Transportation Dialogue 3

The Environmental Impact of Transportation Conference took place in October and early November 2003. Discussion continues in the forum and we are updating links to other websites. For those who find these resources of value, we ask for a voluntary $50 contribution via check or Pay Pal

John Shores

What's the big deal about sustainable travel, anyway? For the past 25 years (involving a dozen different offices and thousands of kilometers of commuting) I have traveled "sustainably" -- commuting to work either by foot or bicycle. So at least my journey-to-work travel was sustainable. Essentially any self-powered travel mode is going to be sustainable. This includes self-powered travel by foot, skates, skis, snowshoes, scooter, bicycle, kayak, canoe, rowboat, and sailboat. These modes of travel are even more sustainable when any necessary equipment is also produced and decommissioned sustainably. Few could argue with hiking barefoot. But limiting ourselves to self-powered transport also limits where we can go, usually by limiting how far we can go due to the slow speeds of most self-powered travel. My journey-to-work travel carried me thousands of miles, but I was never more than 15 kilometers from my home. When we include the sustainability requirement, our slogan "Think Globally, Travel Sustainably" in effect becomes "Think Globally, Travel Locally."

What if I want to go farther afield than just my local area? Once again, I have a variety of travel modes; however, if I want to be sustainable, they're still going to be self-powered efforts. A friend just told me that he had finally finished hiking the Appalachian Trail, a mountain footpath that runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine -- a distance of 3200 km (2000 miles) in the eastern US. Another colleague just completed a two-week bicycle trip around Lake Erie, covering 1600 km in the US and Canada. Others have bicycled across the US. A couple of groups have bicycled from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and at least one individual is bicycling around the world. OK, but what if I don't have that much time and yet I still want to travel? Why not travel by car or plane? Well, there are just a few problems. Most air and surface transport today depends on petroleum products. Cars, buses, and trucks are burning gasoline or diesel fuel. Planes are most likely burning aviation gasoline or jet fuel (essentially kerosene). In addition to burning what is basically a non-renewable resource, all of these modes of transport also release CO2 (the primary culprit in the global Green House Gas equation) and most release a noxious package of other pollutants. There are also environmental impacts at the point of manufacture of the vehicle, during its repair and maintenance, and when it is discarded. The fuel also has environmental impacts during production, distribution, use, and spillage. Here we get into the arguments about relativity. Not Einstein's relativity, but the relative goodness or badness of different modes of transport. Private vehicles and jet planes are the modes of transport over on the "bad" end of the scale. Private vehicles are "bad" in this case because they carry so few people (often just one), require so much infrastructure, and there are so many of them. Jet planes are on the "bad" side because of the enormous amounts of fuel required to move people and cargo quickly, local noise pollution, and the environmental impacts of the infrastructure required for the care and feeding of modern jets. So can we mitigate the negative environmental impacts? What about "offsets" of the green house gas (GHG) problem? As long as a mode of travel requires non-renewable resources such as petroleum, there is little hope that negative environmental impacts can be avoided. In the longer term, we simply must find alternatives to petroleum. In fact, conventional petroleum production peaked in 2000 and some estimates predict that the era of the petroleum-based industry will be over by 2050. So unless cost-effective new techniques for extracting petroleum from oil shale and lesser-grade deposits come on line, we have at least 50 more years of CO2 production from oil to deal with. Unfortunately the demand for private vehicles increases as GDP/capita increases. As the economies of China, India, and Indonesia grow, demand for automobiles and their infrastructure will expand. Because most countries use tax dollars to build highways and bridges, the car-less poor actually subsidize their wealthier car-buying compatriots.

Some argue that we can offset releases of CO2 in one location by absorbing CO2 in another location. Technically that is true. Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere anywhere would be beneficial. The problem is that most of these proposals involve the permanent injection of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning coal or oil, and only the temporary removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by planting trees. The problem is that carbon sequestered in a forest is not really removed permanently from the biosphere -- it is only temporarily bound up in the forest until the next forest fire, or until the trees age and eventually decompose. What we need are ways to remove the carbon from the atmosphere as "permanently" as it was before -- when it was hundreds or thousands of feet below the planet's surface. So the latest idea is to inject CO2 into holes in the ground, putting it back where it came from. In theory, this would work. Unfortunately, the laws of thermodynamics mandate that each step consumes more energy. Some argue that we should establish policies that encourage people to use the existing modes of travel more efficiently, recognizing that the amount of environmental degradation will increase, but at least more slowly. In the US this might take the form of mandating or encouraging more use of car pools and public transportation, higher taxes on gasoline to discourage individual/private vehicle use, and forcing the increasingly despised SUV (does that stand for "Selfish User Vehicle"?) to meet the same fuel-efficiency standards imposed upon other private vehicles. Few of these potential changes stand much chance of being implemented, given the political strength of those same Selfish Users. What about alternative fuels? For land transport, we need new technologies to replace the destructive petroleum-based internal combustion engines. Battery power is a possibility if the power to recharge the batteries comes from a renewable source like photovoltaic cells or environmentally friendly wind, wave, tide, or hydro power. Another hope is the fuel cell, which uses hydrogen as the fuel. The challenge here is to find a non-carbon source for the hydrogen (using neither coal nor petroleum for the energy). One South African company (SASOL) has developed an alternative vegetable-based way to synthesize kerosene. Although this frees airplanes from using petroleum, it doesn't solve the CO2 problem. And while a hydrogen-burning airplane engine is possible, it would release large amounts of water into the upper atmosphere where the contrail effect might be stronger and more deleterious than the CO2 itself. What can an ecotourist do? I like to think that ecotourists are different from the average travelers. Indeed, ecotourists tend to be better educated and often enjoy higher incomes. The fact that they seek an ecotourism vacation is a sign of greater awareness of their environment and a greater willingness to do the right thing. However, up to this point most of the emphasis in setting standards for ecotourism has focused on greening the ecotourism destination. We want certified guides and hotels, certified souvenirs, certified programs and activities. Somehow we seem to have forgotten or chosen to overlook the fact that one of the biggest sources of environmental degradation in the tourism industry is the travel/transport sector. It is sadly hypocritical to focus all of our environmental hand wringing at the destination end when the travel to the site and home again may be far more damaging. And these better-educated eco-travelers are more likely to realize this hypocrisy sooner or later. Bring back the sail! Is there a solution?

In the short term, the precautionary principle would tell us to Think Globally, Travel Locally. Although there are excellent reasons to encourage international exchanges so that people grow to appreciate other places and cultures, there is still much that can be visited and learned within one's own country or region. Travelers in Europe enjoy the great advantage of an excellent rail system. But even in countries like the US with pitiful public transport systems, there are plenty of ways to improve the environmental performance of our own travel. Walk more. Buy a bicycle. Take public transport. Use your private vehicle less. Plan your trips with friends to increase vehicle occupancy and reduce the number of vehicles. Travel shorter distances and stay longer. In the medium term, I say bring back the sail! In a paper written more than twenty years ago, I pointed out that travel by sailboat, using sustainable wind power, would likely be the most environmentally sound way to travel longer distances. In the long term, new alternatives to petroleum and our carbon-based economy must be developed. And the sooner we pressure government and industry leaders in this direction, the better for the planet.

Additional Resources: The Challenge of Ecotourism: A call for higher standards. 1992. By John Shores. Towards Sustainable Aviation. 2003. Edited by Paul Upham, Janet Maughan, David Raper, and Callum Thomas. Earthscan, London, UK and Sterling, Virginia, USA. 248 p. Paving the Planet: Cars and Crops Competing for Land By Lester R. Brown. Worldwatch, Washington DC. The Earthscan Reader on World Transport Policy and Practice. 2003. Edited by John Whitelegg and Gary Haq

Michelle Kirby & Andres Hammerman

The Black Sheep Inn is located just outside the small village of Chugchilan. We are only 90 km (55 miles) from the Pan American Highway, but it takes about 3 hours to get here due to bad roads. The Pan American Highway has been greatly improved in the last 2 years since it was privatized. The road is much better but now there are tolls. When we first moved to Ecuador in 1994, it used to take us 2 hours to drive from Quito to Latacunga and now it costs $1.00 and only takes 1 1/2 hours. And I imagine that in 2003 there is more traffic on this road. I have no idea as to whether it is safer or not. But in addition to the improvements made to the Pan Am since it has been privatized, there are detriments... specifically in Machachi which is south of Quito. Many old adobe houses and estates along the road have been expropriated and bulldozed in order to widen the road. We have a friend who has been buying salvaged wooden doors and windows from this area. There have also been a couple of transportation strikes to lower the new tolls. Getting to Chugchilan is an adventure. We live in the middle of a loop and often people arrive saying that they took the long way in... but in truth there is not a short way to get here. In this area a "good" road is defined by whether or not it is passable. Right now both the roads are good, they are both passable. Usually a road is not fixed until it is impassable, and then just the bad section is made passable once again. We are only 90 km (55 miles) from the Pan American Highway, but it takes 3 hours to get here due to spectacular scenery over mountain passes and through deep canyons. The road starts out cobbled but then changes to dirt and rock and sometimes mud. There are patches of cobble and asphalt along the way which are the remains from different projects aimed at fixing the road over the years. There is a current project underway to cobblestone the road from Toacazo to Sigchos, about 40 km. Cobblestone is cheaper and more ECO than asphalt because there is less heavy machinery involved and because the road does not use tar. The heavy machinery alone could cost several hundred thousand dollars. Cobblestone roads are relatively easy to maintain with a few people with shovels and hammers, but that type of maintenance rarely happens here. On the down side, cobblestone roads are bad for small vehicles and terrible for bicycles. Many of the local campesinos have bicycles and the cobblestone makes riding very uncomfortable, which would make it also harder to open up this area as a cycling destination. The local people always want new roads and to improve their roads, and we on the other hand would like to see good maintenance on the existing dirt roads, but not asphalt, nor cobble, nor new roads. We prefer to slow people down in both arriving and departing from here because we want the area to remain rural. Our opinion about the road reflects on how we view development. A good road could truthfully bring many resources to the area and would make it easier for the local farmers to sell their products. But in the long run it would irreparably change the local culture and could potentially change ecosystems etc. The history of roads in this area is only around 40 years. We have refused to 'collaborar" with money to a road that the community is building through the Iliniza Ecological Reserve / Cloud Forest. The road was started before the reserve was established, so it is therefore legal, but to us it represents access for cutting down more trees. The road is meant to connect Chugchilan in the high sierra at 3200 meters or 10,500 feet, to Pucayacu which is on the Ecuadorian coastal plain at 500 meters or 1600 feet. See our letter for details about the history of this road and the community's desire to open up an old trading route.

A GOOD EXAMPLE: The local cheese factory was established 25 years ago in this area by a Swiss aid project. Local farmers did not have a market for their milk, because it would spoil during transportation to the Pan American. If they used their milk for cheese, they could transport the product once or twice a month without worrying about spoilage. They built the cheese factory at a high enough elevation so that they would not need refrigeration for aging the cheeses. This was a cost effective way to deal with the transportation problem.Since we have lived here the transportation to Chugchilan has increased by 100%. There used to be only one bus a day, and now there are 2!! The price for the 3 hour ride is $2.50. There are a few other buses that go through here on a weekly basis. This area used to have 17 different departures and now it has approx 25. I do not think that the increase in bus service is solely due to tourism, rather growth in general in one of the poorest sections on Ecuador. There are seven vehicles in the village including ours, they are all trucks or pick-up trucks. Anecdote: I am a bit of an anarchist. It is one of the reasons that I left the USA, because it has a very controlled society. I feel that humanity's natural tendency is towards anarchy. Behavior on the Pan American Highway at night helps to prove my point. The large majority of people in Ecuador are willing to risk bodily injure or death in order to arrive somewhere a little bit faster. People (including bus drivers) drive extremely fast on curving mountainous roads, passing on blind corners, passing on the wrong side all the while knowing that there are a large number of random obstacles in the road such as: pedestrians, large farm animals, potholes, unmarked speed bumps, vehicles with no lights, bicycles, vehicles both loading and unloading, accidents, steep drop offs and even stop lights that don't work... it is a free-for-all, anarchy, people only acting in there own self interest. I don't mind driving on the rural back roads at night, with just me and the road. Traffic is the real danger and the Pan Am can be crazy. In the developed world we obey traffic rules for 2 reasons, one because we are afraid of getting a ticket from police officers and two because we understand the common good of obeying simple rules. If we don't like the rules, in theory we have the opportunity to try to change them (or move to Ecuador!) But the very rules that are accepted by the society represent many of the ideas that we try to convey in these forums... We want rules for ECO tourism... we want rules for transportation... we want a balance in the way the world is developing... we want sustainability. The HUGE wall that we are up against is getting cooperation and compliance in the ANARCHIC lands of South Ameerika.... and you heard it from an anarchist! How is the rest of the world for sustainable compliance and cooperation? PS The trail building programs in Mexico appear to be very interesting. And I like the idea of giving a discount to cyclists... but at this altitude, cyclists are in a very small percentage.

Here we will talk about fuel availability and price which also effects transportation issues greatly.When we first moved to Ecuador, the closest gas station was over 3 hours away as was the closest Bank or Post Office and there was no phone service in this area. Cellular phones still do not work in this part of Ecuador. As we have stated in previous posts to this conference, the Black Sheep Inn is located in the middle of a loop. We have always maintained fuel storage of approx 20 to 35 gallons of gasoline at the Black Sheep Inn. This is primarily for personal use, but we also occasionally sell fuel to tourists for their rented vehicles. We rarely drain all of our back up fuel, but whenever we are going on a shopping run for the Inn, we will fill all the tanks that are empty. Sometimes we do not leave the Black Sheep Inn for over 2 months. A few years ago a gas station opened up in Sigchos... just 1 hour drive from here and they sell gasoline and diesel at the same price as the rest of the gas stations all over Ecuador. This did not change our behavior for having a reserve of 20 to 35 gallons of gasoline. But we think that it has changed how the people of Sigchos and the surrounding area view transportation. Factors: 1) is building and maintaining roads, which create access to an area, 2) is owning vehicles and maintaining them to drive on these roads 3) is have fuel to move the vehicles in and out of the area and 4) is the overall effect on the area. All of these points may seem obvious, but they each are important and big steps when a rural community is developing. Even if there are roads, many people can not afford vehicles. In this area we see extremely old and dilapidated trucks and buses. There is a new gas station being built in Zumbahua, about 1 and 1/2 hours from the Black Sheep Inn on the other side of the loop. Years ago a friend of ours suggested that WE open a gas station in Zumbahua, she said it would surely be a money maker and that it was definitely needed there. She said we might be able to pull it off, because we lived close. At the time we said we didn't think that it is very ECO to build and own a gas station. But our friend said that we would be able to do it much better than someone else... and that a gas station in Zumbahua was inevitable. Well, she was right... now there will be a gas station there, which probably will not effect our behavior of storing fuel here at the Black Sheep Inn. It probably will effect our ability to sell gasoline occasionally to tourists, because now in either direction fuel is available. I have 4 big questions: 1) How close would a gas station have to be for us to stop storing our own supply of fuel? (Probably 10 minutes away...) 2) How long will it be until somebody builds a gas station here, in Chugchilan? (hopefully never!) 3) How much does each piece of the above stated infrastructure (availability of roads, vehicles and fuel) effect the area from an environmental point of view? (this would make for some good research... the timetable of road development, increase of traffic use and environmental degradation) 4) If we had built the gas station in Zumbahua, is there really a way to run it ecologically? (we think that the answer is yes, but only relative to the problems that we have seen here in Ecuador, which is poor containment of leakage, spillage etc by gas stations and auto mechanics.) No, we are not going to Open the Black Sheep Filling Station and Garage. Since we moved here in 1994, gasoline prices here have always been approx $1.00 to $1.10 per gallon. Whenever the Sucre (the old currency of Ecuador) would devalue the price of gas would increase slightly in order to maintain the price at $1.00 per gallon. The local people always felt this as an increase, because their relative wage would not go up, but the price of fuel would increase. Every time fuel prices went up, the country went on strike. Because we are from the USA and we, at the Black Sheep Inn, had based our prices in dollars long before Ecuador did, we saw the gasoline price as stable. When the economy was completely falling apart and the Sucre devaluation was skyrocketing, the government's response to a National Strike was to freeze the price of gasoline at S/12,000 Sucres to the gallon. At first this was equal to $1.00 a gallon, then the Sucre continued to devalue which meant the real price of gasoline dropped to $.80 a gallon and then dropped again to $.50 a gallon. What is incredible is that the government was sucked into subsidizing the price of fuel, and that the subsidy continued to increase uncontrollably! It was a spiraling economic crisis. After the year of the fuel prices being frozen, they had to negotiate small increments until fuel once again reached the price of international markets. This process took 2 years.My pessimistic view is that mainstream transportation will not change until the fuel runs out or until pollution irreparable destroys us or the world climate. My optimistic view is that we are aware of this, that we are talking about the right issues, and that through better communication and decision making we can buy ourselves some more time on this planet.

Sami Grover

I was speaking to a fairly high-level representative of the British airline industry at a conference recently, and he was very much convinced that a tax on airline fuel was coming. I've included a few points below:

WTTC is generally opposed to taxation of Travel & Tourism, as it is a barrier to the free movement of people and to economic growth.

True to a degree, but if all other forms of travel are paying tax for fuel, is there any reason why air-travel should be effectively subsidised by rail/sea/ road travel, particularly given the relative impacts on the environment, and therefore to society?

In addition, taxation is a blunt instrument in this regard and taxation on travel has a disproportionate impact on the less affluent in society.

The less affluent travel less frequently, less far, and when they do fly, they will be more likely to travel in budget flights/ economy class, with more efficient use of space (and therefore fuel) per passenger. Not a particularly convincing argument. It must also be remembered that it is the poor who will suffer the worst effects of climate change. At some point we are going to have to face the fact that, if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we simply can't have "business as usual". This will inevitably mean that some industries cannot continue growing forever. Tax on airline-fuel, or airline emissions, would limit the effects of artificially cheap tickets. The tourist industry may need to start looking at ways to encourage shorter travel, domestic tourism and alternative methods of travel ad the norm, perhaps this would mean enough emissions savings that people can continue to enjoy the occasional long-haul flight when it is unavoidable (although this still leaves the question of who has access to this luxury)?

Jean-Claude concluded: "It is important to appreciate that the aviation industry has made tremendous progress in reducing pollution over the past few years and that it is continuing to makeprogress on an international level to further reduce emissions. I am surprised that very little consideration was given to imaginative ideas such as emissions trading."

I would certainly be interested in any other Greenrider's thoughts on emissions trading. I know very little about it. Doesn't a tax on fuel and/or emissions, directly encourage greater efficiency?

Antonio Suárez

Over the last six years Balam has assisted in building about 120 kilometers of multiple use trails and specific light lodging infrastructure in Mexico. Also, we have conducted community-based training and trail building workshops throughout the country. The results have been spectacular and can be seen in the first Mexican multiple-use trail network: 1. Reserva Estatal de Monte Alto at Valle de Bravo: 30 km. multiple use trail network, two camp sites and eight professional trail builders with four years of experience (remarkable since this is the first job on trail building and maintenance in the area) 2. Parque Nacional del Chico At Hidalgo: 25 Km. (first national park to have a trail network, its lodging infrastructure has an almost 100% occupancy) 3. Parque ejidal el Guajolote at Hidalgo: 15 Km. Also has a lodging area using Balam technology. 4. Parque ejidal de Cacalomacan at Parque Nacional Nevado de Toluca 10 Km. (the campground occupancy is almost at 100% since opening last July.

Let's review. Over the past few years the tendency of the ecotourism boom has been directed to create two things: 1. Expensive lodging infrastructure (in a couple of years this usually turns out to be a barn or storage area since the tourists never came or if they did, they didn't stay for a variety of reasons) 2. A bunch of local guides who also speak some "English" ( who soon become unemployed. Most are trained as biologists and the training focuses more on conservation, away from a social perspective ) Some workshops have focused on building interpretative trails by the RARE organization. It is clear that this trails do not create a recurrent visitors pattern in most of the areas, particularly urban areas and suburbs where the greatest ecotourist market is. Multiple use trails, on the other hand, create a market that can be regularly visited. For example, the Ejido de San Nicolas Totolapan receives more than 2,000 visitors a week. If compared with neighboring ejido which started an educational ecotourism project with a USAID $700,000 (USD) grant, the results show the success of multiple use trail strategy. Green Way and linear parks Mexico city government is financing Mexico's biggest ecotourism infrastructure. The main plan was to promote non motorized mobility while making a 60 km trail over the old train tracks between Mexico - Cuernavaca which crosses the city urban and rural area -- the second most visited natural escape in country after la Marquesa.

Now any one can go from Chapultepec -- the prehispanic park -- to rural areas. The project is now been built and the first Mexican seminar on green ways is about to start later this month. This project which Balam and other local NGOs pushed for years is in our view the most remarkable ecotourism infrastructure ever built in Mexico. Trail building now depends on choosing between non-motorized strategies for transportation and amusement and ecotourism activity which tends to become little more than an"International consultant money packet"

Michelle Kirby & Andres Hammerman

Apparently the real reason of this conference is to address alternatives to "dirty" transport methods. The tax that British Airways suggests is soon to be coming seems to be long over due. Air Transport being left out of the Kyoto deal is very bad and worse that the biggest burner of fossil fuels, the USA, refused to participate. As Sami Grover said, "At some point we are going to have to face the fact that, if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we simply can't have "business as usual". Growth growth growth must be curbed on the side of the polluters and high consumers. But Growth growth growth must be established amongst the sustainable businesses of the world, i.e. Ecotourism. Ecotourism can be a model for sustainable development in other industries. Ecotourism has the ability to cross borders, cultures and class if it caters to peoples comfort needs and educates them to the possibility of alternatives. Using the prefix ECO in front of an International Flight seems impossible at the moment. What we need is a list of the possible ways to control the pollution of the growing airline industry without killing the Travel and Ecotourism Industry.

My suggestions would be:
Airline Tax
Carbon emissions offset programs

Clear studies of who fly's (airfreight too), where and with what frequency and most importantly Wide spread publicity and education about the polluting effects of air travel (in other words transparency) I am sure that I have left out some points that also would be helpful. I am taking this approach of making suggestions from my experiences working on GIFEE, 7 Recommendations to Strengthen Ecotourism in Ecuador, with Ron and Antonis.

It is powerful to come up with suggestions and recommendations, even if they are difficult to implement. On an amusing note, we run a completely Ecological Air Transport here in Ecuador called Black Sheep Airlines. We specialize in short one way flights at 10,500 feet in altitude. The passenger fastens their seat belt and fly's via gravity from our tree house 100 meters across our property... our cable swing is otherwise known as a Zipline or Flying Fox.

Tim Burford

In Chile there is a project just getting under way to build the Sendero de Chile, a trail the length of the country from the Bolivian border to Tierra del Fuego - a very ambitious goal! It is to be multi-use, ie hiking, cycling, horse-riding - but there are places in the northern deserts where you just couldn1t hike without a van following with many litres of water. On the pilot lengths of trail (in the south) there are some flights of steps, meaning that cyclists would have to be able to push/carry their bikes some of the way. But it1s a huge opportunity to push sustainable travel. At the moment in Chile most of those interested in green issues are the gringo tourists who of course have just done so much damage to the ozone layer reaching Chile ... Chilean buses are well used, but once people earn money they want a car, and there are plenty of SUVs in eastern Santiago. The Chinese national parks with concrete staircases up them are actually traditional pilgrimage sites and tens of thousands of people have been climbing them annually since time immemorable - the stairs were there long before they became NPs. But in any case on heavily-used hiking trails you do have to build something fairly substantial, viz England's Pennine Way in the peat-bog areas, where it became about a kilometre wide as people tried to avoid ploughing through knee-deep mud. Now it's recovering well. Re variable entry prices dependent on means of arrival, the Earth Centre near Doncaster, UK, does this - it's right by the Trans-Pennine Trail, so should get lots of cyclists calling in ... unfortunately the project as a whole has not done well. The Eden Centre near St Austell in Cornwall (also UK) has done stunningly well - no variable pricing, but it1s also on the Sustrans network and has a well publicised bus link to the rail station. A few National Trust properties do not now have visitor car-parking (due mainly to the limitations of the sites) and promote cycling and public transport. These all seem to have been well received, but in general of course the expectation of visitors is that they can roll up by car.

I had not heard about British Airways (BA) saying anything about air fuel tax, but in any case I'd take anything they say with a pinch of salt - they have the UK government around their little finger, as it were, eg pushing through the disastrous Terminal 5 at Heathrow. The UK government has always said that it's pointless for one country to impose aviation fuel tax alone, as the airlines will simply refuel elsewhere, and if that means making extra landings and take-offs, it would be more environmentally damaging. They claim they've already done their bit by introducing a passenger departure tax, which they would say was an indicator of public receptiveness or opposition to a fuel tax. Personally I see no sign of this reducing the public's propensity to fly as often as possible.

Sami Grover

I'm aware that the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynleth, Mid- Wales also offers discounted entry to visitors arriving by public transport or bike). I am not sure how effective it has been - they still receive a large number of visitors coming by car, but this is a very successful centre in a fairly inaccessible part of mid- Wales. Interestingly, the centre has done some work on assessing their environmental impact and that of their visitors. They found that some of the least damaging visitors are perhaps the least committed to "eco- issues". They drive the whole family the 100 or so miles down from Birmingham for their annual week or two week holiday in mid-Wales (it is a traditional holiday centre for visitors from the midlands) and visit the centre purely for something to do (often referred to as "the poo and wind centre" by the less green-minded visitors). The visitors with more impact are the green pilgrims, who come from all over the world to visit this trail-blazing centre, learn about wind generators or compost loos or PVs, before flying back to Japan or wherever. I'm not trying to make any point about one being "better" than the other. Many of these green pilgrims may go on to start important projects in their own country. I just think it is important that we recognise that good intentions do not necessarily translate into ideal actions - likewise, ignorance or apathy about the environment does not necessarily translate into un-green behaviour.

From personal experience I can strongly recommend Sustrans. They have done great work in ensuring that trails are not only useful to tourists, but commuters also. They work closely with local businesses and schools to integrate their trails with companies' travel plans etc. Many of their trails are in highly built up areas, however, so they have the advantage of being able to use old railway lines, canal tow-paths etc. They do not face the difficulties that many groups working in more remote, pristine wilderness environments.

Mike Robbins

The environmental impacts of transportation has always been a major concern for me given the work I do in remote areas of Canada from Nunavut, Canada's Arctic to Labrador to more southerly areas like the Great Lake Heritage Coast, which I referenced in my first message to this forum. The only way to get tourists to a lot of these areas is by air, whether by float plane or twin otter on balloon tires landing on a beach or scheduled jet.

The negative impacts of these forms of air transport make the relatively small improvements we accomplish in making the destination more sustainable seem worthless. Then I think about it and realize that what we do in the destination is very worthwhile. We not only reduce the impact and footprint on the environment in the destination, we also educate the traveler and we ensure benefits accrue to local people. This ultimately leads to a more educated visitor and host. In future we will all need to be part of the solution to develop more sustainable forms of travel, particularly air travel. In the same manner in which we have started to reduce the impacts of land based travel (i.e. introducing 4 stroke engines to motorboats and skidoos, and creating green certification schemes to make marinas more responsible, focusing more on silent sports in sensitive areas etc) we will be able to influence the airlines and air transport companies to adopt new technologies to lessen their impact on the environment. After all the only reason those companies survive is because people continue to buy their services. A more educated consumer will be more discriminating in their choice of travel provider. Airlines or air travel providers that adopt the new technologies will get the business and thrive, pushing their competition to adopt as well. It will take continuing dialogue like this on-line conference to share and push the tourism industry into new directions.

John Shores

I ran across an interesting paragraph in a book I am finishing on strategic planning for organizations large and small. The quote seems to capture quite well some of the reasons why we travel. It's not exactly on topic, but it does mention transportation! As your moderator, I ask for your indulgence. Immersion in Challenging Environments "Travel is the single best way to immerse yourself in unfamiliarity -- to force yourself to adopt an alien point of view, albeit temporarily. It forces you to ask questions about why people live the way they do. What created their relationships, goals, and values? What are they trying to accomplish? When traveling, I make a conscious effort to encounter difference. I take local transportation and walk unaccustomed streets and routes. Because I usually have to work in urban offices, I deliberately visit factories or villages. I seek out friends of friends, or other nonbusiness contacts, and provoke conversations with shopkeepers and cab drivers." (p. 86-87)

Source: Peter Schwartz (President, Global Business Network). 1996. "The Art of the Long View: Planning for the future in an uncertain world" (Paths to strategic insight for yourself and your company). Doubleday, New York. (Original hard cover (c) 1991). I highly recommend the book. The Global Business Network and Peter Schwartz have been major thinkers behind the use of scenarios in strategic planning. "Uncertainty" seems to be a constant companion in the world of travel and tourism organizations.

Michelle Kirby & Andres Hammerman

My 3rd point, is a philosophical view of transportation and world energy consumption. Pieces of this philosophy have come up in various posts. I remember being a brutal misfit as a teenager. When visiting my grandmother on the 72nd floor of her high-rise apartment once a week in Chicago, I insisted on climbing the stairs as opposed to taking the elevator. I did this because I knew that the elevator was not a "normal" form of transportation. That humans should not be living in boxes stacked on top of one another. In order to realize the truth of living in a skyscraper, I climbed the stairs. Obviously my grandmother would not be able to live there (nor most people) if she had to climb the stairs, not to mention air conditioning, heat, water pumps, sewage and waste disposal. At the time I also thought air travel to be "unnatural". When I flew somewhere, upon arrival I often felt that it took days for the real "me" to show up, although my body had arrived quickly on the airplane.

At one point I considered making a vow to myself that I would only travel via transportation methods that were connected to the ground and sea. That the means (i.e. transportation) were directly connected to the ends (destination). I knew that in recent years the world had grown smaller due to advancements in transportation and communication, but I wondered if the human condition had learned how to deal with these advancements. It can be difficult arriving via air transport in a different country with a different culture and observing or participating in these differences with NO transition. I thought that if I traveled over land or sea, these cultural changes would take place gradually and they would not have such a huge effect. I am talking about "Culture Shock". Are travelers trained for these "shocks"? How have we, as humans, grown to deal with these transitions? Has anyone studied the effects of taking cultural leaps? on both the leaper (traveler) and the receiver? Part of growing up in a modern first world society was to accept what was handed to me as the "NORM" for the world. If it meant using a telephone, taking a bus to school, eating hamburgers at fast food restaurants, opening a bank account, riding elevators, or taking family vacations (via car, boat or plane), then I did it. But if it meant participating in global environmental destruction, or nuclear warfare (or any kind of warfare), or the wasting away of natural resources then I began to question it... truth be told I questioned it all, even the hamburger joints. I say part of growing up is accepting whatever the NORM may be. By accepting the NORM, it means that you can participate in the society. But now I see that accepting the NORM as only a part of growing up... the other part is having a perspective to criticize and correct the NORM... because in most ways it is still very wrong! No, I am not a fanatic nor fatalist, but the ideals that I had as a rebellious teenager point at some truths that are still worth living by... The world has grown smaller due to modern advancements which means we must change our behaviors in order to sustain the world. We can grow up. All humans have the same basic needs of food and shelter, and how we obtain these needs may be very different in different places. It is usually defined by our local culture. In order to grow up in this growing modern world we must be open to the cultural differences of how we satisfy our needs for food and shelter and we must curb our consumption of both fuels and the environment. Transportation and ecotourism are actually keys to sharing these cultural differences and learning about how to sustainably manage the natural world and human settlements.

John Shores

Taoist proverb: "If you want speed, you will not arrive."

The transportation conference has been fun in part because so much of the travel industry focuses only on destinations. This little Taoist proverb ties together a number of the thoughts and comments raised over the past few weeks. Thanks again to all of the participants.