We’re all just so worried about environmental impact.
Vegans going nuts because eating animals is bad for the world.
Fires everywhere.
Record high heat. Floods.
People screaming road rage if your non-EV is idling.
Water conservation mandated.
With air travel and car travel being one of the biggest problems why don’t people take one for World and just stay the heck home?
Just why?
It’s not like a picnic with 17 rather than 4 is any more festive.
Stay home. No traffic. Cops. Accidents.
No frustrating airport problems. Delays and long lines.
No hotels, no more back ache from MILs couch bed.
No bugs and crazy nuts at a campground. No sunburns.
Just stay home. Roast a weenie, have a beer. Hold a sparkler.
Better for you, better for me. Better for the World.
To be fair, I have zero travel plans for the 4th. I was giving what I suspect would be the common response you’d get from people if you asked them about it.
Plus, there’s still a significant percentage of Americans who still believe that (a) climate change isn’t actually a real thing, or (b) it’s happening, but it’s a natural cycle, and human activity isn’t the cause, or (c) I’m not going to inconvenience myself, or make my life less enjoyable, by curbing my energy usage, when there are billions of other people still polluting.
Only about half (54%) of Americans believe that climate change is a major threat to the U.S., and among Republicans (and those who lean right), it’s only 23%.
DH and I plan to stay home for the purely self-centered reason that we dislike being on the road on the big drinking holidays, being concerned about personal safety.
None of those behaviors are things in my personal experience. I’ve heard people bitching on the internet about other people bitching about it on the internet, but I don’t see it myself. Not even a little bit.
Which suggests to me that out of ~340 million Americans, a few hundred or a few thousand are bent out of shape and the echo chamber has many people thinking there are million-person armies of angry crusaders out there. Hint: there aren’t.
Holiday travel is only crazy because so many people try to do the same thing all at once. Has zero to do with anything but crowding. Just like traffic at the church parking lot is only crazy on Sunday morning; that’s when everyone wants to go to church.
If you want to argue that the average American ought to reduce their overall annual ecological footprint, be that water, carbon, meat consumption, wood consumption, etc., I won’t call you wrong.
But to think there is any meaningful connection between that and holiday travel is nutty / panic-stricken. Or just plain curmudgeonly. I ain’t buying any of that.
I’m not panicked. But so many people are about environmental issues.
I think people who scream on the internet probably wouldn’t do it to a stranger in public.
I’m just wondering how, if so many folks are concerned,and we all should be, why do people use all the resources required to travel in record numbers? It seems.
Of the things you mentioned, only traffic and occasional airport issues are involved in our travel plans. And they’re worth it for time at the lake house, a celebratory week on the Vineyard, and hiking in the Alps.
For me traveling is the only thing that keeps me motivated to stay alive. My extended family are all I have left and I look forward to visiting them and also traveling to new places.
Most of my closer extended family live a fair distance from me which necessitates either a long drive or a flight. I try to avoid the heavier travel times of the year but sometimes it can’t be avoided.
I just came back from Aruba a week ago and the airports were the busiest I have ever seen. Even the wheelchair assistance systems were messed up.
There will come a day in the not too distant future when I can’t do this kind of travel. So I am making the most of it while I can.
It’s seems I am in the minority, looking at news reports about this holiday.
It’s totally unnerving to see that many folks on the move for funzies.
What are people thinking?
This is the last time I’m ever going somewhere?
Is this the state of mind millions are in?
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain
Travel itself is a good thing, and healthy for those that enjoy it. I agree that when all the travelers decide to travel at the same time or to the same place, it becomes problematic. Overtourism is now a thing. People who like to travel typically have constraints limiting their travel to weekends and holidays, and when a major holiday occurs on a weekday, ho-boy, everyone wants to get that extra paid vacation day tacked onto their time off from work, plus the two surrounding weekends (9 days off in a row for only 4 vacation days!) - that’s why some weeks are so crazy for travel, IMHO.
I was giving what I suspect would be the common response you’d get from people if you asked them about it.