High-impact air travel.

• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the editor

Lisa Mastny shares worthwhile sentiments in her "Are Americans Really Xenophobes?" essay (March/April 2006), but her advocacy of travel is inappropriate as we grapple with the dilemma of global warming. Travel generates significant C[O.sub.2] pollution, and air travel is a particularly polluting human activity. As individuals, if we are trying to embrace the Kyoto Accords, many of us will have to include travel restrictions as we reduce our C[O.sub.2] output below what we generated in 1990. Of course, the Kyoto Accords are just a small first step in responding to global warming. Citizens of developed countries increasingly need to consider much more radical steps to reduce C[O.sub.2] output, and travel emerges as a likely component of such a response. At the very least, consideration of this issue should be given prominent placement in any article about travel. Edward Dodson's letter in the January/February issue called for equal rights to the world's resources. We are clearly overloading our world's atmosphere, and consumption patterns of the developed world must change to accommodate the needs of the developing world, as a simple matter of eco-justice.

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DAVID GONCI

Glastonbury, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Lisa Mastny says it is fitting for a world watcher to travel and experience the wider world and in her trip she is embarrassed when told by foreigners that only 7 percent of Americans even have passports.

But to the extent that we put concern about global warming high in our priority list, we take note that all travel, especially world wide travel by air, uses a fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide. While our first approach to slowing up global warming is more use of renewable fuels, and more effective use of energy etc., eventually we must get to the point of seeing the other parts of the world by means of TV documentaries.

JOHN BURTON

Washington, New Jersey, U.S.A.

Lisa Mastny responds: Air travel does contribute a significant, and rising, share of global greenhouse gas emissions, and I regret not having given this due mention in the article. In my 2001 Worldwatch paper Traveling Light, I examined the full range of tradeoffs associated with travel and tourism, including the climate connection. It is important to note, however, that despite the many environmental and social pitfalls, the tourism industry has also brought great economic promise to many of the world's poorest nations. In communities across Africa, Asia, and...