Come closer. I want to tell you a story. I’ve seen the future. No telescope needed.
I’ve just toured through some websites and state travel guides in my regional South that I’ll tell you about in a minute, but I want you to understand that while these places might not yet refer to climate action by name, they want you to know that they’re looking for visitors aligned with climate action values.
Serendipity, quirky, suffused by genius
Such places stand out for the serendipity of Main Streets, quirky museums, pop-up sales at one-of-a-kind stores, trails you can easily walk or bike to, local food, places to stay run by people who live there, and suffused by the genius of preserving community.
Travel to the Deep Nearby can easily extend for a week at a time. We don’t skimp. We explore but we also can do so affordably. Going local means choosing what locals cherish for their daily good life.
Residents of these places we travel to are getting the same messages about accelerating transition to climate action as we are.
Think of talking about climate action as if pasting on an “I Voted” sticker at our polling places. We want others to know.
Is there any place that doesn’t want visitors?
Maybe some Amazon places or even in Florida, the city of Mulberry that took its name from a town tree still notorious for the lynchings that took place there.
Otherwise, this symmetry of places where people travel and also get traveled to is the story of modern-day tourism, especially in the United States where travel and tourism in 2019 accounted for 2.9 percent of GDP, according to the International Trade Administration, and forecasted by the World Travel & Tourism Council to grow in the next 10 years at an average 9.2 percent, four times faster than the U.S. economy overall (which also includes foreign nationals at leisure and work).
None of this optimism considers that tourism already constitutes some eight percent of the global carbon footprint, according to Sustainable Travel international.
A Big Bang of energy
Yet this symmetry of tourism may be most worth exploring now when mass tourism is widely under attack for its negative impact on climate change.
What if places hold themselves out for stewardship to travelers, who in their own increasing numbers choose such places to visit in their transition?
These are matters of principle for growing numbers of travelers. Also for many facilitators from chat groups to booking agents, touring companies, small and locally resourceful places to stay, farm-to-table places to eat,
and the nonprofits that help bring travelers and locals together around what’s authentic and sustainable. A lot of collaboration is going on.
The ideal and the transition toward it
But if the ideal is far from fully in place, it’s otherwise the perfectly good that’s where we should also be paying attention. That’s where we can personally feel that we’re effecting climate action, doing what needs to be done. We ourselves as travelers can help motivate the change that we want the places we choose to visit to keep on keeping on.
When change becomes our friend instead of our enemy, we experience a kind of conversion therapy. Skift Travel Research says that 90 percent of travelers want to accelerate climate action.
This happens when we feel ourselves not taking a short distance flight to where we’re going, but riding the train, intercity bus or transit, by cycling or taking a long walk that maybe starts with a short drive.
Examples from my bailiwick South
Turn to the Sweet Home Alabama travel guide. It’s about The Year of Alabama Birding, about statewide recognition of Hank Williams Sr. on
the centennial of his birth, about Alabama writers from Taylor Branch, who wrote the esteemed biography of MLK, Jr., Parting the Waters, and Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.
The first take on lodgings features “boutique sleep” in restored historic structures, century-old family farms, a transformed Auburn dormitory, and at the Gunrunner Boutique Hotel with its 10 suites that highlight Florence area art, history, and music.
The guide describes Alabama’s Civil Rights Trail as “what happened here changed the world.” Owning up: it’s a good message toward stewardship for all of us who travel.
Greenville, South Carolina has at least 3 historic B&B inns, including the Federal-style home in the Pettigru [cq] Historic District a mile from the Peace Center for the Performing Arts and a 12-minute walk from the shops and restaurants on Main Street.
In my home state, a former Himalayan trekker, Tom Dennard, learned about hostels while touring on a Eurail Pass. Today his 142-acre Hostel-in-the-Forest 14.2 miles west of Brunswick contains tree houses, houses close to the ground, traditional hostel group rooms, a natural swimming pool and a lake for paddlesports. People come from everywhere by bike. Those who arrive by car can organically mitigate their greenhouse emissions by returning as staff for weeks at a time. There’s a waiting list. A $40 nightly rate includes a full plant-based dinner from the gardens. Conversation among visitors of all ages is much about climate action.
And in the matrix, there’s Thomasville, with its restored antebellum downtown and known for its “musts” from the richly ornamented 20th century Pebble Hill Plantation built for quail hunting, its 400-year-old Southern Live Oak, the town’s 101-year-old Rose Show and Festival, and the oldest perimeter road in the United States. originally a “country drive” topped by oaken canopy for visiting Northerners in the late 1800s.
Standout among in-town places to stay is the Thomasville Bed & Breakfast, a Queen Anne built as a home in 1908 with its Victorian interiors behind a wraparound porch and gardens set off by unbelievably outside-the-box colors kept inside the lines.
We lean in and become the people we want to be, the change we want.
NOTES
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/history/2022/02/28/african-american- historical-museum-lakeland-seeks-descendants-lynching-victims/6928362001/
https://www.trade.gov/travel-tourism-industry
https://wttc.org/news- article/travel-and-tourism-set-to-inject-over-2-point-6-billion-usd-into-the-us-economy-over-next-decade
https://sustainabletravel.org/issues/carbon-footprint-tourism/#:~:text=Tourism%20is%20responsible%20for%20roughly%208%25%20of%20the%20world's%20carbon%20emissions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Flagler
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/envi/one.html
https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/tourism/generation-y-tourism/market-potential
https://skift.com/2022/06/22/new-research-understanding-consumer-demand-for-sustainable-travel/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/06/rainforest-colombia- farc-amazon-river-dolphins-peace-aoe?utm_term=63e2363f508f454e8d8301090f855516&utm_campaign=US MorningBriefing&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=usbriefing_email
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/life/2016/06/29/greenvilles-seminary/86511098/
