The Guilt Free Adventure Traveller: On loving travel and knowing its cost and what to actually do about it
I remember the exact moment the guilt crept in.
I was somewhere over the Atlantic, probably six hours into a transatlantic flight, watching the little plane icon crawl across the screen. Somewhere below me was ocean. Somewhere behind me was a carbon trail I didn’t want to think about. I was heading toward a family adventure in Europe a weekand I was already slightly dreading the mental math.
Because here’s what nobody puts in the glossy brochures alongside the waterfalls and the crater lakes: adventure travel has a cost. Not just a financial one.
Many of us have used the rational of the the economic argument: tourism supports local communities, it’s worth it: and moved on. But this time I decided to stop looking away and actually dig into the numbers. What I found was uncomfortable, clarifying, and ultimately, strangely hopeful.
First, the honest accounting
Travel is not a minor player in the climate story.
Global tourism emissions grew at roughly 3.5% per year between 2009 and 2019, double the pace of the wider economy reaching about 8.8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions by 2019. Let that sit for a moment. Not 2%, not 4%. Close to one in every ten tons of carbon emitted globally is connected to tourism.
The biggest source within that footprint? Getting from here to there. Aviation, private vehicles, and utilities dominate the numbers. And adventure travelers, people like us, flying to remote corners of the world to hike, kayak, and climb, are not exempt from this.
There’s also the overtourism problem, which is separate from carbon but just as real. Cities like Barcelona, Venice, and Amsterdam face record tourist volumes straining local infrastructure and ecosystems, while short-term rentals have driven housing costs beyond the reach of local residents. The places we love most are often the ones being loved to death.
And the economic benefit that tourism supposedly delivers? It’s real, but uneven. Research has found that many popular adventure travel destinations have become highly dependent on tourism, which leaves them economically vulnerable to downturns as COVID devastatingly illustrated.
So yes. We carry some of this.
What’s your approach to this tension? Have you found operators or destinations that got it right? I’d love to hear in the comments.
The tension that doesn’t go away
Here’s what makes this genuinely hard: I also believe, deeply, that travel makes people better. More open. More empathetic. Less likely to fear what they don’t know. (read more about the science of adventure).
We know from research that meaningful cross-cultural experiences reduce bias and expand worldview. We know that adventure travel builds resilience and creativity. We know that the people who have seen the wild places of the world are far more likely to fight to protect them.
So we’re caught. Travel costs the planet something. It also gives the world somethig, in the people it produces. The question isn’t really should we travel. It’s how do we travel in a way we can defend, to ourselves and to the places we visit?
That’s where most conversations stop. They give you the guilt and leave you standing in it. I can’t completely solve this problem, but I’ve got some practical and clear solutions for you below. The rest of this article is for paid subscribers but before we jump to this - here is one practical solution - use booking.com to search for sustainable lodging options. This is a good place to start BUT it doesn’t guarantee anything (see what I mean in the details below).
The title above ‘The Guilt Free Adventure Traveller’ doesn’t truly exist, but it’s a good place to start teh conversation.
Step One: Reduce before you offset
The most important thing to understand about responsible travel is the order of operations. Reduce first. Offset what you can’t avoid. In that order, not simultaneously, and definitely not in reverse.
