It’s hard not to be a hypocrite

When I first started writing this blog, I made a few posts about sustainability, how I hated air travel, and the like. As you may have noticed, I have not written about this for awhile. The reason is pretty clear – I am a bit of a hypocrite to be decrying non-sustainable practices when I am also writing about travel. While we travel bloggers may like to think we are pretty good people, at the end of the day most travel is frankly  not earth-friendly. Even if you are not flying, that car/train/bus trip is using resources we didn’t need to use.

So while I can try to excuse myself when it comes to our latest flights to Singapore/Australia/Japan – I tried to find land travel options, we are a household that rarely uses our car and we use it much less than the average household, we are almost completely vegan and try to source our groceries and other things sustainably as possible, we are trying to buy less stuff – at the end of the day, they are just not a good thing.

As an interesting book I am reading – How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything – points out, fretting about using plastic bags or whether to use the hand dryer or towels when you use a public loo is really meaningless if you go out and fly somewhere. I’ve got to admit I feel the same when I read blog posts about ‘five steps for greener travel’ that talk about using re-usable bags and tap water instead of bottled, yet don’t bother to address the huge environmental impact of flying, or staying in a new resort that would have taken huge resources to build (let alone the fact it may have meant the clearing of previously forested land or some such). Frankly, such articles are meaningless, and are either trying to make us feel good when we don’t really deserve it, or are just filling space. There are some very good blogs out there that do address sustainable travel of course, and some great posts about the reality of ‘green travel’, such as this one from 501 Places, but very little writing on travel blogs about ‘sustainable/eco/green’ travel is more than window dressing.

So rather than be a hypocrite, I am just not going to write about it anymore. Not that I think it is not an important issue (it is) or that we shouldn’t be thinking about it (I do, constantly, to the point of tying myself up in knots and getting more than a little stressed), but from now on I am just going to link to those who really seem to be thinking about it and writing about it. And while I don’t advocate we all become martyrs and give up travel for the greater good (because I know we won’t) perhaps we can all stop patting ourselves on the back about what excellent people we are for being ‘well travelled’ and start thinking about the impact of what ‘well travelled’ really means for the planet, and how we should be dealing with that responsibility.