Why is it so many people aspire to fly in First Class, sleep in Five Star hotels (or even Seven Star hotels) and eat in Michelin Three Star restaurants? Don’t they know that it is very poor value for money? That you can sleep just as well in a £29 per night room as a £2900 per night room? That the carbon footprint of a seat in First Class is at least double that of one in Standard?

I don’t know whether anyone has researched the psychology of luxury travel, but studies undertaken for luxury brands, found that someone buying a handbag for $50,000 is saying ” I have so much money that I can afford to waste it”.  The message being “I am a winner” and if you mate with me, our offspring will have a great chance of promulgating our genes also. Or to sum it up in one word “Sex”.

It goes deep into the contemporary psyche. Role models are chosen for their looks and the brands and fashion ideals they endorse. Their values or contribution to making the world a better place seem to count for little.  School children not sporting the right logos, must either conform or be bullied. This is worse than the secret police in a Cold War Era Eastern European country, making life a misery for anyone not toeing the party line. Combine this with incessant  advertising from TV, film, computer games and even by stealth through their social media accounts and our youth don’t stand a chance. It is no wonder that many believe that being someone is a matter of having the right logos on their clothes, cars, hotel chain or airline.

But is travel like a Hermes handbag? Do extravagant purchases define us as someone successful? Is a tan in the middle of winter a status symbol to wear with pride? Does taking regular flights make you a member of the “Jet Set”?

In Europe since the 1950′s the cost of flying, encouraged by lenient taxation, nose-dived.   Spain was suddenly affordable and millions flocked there returning with a tan, donkeys wearing sombreros and other ornaments proudly displayed in the home to demonstrate that here is a person “well-travelled”. But then the Jones’ had to go on that trip to Florida and Disneyland! To keep up with them, a trip to the Maldives was a “must do”  for the following year, even if it meant getting into debt.  Does this explain why cruises to the Antarctic are now in vogue?

I’ve raised a lot of questions in this post. I don’t have answers to most of them. However, in a world of limited resources and Climate Change, it matters not only how much we travel, but how we travel. If a backpacker hiking for a year has a smaller ecological footprint  than someone flying 2,000 miles to stay at a Seven Star Hotel for a week, surely these questions are important?

If it really all does boil down to sex, why are our planetary life support systems getting screwed instead?

Dr Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA) now admits that we have passed peak conventional crude oil. After saying for years, that we are nowhere near peak oil, he now says that the IEA thinks that conventional crude peaked five years ago. Dr Birol says that governments should have been planning for this ten years ago. What have they been doing?
In the UK, predicting a doubling of air passengers by 2030 and planning for a third runway for Heathrow and a second runway for Stansted. The cancelling of plans for the Heathrow third runway by the new government seems obvious in light of the predicted oil supply in 2030. Yet, I still see plans being wheeled out for concepts such as the Aerotropolis.

The travel industry will increase its fuel surcharges, but the problem extends to all of the products that rely on cheap oil but the real hard hitter will be fertilisers and food. All of these will rise in price. With the scarcity of supply driving prices up, the price of oil is hardly likely to drop unless the recession bites again. Take a look at this video where a Dr Birol is interviewed and even Richard Branson is shown discussing an impending oil crunch.

Do you think we will still be able to fly around the world for less than £1000 / $1500, in five years time?

Due to the time spent following the ongoing crisis in Japan, I have not posted for some time. I had a break last Friday and was honoured to co-host #FriFotos on Twitter, by @EpsteinTravels. It gave me an opportunity to see and share many beautiful and inspiring photos on the theme ‘Green’.  Some of my thoughts on the subject are displayed in pictorial form in this post.

Well firstly there is the “Green, green grass of home”, Llangollen in North Wales.

Wales gets it’s fair share of rain and therefore is usually very green. Here are some of the inhabitants enjoying an autumn afternoon near Conwy.

Portmeirion is renowned for it’s Italianate architecture by Clough Williams-Ellis and being the location for the cult sixties TV series “The Prisoner”. The gardens are also worth visiting as the photo below shows.

Chamonix has a number of green credentials. In Summer the valley bottom and sides are verdant, one of the peaks above 4000 metres is the Aiguille Verte, (Green needle) and the Tourist Office holds ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

Green always catch my eye, wherever it is found.

Eurostar trains at St Pancras, London, quite a green way to travel between London, Lille, Brussels and Paris and beyond.

Green also brings to mind the environment and a core subject of this blog. Many people find wind farms unsightly, but they have a beauty of their own. More importantly they produce some of the lowest carbon forms of electricity currently generated.

What pictures form in your mind when you consider the word ‘green’.

Thank you also to my co-hosts on Friday: @MO_HOTELS @TravelDesigned

While waiting to be served at a Cardiff Restaurant last week, I couldn’t help overhearing the large party on the adjacent table, discussing the merits of European cities they had visited. They were talking loudly, probably because they wanted the rest of the group to hear. One woman said “I did Prague”. The expression grated with me.
Prague is a wonderful city. It deserves more than to be “done”. Hearing this made me ponder why I travelled there in 2003.

It was a period of my life when everything seemed to be going wrong. I went because it had all but beckoned me through books, films and even pop videos. The experience was truly therapeutic.

I stayed in a cheap hostel with Soviet Era plumbing in the communal wash room. I walked, took the metro and trams all over the city. I ate with locals at cafés in the suburbs avoiding the tourist restaurants in the Old Town and city centre. I had many conversations with Czech locals and Russian Ex pats living in Prague. I even went to the Opera twice.

But did I do Prague?

My week in the city gave me a very small idea of what life was about in the city. The Museum of Communism gave another another insight. Inside in a display case were little lumps of lead and other heavy metals. The explanatory caption explained that the quantities shown were the average amounts breathed in over a year by a Czech inhabitant.

Shocking!

But is it any more shocking than flying out to Prague for a drunken Hen / Stag Party or flying there just to be able to say; “I did Prague”?

Thirty nine years ago a number of organisations with diverse goals, yet all concerned with a sustainable future on this planet got together. The first Earth Day was held in in 1970. The event has become mainstream.  It has been interesting reading surfing the net today as some of the news items have varied from positively helpful ways to secure a sustainable future on the Earth to pure Greenwash.

Using Earth Day to sell airline tickets

One company selling cheap airline tickets even tried to get some Earth Day Green points, by focusing on eco hotels, spas and even some green travel tips. Instead of being honest and saying that you shouldn’t take the flight unless there is no sustainable alternative. They simply say green issues shouldn’t stop you flying. Of course they say you can offset. Offsetting though, is the last resort, as the flight will still produce carbon dioxide, as well as burn up a portion of irreplaceable fossil fuel.Of course the answer is to travel to the destination slowly using buses, trains, cycling or walking. This takes time and that is not compatible with the life we live. There is hope though, I will try to provide some inspirational examples in future posts.

Eco villas

Another company was promoting its eco villas. Some of the ones advertised were huge with their own swimming pool. Of course they had rainwater harvesting but usually for watering the plants not for flushing toilets. Solar panels, ground source heat pumps were on offer. I am not negative about the efforts made, but surely there is still lots of room for improvement. A private swimming pool maybe a luxury, but it consumes lots of resources in their construction, upkeep and that’s without all the fresh water they consume in areas that are often water stressed. Its better for the environment to use the sea or failing that communal pools.

Frivolous Earth Day Posts

Another site had a video post of Celebrities approach to Earth Day. I found it fairly shallow. OK, so the presenter pointed out that to be a green celebrity, you need to do more than drive a Toyota Prius (actually there are less polluting cars available), use reusable shopping bags and the like. I suppose the only test is to look at someones complete ecological footprint this is impossible without being intrusive, although one Hollywood film star who produced a green quote for Earth Day has a fleet of private jets, so I agree that we can’t take him too seriously. I certainly am far from green, but I am taking action that reduces my footprint month by month.

Why does Luxury Travel claim the Green credentials?

I find it just a little disconcerting to note that it is luxury travel that is claiming to be eco friendly. Often often long haul flights are required to access the location, the facilities occupy large amounts of land compared to indigenous homes. Whereas budget travel staying in small easily heated rooms with showers instead of Jacuzzis do not use anywhere near as much in the way of resources. Combine this with small family run hotels with locally sourced produce and your impact is going to be a lot less. Or perhaps you don’t agree?

Its Tuesday of World Water Week 2009. Here are two more water saving tips for travellers.

Hallgerd - Fotolia.com

Tip 3

Do not leave the tap running while brushing your teeth. All you need is to wet the toothbrush.

Tip 4

In a similar vein. If you are staying in self catering accommodation, and are doing washing up, then use the dishwasher if it is provided. Dishwashers consume resources in the form of energy, raw materials, including water when manufactured.

If they are there use them.

They use less water than hand washing.

If washing up by hand then fill the sink. Do not use running water to wash your pans and dishes.

‘Credit Crunch’ and ‘Energy Crunch’ are terms many of us will have come across at one time or another. To be able to travel we all need to be able to finance our trips and the current credit crunch will affect many travel plans. Of course the credit crunch will come to an end someday but that may not be the end of the challenges facing anyone wanting to travel the world. The energy crunch or at least Peak Oil is waiting in the wings as oil will not last forever and many experts believe that there is not enough oil left in the world to increase production beyond the levels reached in Summer 2008.

Treading lightly as we travel this beautiful world will ensure that our successors can enjoy it as much as we do. I do not endorse luxury travel as it consumes a lot more resources than budget travel. For example a business class traveller can take up the space of up to six passengers on a budget airline. This means that passenger will probably use at least four times as much aviation fuel per passenger mile and emit at least four times as much CO2 as a passenger on budget airline. Of course train and bus passengers will consume even less.

This blog has been started to discuss these issues and share experiences and tips for travellers who are want keep the cost of their travel to themselves and the environment to a minimum.