Exploring the Climate Science/Policy Jungle. II. What To Do About Air Travel/Tourism?

Given that carbon is one of the major sources of climate change (landscape change and other greenhouse gases are also involved), a policy question, both nationally and internationally is “what industries get to emit CO2?” and what industries are asked via policy to reduce emissions by changing their practices and/or reducing their activity, and which are asked to stop completely (coal is an example of this).

For Each Industry
Is it an Energy Producer or User?
Via Policies, Are we asking them to: Reduce Impacts of Doing the Same Amount?
And/or Do Less?
or Stop Entirely?

In this post, we’ll take a look at international tourism, and discuss it as it relates to places and impacts in the western US. Let’s take a look at this2018 paper by Lenzen et al.(and the correction here). My point is to simply ask the question, for what industries and when, are carbon footprints a reason to change local/state/federal policies? For example, should Boulder, Colorado stop having international conferences to reduce its carbon footprint? Should Utah stop encouraging international travel to visit ski areas and National Parks?

At around 1 kgCO2e per dollar of final demand (Supplementary Table 6c), the carbon multiplier (Section ‘Input-output analysis’) of global tourism is higher than those of global manufacturing (0.8 kgCO2e per US$) and construction (0.7 kgCO2e per US$), and higher than the global average (0.75 kgCO2e per US$). Growth in tourism-related expenditure is therefore a stronger accelerator of emissions than growth in manufacturing, construction or services provision.

…

Conclusions
Travel is highly income-elastic and carbon-intensive. As global economic development progresses, especially among high-income countries and regions experiencing rapid economic growth, consumers’ demand for travel has grown much faster than their consumption of other products and services. Driven by the desire for exotic travel experiences and an increasing reliance on aviation and luxury amenities, affluence has turned tourism into a carbon-intensive consumption category. Global demand for tourism is outstripping the decarbonization of tourism operations, and, as a result, is accelerating global carbon emissions. At the same time, at least 15%
of global tourism-related emissions are currently under no binding reduction target as emissions of international aviation and bunker shipping are excluded from the Paris Agreement. In addition, the United States, the most significant source of tourism emissions, does not support the Agreement.

..

Recognizing the global significance of tourism-related emissions, the UNWTO proposed two mitigation strategies: (1) to encourage travellers to choose short-haul destinations with an increased use of public transportation and less aviation; and (2) to provide marketbased incentives for tourism operators to improve their energy and carbon efficiency16. Our findings provide proof that so far these mitigation strategies have yielded limited success. Neither responsible travel behaviour nor technological improvements have been able to rein in the increase of tourism’s carbon footprint. Carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes (especially for aviation services) may be required to curtail unchecked future growth in tourism-related emissions.

So, international tourism is a user of CO2 emitting energy. Emissions of international aviation are not under a binding agreement (the US is not party to the Paris Agreement, but that doesn’t matter with regard to airline emissions).

Do US/state/local policies ask the tourism industry to reduce its footprint (reduce impacts)?
Do US/state/local policies discourage international/(or long-distance air national, which may be m/l the same) tourism? In fact, current policies may well promote more tourism.

Let’s imagine some policy options. Someone at PERC, can’t remember who, suggested that National Parks charge non-citizens more for entry fees to help address maintenance backlogs. Since people are generally fairly well-off who do international travel, would this be a good policy choice? Or perhaps the extra funds could go into efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of tourism in the Parks? Or go to a research fund toward low carbon fuel for jets? Should states encourage international tourism (or from tourists who come via plane), when the results lead to greater carbon use (plus water use and potentially other more local environmental impacts)? What are the economic/environmental trade-offs and who decides? And are these impacts on anyone’s radar screen? Why or why not?