Carbon Footprint
Carbon cost of Travel

Summer time! Travel time! Time for a trip! A nice long vacation! You deserve it! ... Unfortunately, your big fun trip comes with a big ol’ carbon impact — even bigger than we

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Summer time! Travel time! Time for a trip! A nice long vacation! You deserve it!

Unfortunately, your big fun trip comes with a big ol’ carbon impact — even bigger than we



So you want to carbon offset that vacation. Here’s what you need to know

By Jesse Nichols and Eve Andrews on May 29, 2018

Summer time! Travel time! Time for a trip! A nice long vacation! You deserve it!

Unfortunately, your big fun trip comes with a big ol’ carbon impact — even bigger than we previously thought, according to a new study. UGH, I know. I guess that means you’re in the market for a carbon offset, which ostensibly neutralizes that impact.

But what does a carbon offset actually do? Sometimes it grows a tree. Sometimes it lights a fire over a garbage dump. Life is full of mysteries, and we investigate all the ones pertinent to carbon offsets in the video above.
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Article | Published: 07 May 2018

The carbon footprint of global tourism

Manfred Lenzen, Ya-Yen Sun, Futu Faturay, Yuan-Peng Ting, Arne Geschke & Arunima Malik

Nature Climate Changevolume 8, pages522–528 (2018) | Download Citation

An Author Correction to this article was published on 23 May 2018 Correction 23 May 2018

Abstract

Tourism contributes significantly to global gross domestic product, and is forecast to grow at an annual 4%, thus outpacing many other economic sectors. However, global carbon emissions related to tourism are currently not well quantified. Here, we quantify tourism-related global carbon flows between 160 countries, and their carbon footprints under origin and destination accounting perspectives. We find that, between 2009 and 2013, tourism’s global carbon footprint has increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GtCO2e, four times more than previously estimated, accounting for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Transport, shopping and food are significant contributors. The majority of this footprint is exerted by and in high-income countries. The rapid increase in tourism demand is effectively outstripping the decarbonization of tourism-related technology. We project that, due to its high carbon intensity and continuing growth, tourism will constitute a growing part of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.