Why We Shouldn’t Travel

If you travel far enough you will see some beautiful scenery (above) and lots of ordinary scenery (below).

Here are my reasons you shouldn’t do touristic travel. It is exhausting. It is crowded. It is theater and it is therefore not an authentic experience. Touristic travel consumes the world’s scarce resources and creates environmental distortions. I could explain these arguments in great detail but I really don’t need to. I’m just going to give a few examples.

More than 30 million Americans visited Europe in 2018. One round trip to Europe is the equivalent of a 10% increase in you annual carbon emissions. By my calculation stopping vacation flights to Europe would have a bigger effect on CO2 levels than all of the wind and solar installations in the country.

In my post Why We Travel I list a dozen or so reasons why people travel. I have made a complicated mental matrix of types of travel from car trips to cruise ships to vaguely planned backpacking trips and compared it to the reasons we say we travel. It shows that the more you plan the less you will fulfill the adventure objectives for travel. And the more you plan to do the less you will fulfill those objectives. If you let others be your guides you will have no adventure and no authentic experience. And if you let others plan for you to go to the “A-List” places (The Grand Canyon, the Louvre etc) you will have no adventure, no authenticity and no relaxation.

There is a small correlation between money and fulfilling travel. But there is a large correlation between limited objectives and fulfilling travel.

Next I will post about How I Travel.