Charlie Brooker rules
If you’re reading this and it’s Tuesday 20th November 2007, then you’re probably Charlie Brooker. I’ve just emailed him to ask if he’d like to engage with Loco2 and go on a free holiday when we launch in Spring 2008.
“Why throw your money at such a pessimist who will clearly scoff at your idealistic environmental ways?!” I hear you cry. Because Charlie makes me laugh and because here at Loco2 we’re realists too. Yes, taking the train will reduce the environmental impact of your journey by up to ten times, but no, the toilets won’t be particularly clean as you travel from Paris to Rome on the sleeper. Let’s expose the pitfalls straight away and get the cynics verdict before we open the door to the swathes of hippies who think that the world’s problems can be solved if we all just marinate our tofu for long enough.
Recently, two of Charlie’s columns have been spot on with his cynical indictment of modern travel. What makes his observations all the more relevant is the self-awareness with which he criticises society’s approach to the must-see must-do activities. Have a read of his latest column, in which he lambastes lists of “things to do before you die”…
Charlie’s G2 column
I particularly like the bit where Charlie is completely nonplussed by the Grand Canyon, and it reminded me of something Stephen Moss (a slightly more serious Guardian writer) said when I interviewed him back in June: travel is about taking pleasure from the incidentals, and not relying on the climax of arrival. If you build everything up into that one moment you’re only going to be lying there feeling awkward afterwards.
What Charlie articulates so well is that travel is often a question of boasting about where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Interestingly this is something that was outlined explicitly by a representative of Mintel at the World Travel Market last week. He showed a presentation giving the conclusions of their latest market research. What it showed rather depressed me: one of the major motivations for people travelling is to display their social status, and that this trend is increasing.
What?! So the main reason for travel is not to broaden your horizons, to escape from the insecurities of modern society, but to simply ensure that you have enough to boast about when you get back? Blimey.
Not ultra-surprising I suppose, but I was certainly disappointed that there wasn’t a whisker of disappointment on most of the faces of the travel industry panellists commenting on the findings. And despite a refreshingly honest approach to climate change in general, there was no link made between that and the increasing prevalence of marketing campaigns telling people they’re missing out if they don’t spend their disposal income on flights.
All this means that those individuals within the travel industry who are starting to take a progressive approach (such as Noel Josephides of Sunvil Travel) are presented as the pessimists, the ones painting a picture of a dark and inglorious future where no-one can travel anywhere and we all must stay at home and cry over the remains of our rusty old bicycle because we’ve just discovered it has a life-cycle carbon footprint of 50kg.
In reality, the reason that the progressive voices aren’t heard is because they are shouted down by the vast majority of the travel industry who are suffering from inertia: they know there are problems but they can’t join the dots. We need to embrace the local and travel less frequently and by different means.
It’s not enough to talk about climate change in one question, and then prevalent industry trends in another. Creating an interesting and appealing global travel market is about acknowledging that commercial companies can lead as well as follow and this is all the more relevant given the huge challenges of climate change. It’s not going to be particularly easy, and there must be always be a place for healthy cynicism, but travel is a crucial part of inter-cultural understanding and we have a real chance to make a difference.
