Comments on: 094 – Tread lightly

By: :: 094 - Tread lightly Indie Travel Podcast :: Sweet travel advice … | Guadeloupe today

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:03:50 +0000

[...] the original post: :: 094 – Tread lightly Indie Travel Podcast :: Sweet travel advice … Tags: czech-republic, gibraltar, greenland, Travelling [...]

By: JT Solace

JT Solace — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:17:20 +0000

A very ironic and emphatic “amen” to your thoughts on carbon offset travel. To call them “indulgances” is spot on. As you mentioned, often these let’s call them “Carbon Indulgances” go to other countries and communities than the one you are headed to and much too often they find their way to 3rd world alternative energy projects that are neither regulated/credentialed, in any way, or often as not fail to ever truely materialize. Until some sort of real regulatory and/or creditialing office/governing body is created many corporations and governments will continue the plabet draining exercise of green washing unabatied. So again thank you for crossing the green line and again amen.

By: Hybrid Cars, Green Travel Podcasts, Holey Soap, and other Links | Go Green Travel Green

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:14:12 +0000

[...] Indie Travel Podcast has a number of solid tips in the Tread Lightly Podcast [...]

By: Craig and Linda

Craig and Linda — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:20:34 +0000

So it was you, Peter, who convinced Virgin to do that. Good work, sir! As we said in the show, we’re in full agreement about the crappiness of airline carbon offsets.

Thanks for the links Sonia; we’ll keep them in mind for future shows. We first heard about Responsible Tourism while in the UK. We were planning a trip to the Baltics and considering a tour vs. travelling ourselves. Whilst we decided to do it our way, we’ve always kept an eye on them – they seem a good lot.

By: Sonia

Sonia — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:40:32 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion to check out ResponsibleTourism.com. I may give them a try as we start planning for a trip to Italy in the fall.

Just saw this today; haven’t had a chance to check it out but I thought I’d pass it along:

http://mekongtourism.org
A new website inspired by ‘The Guide to Responsible Tourism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnamâ€™ will be launched into cyberspace by the end of March.

Also on that site is a link to something called “The Good Tourism Wiki”
http://www.good-tourism.com

By: Peter Daams

Peter Daams — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:03:46 +0000

Good topic guys. One other big thing to consider is how to move around a country. When the distances are not too large, catching a train or bus is a great way to cut down on emissions. A couple of years ago we travelled to Europe. Coming from Australia, we pretty much have to take the plane, but once we were there we spent two months travelling by train from Rome all the way to Oslo. Not only was it a great way to cut down on emissions, but it also provided a much better experience getting a real feel for the landscape between cities.

Cycling (combined with camping) is another fantastic way to reduce emissions while on the road.

And once we got back we *did* opt for an offset through Greenfleet to complete the picture. I think it does play a part. I have come to the conclusion though that airlines offering offsets are just a crock of crap – if they really cared, they’d pay for the offset themselves rather than get us to do it, while they benefit from the PR. Mind you, I did send Virgin an email about this about 4 years ago suggesting they do exactly this, so I guess I can’t hold it against them too much for taking up my suggestion