Why the Travel Industry Can’t Afford to Dismiss the UN’s Loudest Climate Change Warning Yet
Photo Credit: Unless tourism decarbonizes rapidly and consistently by 2030 as recommended by the latest IPCC report, the industry may no longer have a future. Flickr Commons / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Skift Take
Ignorance of the science is no longer an excuse — the IPCC report makes sure of that. If the tourism industry doesn't snap out of its inertia faster, its fate will be sealed sooner than any of us thought.
From droughts to floods and fires, the unprecedented size and frequency of natural disasters the world has experienced will continue, each more cataclysmic than the last. And they will affect industries essential to the travel industry, as well as entire sectors such as winter tourism. But there’s still time to prevent worse outcomes through deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
That’s essentially the message of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its sixth assessment report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, released on Monday. Relying on the most advanced climate science to date, which makes these findings the most accurate yet in our lifetime, the report confirms that human activity is to blame for the warming of atmosphere, ocean and land.
“Based on the data that is now available, it behooves every political figure and every decision maker, be it in a company, be it in city government or nati
