A sustainability expert explains why we travel

Great holiday experiences are currently missing. But isn't travel often just a reward for everyday routines - at the expense of the climate? This is how a sustainability expert sees it.

Leipzig (dpa / tmn) - Work diligently all year round and treat yourself to a vacation trip in the distance to compensate: Sounds nice and pretty unproblematic, right? Not for the sustainability expert Prof. Felix Ekardt.

He is critical of long-distance and air travel. In an interview with the dpa themed service, the lawyer, philosopher and sociologist explains exactly what experiences in distant countries mean to us - and what that in turn has to do with the climate problem.

Will it be very painful for us to be able to travel abroad only to a very limited extent in the summer because of the corona pandemic?

Prof. Felix Ekardt: Not personally at all, I always go on regional vacation, but certainly many people. Long-distance travel is the ultimate event. At the same time, air travel is ecologically the biggest disaster that an individual can cause.

The climate in particular is suffering, including the devastating effects of climate change on ecosystems and biodiversity. Aircraft noise and air pollutants are on top, with fatal consequences for other people.

What does it say about our life if this rather short-term waiver of trips abroad hurts us so much?

Ekardt: Astonishingly, ecos are often big frequent flyers, because those who are politically interested and educated are often cosmopolitan and comparatively wealthy. However, to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees in accordance with the Paris Agreement, emissions in all sectors - transport, electricity, heating, plastics, agriculture - must drop to zero in a maximum of two decades. In addition to technical change, this also requires new lifestyles.

You once said that many people in western countries consider experiences to be the most important thing in life - so being unable to travel is a big problem?

Ekardt: We all float on a small ball through the vast universe, and one can certainly ask: what am I getting up for in the morning? And why am I doing the stress at work when all the exciting projects that we devote ourselves to so devotedly don't really make any sense when viewed in light?

The old answers - for God, for the fatherland, for the leader - have clearly been used up. What could the whole hard work and generally our strange doing legitimize better than an exciting long-distance trip?

Is it really about new experiences and exciting experiences when traveling?

Ekardt: This is the only way to understand why you are embarking on trips that are objectively not particularly pleasant, with oppressively hot climates, poor food and uncomfortable hotels. In 1994 I worked in Israel for three months. But have I become someone else through this supposed experience? Do I really know the country now? Rather no. This applies even more to shorter and tourist trips.

In your view, what would be a healthy approach to travel?

Ekardt: To see something of the world once or twice in a sabbatical, preferably by land, can be far more impressive than all the travel stress we are doing today. Experiences and experiences are not everything, and they do not only wave when traveling. I can't get rid of the vacuum of meaning in the post-religious age by walking through Tierra del Fuego or Bangkok.

And with international understanding we can also start very specifically in Europe. That being said, Europe's diversity of good food, cultural hotspots and pluralistic lifestyles is almost unrivaled worldwide - and it can be reached without flights.

Traveling more regionally would be better for the climate. But many vacationers don't seem to care. Why not?

Ekardt: Behavioral research has long known that factual knowledge and even values ​​only have a limited impact on our behavior, despite all the beautiful environmental education.

Added to this are sober self-interest calculations and emotions: comfort, habit, crowding out or simply the difficulty of imagining climate dead when I'm getting on the plane to my dream destination. In addition, we are all stuck in the normal ideas of a fossil-fueled world, which also includes air travel.

Personal details: Prof. Felix Ekardt is a lawyer, philosopher, sociologist, head of the Research Center Sustainability and Climate Policy in Leipzig and professor at the University of Rostock.