America and travel
On my way back from London yesterday I needed something to read and in my hurry to catch my train I picked up the nearest thing, which happened to be Time Magazine (which has to be pronounced time magazine like it is when you speak American. Incidentally, it cost £2.80 even though it’s really small and not even glossy paper; not worth it). The front-page article that had caught my eye was “10 Ideas that are changing the world”. As you might have guessed, it was a series of ten articles about vaguely interesting things that are changing the world.
The first idea pleasantly surprised me - the idea that competition between national economies is increasingly becoming irrelevant because of globalisation, and that we need to embrace the international ideal of ‘common wealth’ if we are to avoid the collapse of the climate that sustains all inhabitants of the planet. So far so good. The author of the article Jeffery D. Sachs, articulated the need to shift to sustainable energy systems, and correctly identified the exciting prospect of photo-voltatic cells hopefully soon being price competitive with fossil fuels for producing electricity.
However, in concluding the article, one of the main recommendations he gave was to travel,
“There is no substitute for meeting and engaging with people across cultures, religions and regions to realize that we are all in this together”
Very true. And it got me thinking about the American focus of the article and how I have previously laughed cynically about the backward nature of society across the Atlantic when hearing that only one in four Americans owns a passport. Travel is inevitably seen as a crucial element of international cultural and social awareness. Putting this in the context of climate change is where it gets tricky. One long-haul flight releases around four times the amount of CO2 as is sustainable for one person in a whole year. Trying to bridge this gap is what Loco2 is all about.
So with that in mind, here’s an update on our low carbon travel pioneers:
- Ed Gillespie, co-founder of Futerra, is just about to return to the UK on a cargo-ship from Costa Rica after 12 months of adventuring around the world and writing about it for the Observer and at his blog
- After getting across the Atlantic on the same cargo-ship route that Ed is now returning on, Kate Andrews (founder of Loco2 and my sister) is about to sail on a yacht across the pacific from Mexico to Australia (taking seven weeks and going via some of the most beautiful tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific)
- Having successfully avoided both the strikes in Nepal Emily and Verity have successfully arrived in India (Varanasi) where after meeting some other friends (who flew there) they have now parted ways. Emily is off to learn Hindi and go white-water rafting, whilst Verity is planning to do volunteer on a WWOOF farm
- The last thing heard from Toby and Stuart is that they’re about to write a blog post about the political reality of Darfur
Finally, something to think about: surface travel is far from easy, and political turmoil around the world is often there to disrupt plans. One of the biggest headaches in this area is the lack of a stable overland route into India. Emily and Verity successfully negotiated one of the few paths that avoid Afghanistan and the dodgier regions of Pakistan, but recent protests in Tibet have made their option look a lot shakier for future travellers. A big dilemma is how to support people such as the Buddhist monks who want China out of Tibet, whilst still wanting stability enough to travel in the regions that are so fascinating because of the illustrious histories that are still being written.
On that rather philosophical note, I’ll leave you with a report of the recent protests in Lhasa.
