The backlash against overtourism

Post by plouc » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #207

quest88 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of traveling to experience other parts of the world that you can incorporate into your part of the world?

Genuinely. I can't come up with a reason or 'thing' that I wouldn't be able to learn from the internet/video chat/vr (hopefully soon). What were you thinking of when you wrote this?

Post by paganel » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 9:40 AM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #271

paganel wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ignores limits to growth (e.g. energy, rare materials, food, etc.) Lots and lots of people have tried to discredit Malthus and his reasoning in the last 200 years but we keep going back to him, he must of have been right in a way (if it matters, I think he was). The same way idealist political thinkers tried to discredit the writings of Hobbes and Machiavelli but it turns out human nature is closer to the writings…

Just because people go back to discredited ideas doesn't mean they weren't discredited. Malthus - and later Ehrlich - made specific predictions about the sustainability of population increase, and they were proven flat out wrong. Extrapolating a trend and showing disaster looming is much easier (and gets more attention) than recognizing that humans are adaptable and we shouldn't be so negative about humanity's future…

Post by sundarurfriend » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 9:59 AM UTC

chasingthewind wrote: post #111

jolesf wrote: post #3

“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction afte…

I personally hate travel and can identify with some of what he expressed here, but at a deeper level this throbs with a kind of elitism that really bothers me. I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the "alien" invader. Is there even any possible solution to the "problem" of some people living in or near a place that o…

Post by coldtea » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 10:39 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #138

coldtea wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sucks. But what's the alternative? It's perfectly reasonable to drag people out of poverty. But the idea that everyone should be able to do the same things implies a set of "things" very different from what, say, the middle class families on my suburban street do today. Exactly. The "eternal growing of the economic cake" which the majority of the related policies are based on, ignores limits to growth (e.g. ener…

Food is cheap enough we throw away a ton of it and energy could scale significantly further quite easily if there weren't an anti-science political barrier to nuclear.

Post by narag » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:37 AM UTC

okal wrote: post #100

narag wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the two comments that touch the overpopulation side are being downvoted. Why? Does the people downvoting care to explain? There's a huge contradiction here. Either you do "something" to control population or else all the measures to control climate change are stillborn. We are struggling with the current population!

I didn't downvote the GP, but my impulse to disagree with population control is due to the likelihood that, in my experience, it's not the population groups that have the largest adverse impact on the planet (highly industrialised, middle to high income societies) that are generally the target of this sentiment.