I am concerned about the short term economic engine of tourism and its environmental cost. I live in a tourist town (Cairns) one day I was struck by a huge galvanized catamaran belching thick palls of black smoke into the air as it took hundreds of tourists out to the Barrier Reef. I looked around at all the planes flying in and out, buses going every which way and it became obvious just how much fossil fuel was being burnt moving people around with no actual practical purpose.

I am not condemning tourism per se it is just that with the state of the atmosphere as it is – can we really justify all this unnecessary fossil fuelled locomotion? It seems that something like a limit or quota should be put on each person’s CO2 producing activities, only allowing a certain expenditure per person for recreational uses. However our local economy like many, many economies around the world is dependent on tourism and would collapse if tourism decreased significantly. My question is what systems could we adopt that would allow us to be responsible atmospheric citizens and survive economically?

Ahhh Rob, it is indeed a problem. By co-incidence I saw an interview with a UK government minister
on just this subject on the BBC about low cost airline fares and aircraft CO2 emmissions and how to put a
carbon charge onto the fare.
It sounds like this will happen in Europe fairly soon and by the usual extention will eventually arrive here.

However as we are approaching Peak Oil, or may indeed have arrived at
Peak Oil last year, I think that airlines, and the tourist industry
may be very much restricted by high oil prices. In the longer term, say five to ten years the
airline industry may well collapse.
So Rob, if you are employed in the tourism industry start thinking
about a different career. You could well have five years to get retrained.

Yesterday I sold my Qantas shares as I see no future in airlines,
airports or the tourism industry. If some one is dopey enough to buy an airline
with peak oil peeping over the horizon, then let them.
Qantas has 25 of the Airbus 380s on order. How will they ever pay for them ?