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Yes, if you plan a vacation that includes air travel, you might be guilty of ‘ecocide’…or something.

Via HotAir.

…the push to eliminate air travel to save the planet is on….the Atlantic published a piece by a travel writer who feels guilty about his own hypocrisy:

As this summer’s tourism season draws to a close, anyone in a half-sane society would choose this moment to stop going on far-flung vacations. That’s a hard thing for a travel writer to admit. After family and friends, travel is pretty much my favorite thing—not only my source of income, but an inexhaustible wellspring of curiosity, empathy, and wonder.

Yet optional travel is also a major contributor to ecocide. Last year, a University of Sydney study examined the environmental impact of the many activities involved in tourism—including transportation, shopping, and more—and found that it accounts for 8 percent of all global carbon emissions, far more than previously imagined. The 100,000 flights a day that now crisscross the skies pump almost as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the 28 member states of the European Union combined. (In the United States, at least, roughly half of all airline trips are for “personal leisure purposes.”) In May, a landmark United Nations report into collapsing biodiversity found that humans have severely altered or destroyed about 75 percent of the Earth’s land; while human land use, including agriculture and ranching, was the greatest culprit, climate change was a significant factor as well. Moreover, while the report neglected to say so, the remaining 25 percent is hardly inviolate, as we scramble over one another to Instagram what idylls remain.

The author concludes that he’ll take the train wherever possible but will continue to fly when necessary, which of course will be all the time. But he laments that “regular travelers like me are loving the world to death.”….