How's this for backwards messaging? A Forbes article posted late last week on MSNBC urges tourists to "See these travel spots - before it's too late!", referring to the world's most endangered tourist destinations. These are exotic spots threatened by over-tourism, deforestation, and global warming, and as the article says, if they're on your destination list, they may be gone before you can book your flight.
So wait a minute. The problem in some of these places is over-tourism -- too many of us showing up, stomping around, touching stuff -- so we're supposed to rush out and flood the spots with even more tourists who want to be the last to see it? This "I got mine, screw the rest of y'all" school of thinking isn't exactly the most environmentally sound. And the fact that global warming is responsible for the future disappearance of other spots makes it even more reprehensible. Encouraging everyone to jet off to exotic destinations in huge, carbon-spewing airplanes will only make the problem worse.
Spots in danger? The Galapagos Islands, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, ruins in Peru, the entire country of Tibet, the Everglades, the Great Barrier Reef.
I got all excited when I got to the bottom of the article, and they had a subhead titled "Taking action." I thought they'd maybe tell people to be more responsible tourists, travel lightly and as little as possible, avoid air travel when you can, purchase offsets, or any of the plethora of things people can do to reduce their impact. Their proposed "action steps"?
The World Heritage Center tries to take corrective action when it feels a site is in jeopardy, says Rao. This could mean raising money to protect the area or diverting planned buildings or hotels to other places.
Still, man and Mother Nature are powerful forces. While some historic and natural sites might have a future, no amount of money or work can save other places, such as those affected by global warming, since it's projected to worsen.
The point? Visit these places while they're still around.
Oh, geez.
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JMG Posted 9:54 am
04 Jun 2007
http://www.marathontours.com/sevenclub.shtml
From the story (which I can't find on line):
Kern spent 84 hours on airplanes, traversed twelve nations and managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing, such as Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. The cost? About $15,000.
"Life is short and what it cost is inconsequential," Kern says. "Ten years from now, I won't even notice what I spent. But 10 years from now, I'll still have the memory of this adventure."
...
Marathoners also tend to be upper middle class, which means they put dollar signs in the eyes of tourism officials. The average runner has a household income of about $95,000, has had at least four years of college, and has time to spend on his passion."
...
Now the company is booking 2009 Antarctica Marathon trips because 2008 is already sold out --- at a cost of about $6,000 a person. Gilligan is scouting Madagascar this summer for a future trip. He has to keep finding new destinations, he says, "because we have clients who have already been on all our trips."
Apparently all educated at colleges where ethics were not a big part of the curriculum.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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caniscandida Posted 4:50 pm
04 Jun 2007
Why, just this past Sunday, there was this obnoxious article on an Inca site in Peru similar to Machu Picchu, but not nearly so over-crowded and "spoiled":
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/travel/03inca.html?e ...
It is currently one of the most e-mailed of NYTimes articles, and so we may imagine that thousands of people have read it, and are already making travel plans.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Whiskerfish Posted 6:17 pm
04 Jun 2007
They all had a bunch of somewhat creative but equally bogus reasons for justifying what they did.
I've also come across a rash of articles lately on the economic advantages of birding, particularly 'twitching' which encourages zillions of birders to charge around the world madly looking for rare or lost 'out of range' birds. Twitchers supposedly pump millions into rural economies etc., but I've never seen the cost of this increasingly mainstream pastime-for-the-rich in terms of carbon emissions.
As a confirmed birding addict - though not a long-range twitcher - it amazes me how 'people who love nature' (birds) can be so blind to their impacts...
Whiskerfish
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caniscandida Posted 7:39 pm
04 Jun 2007
Thanks, Whiskerfish, for bringing up the preciousness of rare birds. If going after the few remaining ones is an ethical problem for birders, my dread -- cynic that I am! -- is that there are collectors out there too, whose activities are even more horrible to consider.
That is why, early last year, after some apparently reliable reports came in from eastern Arkansas that an Ivory-billed Woodpecker had been spotted, I was very fearful that we would soon be hearing of operations thereabouts by the agents of self-interested (but pointlessly so!) collectors.
We are already beginning to resemble Philip K. Dick's dystopia, described in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," a world with very few surviving animals, such that living animals are objects of desire, the preserve of the wealthy few, and inspirers of criminal activity; and most people, whose hearts were broken when the animals died, have to find consolation with "electric sheep," and other artificial substitutes. (This is the moral heart of the story, which was elided when it was transformed into the quite different movie "Blade Runner.")
I am sure you know a great deal about a somewhat analogous situation in Africa, though not with birds: the recently announced discovery of a considerable population of elephants, in southern Sudan, on an island where the White Nile breaks into countless channels. The scientists who made the discovery have apparently kept the location of the island a secret, fearing what need not be said: that if its location became known, poachers seeking ivory would quickly arrive, and the elephants would be doomed.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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BiggusCattus Posted 1:03 am
05 Jun 2007
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Whiskerfish Posted 1:15 am
05 Jun 2007
I watched it again recently and was completely blown away by how prescient its depictions of large cities were - there is so much in that film that could come straight out of any megalopolis in East Asia right now. It's really hard to believe that it was made so long ago.
I keep the nest locations of the birds of prey I work on a closely-guarded secret. There are too many folks here in Cape Town that will steal eggs and chicks to keep for themselves as trophies or sell on to the Middle East where birds of prey are prized trinkets of the mega-wealthy.
A couple of years ago a well-known Japanese botanist was bust smuggling rare succulents from the desert near here. His fine was about US$50 000 - a mind-boggling sum in SA that made headlines (the conservation community FINALLY got a judge that took plant smuggling seriously!), but he paid it without blinking as he'd already made millions off his previous trips to this country. He still has his professorship in Japan.
Rare animals and 'untouched' wilderness really are becoming valuable possessions.
Whiskerfish
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 7:33 am
05 Jun 2007
Clark Kellog is hired to convey illegally imported endangered species by Sabatini in order to provide million-dollar-a-plate dinners for a bunch of international degenerates who revel in eating endangered animals.
It's a farce that features the sorts of people who've been discussed here.
For more about the movie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099615/
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JMG Posted 8:05 am
05 Jun 2007
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Whiskerfish Posted 9:49 pm
05 Jun 2007
Whiskerfish
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 11:47 pm
05 Jun 2007
--------------------------------------------
Representative Helen Chenoweth, who famously hosted an endangered-sockeye-salmon bake in her district and once donned a T-shirt that read "Earth First!" on the front and "We'll log the other planets later" on the back.
Outside Magazine
http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0998/9809disppol ...
Among the most memorable moments in her wretched fanatical career: she famously groused that "It's the white Anglo-Saxon male that's endangered," making her point by serving endangered species of salmon for dinner. She wasn't exactly a conservationist, calling environmentalists "Marxists." And she was calling for selling off the National Parks even before Dirty Dick Pombo. As far as I know, she was the first congressperson to complain about mysterious black government helicopters bothering people.
Down With Tyranny blog
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/10/helen-chenowe ...
She ran for Congress against incumbent Democrat Larry LaRocco and gained national attention when she held "endangered salmon bakes," serving canned salmon and ridiculing the listing of Idaho salmon as an endangered species during fundraisers.
Spokesman Review
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=7556 ...
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chupacabra Posted 1:07 am
06 Jun 2007
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caniscandida Posted 6:59 am
06 Jun 2007
And thanks for the research on Helen Chenoweth, hardly a household name in this part of the country.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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red black and green Posted 7:10 am
15 Jun 2007
the only solution to pollution is revolution
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