a miracle which doesn't happen for our friends on the west coast.
Once you don this set of eyes, entirely new and fascinating worlds can appear in the most unlikely places, such as the one thriving under the tomato and zucchini plants in your garden. There's even something there for the action hero fans among us: I've discovered that ripping through a bed with a garden claw is a deeply-satisfying Wolverine (of the X-Men)-like experience - with the added benefit that weeds are a real world evil that must be destroyed!
And for those with more cultural interests, we live in the middle of some of the richest diversity on the planet, from world-class museums to the sweetest local fairs, most raucous festivals and yes, even shopping. This "Staycation" issue of the Voice is filled with a multitude of opportunities for your summer pleasure - take full advantage.
For as it becomes increasingly clear that the appropriate response to the crisis of climate change (and peak oil) is to go local, from renewable energy sources to growing our food, we also need to become the traveler equivalent of the "locavore," and discover the bounty at our feet. Staycations may be cast by some as an unpleasant economic necessity, but in reality they embody the truest spirit of connection with the world around us, and enjoyment derived from it.
Which is good, because I do so love to travel. Thank goodness I don't have to go far to do it.
Thanks for the motherhood, but it's not realistic to expect people to curtail their travel habits in the name of global warming. Green campaigners have argued that sacrifices will be necessary if the world is serious about cutting carbon emissions, with conscientious consumers facing tough choices between "saving the planet" and, for example, enjoying low-cost flights to Europe. Not so fast.
Lord Adonis of Britian's Head of Policy quotes it thus: “We’ll never sell a low-carbon future to the public if it depends on a deprivation model. I’m convinced that there’s no necessary trade-off between a low carbon future and more or less transport,” he said.
“The critical factor is the deployment of technology and the intelligent use of pricing and policy mechanisms to regulate emissions.”