Tourism Pollutes Far More Than Anyone Expected — And Here's The Data

We already knew that boarding a plane (particularly when we're heading for another continent) was one of the most greenhouse gas intensive things we could do. That's why a number of people have already given up flying at all, and many others have opted to reduce it as much as possible. And we even recently saw the first no-fly climate change conference.

We already knew. Or did we?

Yesterday, some seriously bad news came in. A study, published in Nature Climate Change by researchers from the University of Sydney, shows that global tourism means eight times more greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Up to 8% of the world's total. Take a moment to let that sink in.

The impressive part is that this study takes into account the whole supply chain in the tourism industry. It takes flights into account, but also souvenirs, food and other consumables. The authors have analyzed up to one billion supply chains. It's the first time anyone has done anything like this.

The media has immediately jumped on the story, and I've seen it published all over the place, from Reuters to Phys.org, to the Daily Mail. However, Carbon Brief has done the best reporting once again, with lots of graphs, analysis and expert commentaries. They even brought in an unexpected angle: The researchers may have underestimated tourism's global carbon footprint:

“Notably, the non-CO2 warming effects from aviation, which, calculated for a given year, make aviation twice or three times as climate-relevant, are not even considered in this paper.”

In the article you'll find a lot of interesting data, filtered from the study and explained in layman terms. You'll discover who are the most polluting tourists by origin and destination and the sectors that contribute the most to greenhouse emissions. There's also a breakdown of the most polluting countries by internal flights, an analysis that leaves out flying completely, and a word on so-called ecotourism.