Has Comrade Miller Factored This In To His Green Plan

Tourists cause global warming
22/03/2007 10:53 - (SA)

Madrid - Holidaymakers may be ruining their favourite destinations through pollution and greenhouse gases, making the tourism industry one of the world's worst polluters, experts say.

A flight to that pristine beach and a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room, when repeated on the mass scale of modern tourism, is all it takes to put the holiday business on a polluting par with heavy industries.

"Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an international conference on meteorology in Madrid this week.

In 2006, 842 million people took a holiday in a foreign country and 40% of them flew to their destinations. That's 336 million people, or more than the population of the United States, taking trips which spew greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.

Total air transport still only accounts for two percent of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere, but its contribution is growing and tourism is one of the driving forces behind rising passenger numbers, Frangialli said.

He said 1.1 billion tourists were expected to take trips abroad in 2010, and 1.6 billion by 2020.

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