Intrepid Travel is a UK-based company which offers a mind-boggling array of small group tours around the globe. From mountain biking in Madagascar to sharing a meal with Buddhist monks in South Korea, to sailing the Cyclades Islands, Intrepid has it all. ‘Good views, good friends, and good times on over 1000 trips in more than 100 countries.’
However, together with a ‘foresight consultancy’ called ‘The Future Laboratory,’ Intrepid has provided us with a glimpse into what it thinks ‘sustainable’ tourism should look like in 2040, and much like the vision for 2030 painted by our C40 globalist mayors, it does not look like much fun. There will be neither good views, friends, nor times.
It is clear from the report, entitled ‘Sustainable Future for Travel; From Crisis to Transformation’ that the folk at Intrepid are fully committed climate apocalyptists who have been deluded into thinking that we have little time left on this planet because of our actions. ‘A wealth of compelling climate evidence,’ they write, ‘shows we are approaching a tipping point from which there is no return.’
They inform us that in 2040, travel will be defined by ‘Travel Transformers’, who as far as I can tell, will be cohort of virtue signaling killjoys who ‘have known nothing other than climate anxiety’. These neurotic twenty-somethings will be in charge of setting the ‘new agenda’ for tourism, deciding where and when the rest of us can go.
They happily inform us that our new travel agents will make sure that ‘the days of snapping selfies in front of overcrowded tourist attractions will be numbered.’ Goodbye to St Peters, Petra and Angkor Wat, and hello to ‘sustainable’ camping in a tent made out of recycled milk cartons and regurgitated mung beans.
No doubt our ‘Travel Transformers’ will be early adopters of Carbon Passports, which the report suggests are needed because flying is killing the planet more than anything else. ‘Personal carbon emissions limit will become the new normal,’ they write with undisguised glee, ‘as policy and people’s values drive an era of great change.’
And if you were thinking about a summer holiday in Greece, Majorca, or Australia, forget it. They claim that this new era of ‘global boiling’ will render such holiday destinations too hot for humans. Instead, they suggest that we should pack our thermals and head to Norway’s Fjord Coast, Iceland’s Akureyri, and Finland’s Northern Ostrobothnia for our summer hols. In Iceland, the average temperature during the summer in Iceland is around 10°C.
Finally, the report concludes with a threat. ‘If there is a lack of action to tackle the climate crisis,’ it warns, ‘by 2040 many of the world’s favourite destinations will be forced to go virtual.’ If you don’t behave, the furthest you’ll get is to your living room, where you’ll sit on your sofa to do a virtual tour of Kathmandu in a set of ridiculous VR goggles, while waiting for a miserable, laboratory made ‘hamburger’ to be delivered by you by a Nepalese student on a bike.
