So Christmas is over and everyone's thinking about the summer holidays. I suppose it's pleasant to think about blue skies and hot sunshine when the weather outside is cold and grey, but for budding Greens the subject of travel is tricky. I mean, we like to travel as much as the next person, but we feel bad about the consequences.
Mostly people worry about carbon emissions from flying, driving long distances and so on, but there's another side to the story. Here's a little snippet from 'How to Turn Your Parents Green':
The Plane Truth about Stonehenge
You know the story of Daedalus and Icarus? Dad makes wings. Son gets over-excited and flies too close to sun. Wings fall to pieces. Son plummets to death.
Moral: THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE LEAVING TERRA FIRMA.
In the old days flying used to be dangerous, but now it’s safe and cheap, and Groans love it. They love buzzing over to Paris or Prague for the weekend, and because everyone else is doing it too they assume it must be a good thing to do. Of course people used to feel like that about sending little boys up chimneys and putting little girls in charge of dangerous machinery.
The trouble with flying is that it uses an amount of energy way out of proportion to the benefit gained, ie a Groan lying by a pool or trawling around the shops. And there are Hidden Costs.
Take Stonehenge. I don’t mean literally. Just as an example. Not so long ago you could wander among the stones, but now there’s a huge fence round them. Why?
1. Because otherwise the stones might escape?
2. Because a gang of dastardly international criminals is planning to steal them? Or
3. Because so many people come to see them that if there wasn’t a fence the stones would be worn away like the noses of cathedral saints?
A trip to a foreign country used to be a rare adventure, but now you just drive to the airport, hop on a plane and hire a car when you get to the other end.
Groans may grumble about how they used to wander round Stonehenge but they themselves want to go everywhere and see everything. They want More, Cheaper.
So Stonehenge is now hidden by a giant car park full of coaches and a fence, and none of you will ever see the old stones sitting quietly on the grass.
Still, even the Greenest among us will be thinking wistfully of a sun-soaked beach right now, because that's what we do in winter when we're hunched in our woolly hats and scarves. As we dream of the sun, travel agents offer to make our dreams come true. We book our exotic summer holidays so that the thought of them can sustain us through the winter. But when the summer comes around we don't really need to go anywhere. England (or any other northern country) is beautiful in the summer, wet sometimes maybe, but green and temperate when more southerly countries are roasting.
So what we need is a new way of dreaming through the winter. We need to invent imaginary journeys, magical cities, fantastic voyages. We need to read Marco Polo or Gulliver's Travels or The Odyssey. These adventures have helped people cope with hundreds of winters, and they can help us now.
In the future, when the human race has grown bored of zooming all over the place and Stonehenge is open to all again, people will sit in their gardens imagining fantastic journeys. Travel guides will no longer be published. Instead, there will be books full of imaginary journeys, while visitors to unfamiliar cities will be given puzzles instead of maps. Travel will be a test of character, undertaken only by those with a genuine thirst for knowledge and adventure.
In the meantime, try reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - you'll never need to leave home again.
PS The exotic desert island in the picture is called Steep Holm. Can you find it?
