Is Travel Really Necessary?

Is our lust for adventure a good thing?

A few years ago at a sustainability design conference I attended, speaker after speaker shared their ideas on how to reduce the carbon impact of our everyday lives. Only one man stood out for me. His message was simple: to reduce our footprint we need to demand less; less products, less travel, less power. Only by creating a reduction in demand and subsequent consumption will our society really make the changes required.

So it was interesting to read on the BBC website this morning that the New Economics Foundation are advocating a switch to a 21 hour working week (worth a read). They argue that a shorter week would reduce unemployment, but the main benefits are far more widereaching than that. We would enjoy more time with families, more opportunity to contribute to our communities, while the lower income that results would stem our insatiable demand for consumer goods that is responsible for so much of our carbon use.

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