- planes and ships have a massive carbon footprint and travel for tourism
represents 5% of all manmade carbon emissions
- tourists on beaches, in nature and in urban areas consume and leave behind a fucking ton of plastic and other pollutants
- in hot, dry places like Sicily, Greece or South Africa, water supply is already at a premium and expected to decline - so more people coming in and using more of it can never be a good thing. in Sicily this summer the authorities
had to decide between water for tourist resorts or for livestock - in the end many livestock were put down because tourists need water and lots of it.
- in ten years much more of Europe will be hot and dry so this problem will be considerably exacerbated
- heavily overcrowded cities, metros etc. can make life difficult or even miserable for locals (as evidenced by the many protests currently) and many cities on this continent simply were not designed to handle such a large influx of people
- global tourist numbers (~1.5bn in 2019) are on track (
National Geographic) to rise 20% to 1.8bn within 5 years - with obvious knock-on environmental effects
the idea that only the housing/accommodation situation is a problem is madness