Climate Change is Hurting Tourism Destinations and All Eyes Are Now on the Biden Administration
The Biden administration needs to make climate policy its 2021 moonshot.
The TL;DR
New studies: The forced halt to tourism during the pandemic didn’t help the climate and 2020 had record breaking temperatures.
Climate change is transforming tourism destinations in Australia, the Alps, and Wales in a way that could make them unrecognizable.
The U.S. is only 4% of the world population, but the second largest polluter. All eyes are on the Biden administration’s climate action.
Natural disasters due to climate change cost the globe $215 billion USD.
Vanishing Florida mangroves. Forests decimated by a beetle. Devastating forest fires. Disappearing glaciers. Remember climate change? It hasn’t forgotten about you.
Most of us took a forced hiatus from tourism-based travel in 2020, meaning that there were fewer planes leaving a carbon footprint mid-year. So climate change was fixed, right? Not exactly. The last year came with its own climate change records and disasters that impacted cities worldwide, and it’s becoming clearer how that impact will eventually catch up to destinations. A return to tourism over 2021-22 cannot be done simply with a vaccine, it requires strong action on climate change—and all eyes are on the Biden administration.
A Record Setting Year
Last year ended with new revelations about the planet’s ongoing carbon-driven fever. New record-setting temperatures, and their rapidly increasing effects on the environment—like an unparalleled 2020 hurricane season—show that it will take more than quarantines to fix the world.
According to two new studies, 2020 was either the hottest year on record (NASA), or the second hottest year, just behind 2016 (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). They both use the same basic raw data, but have different approaches to methodology, which leads to slight differences in their conclusions about a year, but not in their overall projections of the future.
But does it really matter at this point if 2020 had the highest or second highest temperatures? That feels like arguing which terminal disease is best.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, airline activity did slow down CO2 accumulations early in the pandemic, but that dip in numbers was temporary and already back on track by the end of the summer, leading to record levels.
“The lockdown has cut emissions of many pollutants and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide,” the WMO concluded. “But any impact on CO2 concentrations - the result of cumulative past and current emissions - is in fact no bigger than the normal year to year fluctuations in the carbon cycle and the high natural variability in carbon sinks like vegetation.”
(Curbing a virus killing machine was a good enough reason to stay home, but it would have been good if it also came with a huge bonus for the planet.)
The Impact on Destinations
The impact of climate change is widespread and costly. In Australia, for example, climate change led to dryer conditions and powerful wildfires, which began in 2019 and raged into 2020. Globally, climate change related disasters cost $210 billion USD last year, according to estimates from the reinsurance group, Munich Re.
The ramifications of climate change, however, do not usually appear all at once. The effects can show up piecemeal and over longer periods of time, altering the environment of a community, and this can mean significant disadvantages for those economies built on tourism.
Aside from the Australian wildfires, for example, other stories from the southern continent were also very significant, even if they are being covered far less. The country’s Kakadu National Park is seeing the effects of rising sea water, meaning that the freshwater wetlands may be swallowed up by salt water in 50 years. This is affecting biodiversity and driving a growth in mangroves, which thrive under brackish conditions.
In other words, if this trend continues, a generation from now will likely visit a very different Kakadu National Park.
And what is a ski-resort without snow? In the Alps, snow loss due to increasing global temperatures is eroding winter tourism.
“As the climate has warmed,” according to National Geographic, “the altitude at which temperatures are generally cold enough for snow to stick has risen by over 1,300 feet over the last century.” Climate scientist, Reto Knutti, predicts that “will double in three decades,” telling National Geographic that “every resort below 1,000 meters has already gone bankrupt, and those above are highly problematic.”
In the UK, there are also some troubling predictions.
In 2020, Welsh capital city and popular tourism draw, Cardiff, was listed in the top 10 cities globally that are most-likely to be impacted by climate change. According to a study by Climate Central, large portions of South Wales will be under sea level by 2030, including Cardiff.
As climate change continues to shift shorelines and other natural ecosystems, it comes with a significant impact on destinations, their tourism dollars, and their essential, long-standing identities.
The Role of the United States
For things to improve, bigger and bolder changes have to start with the United States, which only has just over 4% of the world’s population, but is the second biggest producer of carbon behind China.
What needs to happen next?
The Biden administration already rejoined the Paris Agreement and ended the Keystone-XL pipeline through new executive orders on the first day of office, which is a good start. The incoming president also promises to have the U.S. reach “a 100% clean energy economy” and “net-zero emissions no later than 2050,” adding green jobs along the way. All the signals show that the new U.S. president will also be aggressively reversing many of the regulatory decisions made by former President Donald Trump.
It will take a massive effort not undergone by any other President to compensate for four years of not only lost progress, but also the active opposition and undermining of U.S. EPA policies by a climate denying administration. The new Biden administration, however, will not simply need new controls on emissions, it will need new technology to reverse the growing carbon crisis, and Hail Mary concepts like carbon capture have yet to prove itself as a climate savior.
We are past the time for merely tinkering with the climate. The Biden administration needs a proverbial moonshot. In the meantime, we hope that when we finally get to see a bucket-list national park or island, that we aren’t just visiting a memorial to what once was.
Hi, I’m Brandon Withrow. I'm a freelance travel journalist—stranded by the pandemic. You’ll find me in places like The Daily Beast, Business Insider, and Sierra Magazine. Follow me on Twitter or Instagram or visit brandonwithrow.com.
