Tourists Causing Global Warming

As you plan your summer vacation, just remember; global warming is your fault:

Madrid - Holidaymakers may be ruining their favourite destinations through pollution and greenhouse gases, making the tourism industry one of the world's worst polluters, experts say.

A flight to that pristine beach and a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room, when repeated on the mass scale of modern tourism, is all it takes to put the holiday business on a polluting par with heavy industries.

"Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an international conference on meteorology in Madrid this week.

In 2006, 842 million people took a holiday in a foreign country and 40% of them flew to their destinations. That's 336 million people, or more than the population of the United States, taking trips which spew greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.

You knew you were to blame, didn't you? Excuse me now while I leave on a carbon-producing 370 mile drive to Monterey (and 370 miles home again on Sunday), not to mention the leisurely 17-mile drive we'll take around Pebble Beach tomorrow.