More mobility means more impact on climate change: prospects for household leisure mobility in France

Given the growing dependence of tourism on transport and the contribution of tourism mobility to global warming, this activity might be seriously questioned by mitigation policies. This paper explores prospects for household tourism and leisure mobility and their associated impacts on climate change. Household mobility patterns associating various forms of tourism trips and proximity leisure outings are developed. Their comparison shows that less conventional tourism does not necessarily implies less mobility, also the critical impact of long haul travel on climate change, and that fundamentally the future impacts are strongly associated with the individual choices between tourism and the other uses of spare time.En raison de la dépendance croissante du tourisme vis à vis du transport, mais aussi de la contribution de la mobilité touristique au changement climatique, le développement de cette activité pourrait être sérieusement remis en question par les politiques de lutte contre le changement climatique. Cet article explore les évolutions possibles de la mobilité de tourisme et de loisirs, et ses impacts associés sur le changement climatique. Des profils de mobilité associent différentes formes de mobilité touristique et de mobilité de loisirs. La comparaison de ces profils montre d’abord que moins de tourisme – au sens classique du terme – n’impliquerait pas nécessairement moins de mobilité, ensuite le rôle déterminant des voyages à longue distance en avion, enfin que les arbitrages individuels entre tourisme et autres usages du temps libre sont un facteur déterminant des impacts à venir

L’aviation, le tourisme et la décarbonation dans les décennies à venir : impasses, solutions et incertitudes

Alors que le tourisme et le transport aérien se relèvent de l’impact de la Covid-19 et des problèmes structurels qu’elle a mis en lumière (conditions de travail, etc.), cela paraît être le moment de faire un bilan et une synthèse combinant les thématiques suivantes : les scénarios d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre du tourisme pour lesquels des travaux récents ont amélioré sensiblement la réflexion ; les émissions de l’aérien, dont 60 % selon le dernier rapport du GIEC sont hors CO2. On y voit maintenant plus clair sur les possibilités de diminuer ces dernières de façon significative ; les carburants et les motorisations alternatives pour l’aviation, sujets complexes et controversés sur lesquels la science a bien avancé ces dernières années. Les développements dans ces trois domaines offriraient-ils de nouvelles perspectives pour penser et atteindre une décarbonation du tourisme aérien ? La réponse est qu’elles peuvent apporter une contribution partielle, sans pour autant rendre caduques les réflexions antérieures sur les substitutions entre types de tourisme (proximité/longue distance), modes de transport (transport terrestre/aérien), etc. Dans le prolongement de cette analyse, l’article s’intéresse au positionnement des acteurs et aux types d’arguments qu’ils mobilisent. Le texte conclut sur la nécessité des choix stratégiques à effectuer pour éviter un gaspillage de moyens

It starts at home? Climate policies targeting household consumption and behavioral decisions are key to low-carbon futures

Through their consumption behavior, households are responsible for 72% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, they are key actors in reaching the 1.5 °C goal under the Paris Agreement. However, the possible contribution and position of households in climate policies is neither well understood, nor do households receive sufficiently high priority in current climate policy strategies. This paper investigates how behavioral change can achieve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in European high-income countries. It uses theoretical thinking and some core results from the HOPE research project, which investigated household preferences for reducing emissions in four European cities in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden. The paper makes five major points: First, car and plane mobility, meat and dairy consumption, as well as heating are the most dominant components of household footprints. Second, household living situations (demographics, size of home) greatly influence the household potential to reduce their footprint, even more than country or city location. Third, household decisions can be sequential and temporally dynamic, shifting through different phases such as childhood, adulthood, and illness. Fourth, short term voluntary efforts will not be sufficient by themselves to reach the drastic reductions needed to achieve the 1.5 °C goal; instead, households need a regulatory framework supporting their behavioral changes. Fifth, there is a mismatch between the roles and responsibilities conveyed by current climate policies and household perceptions of responsibility. We then conclude with further recommendations for research and policy

The camera of the fifth H.E.S.S. telescope. Part I: System description

In July 2012, as the four ground-based gamma-ray telescopes of the H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) array reached their tenth year of operation in Khomas Highlands, Namibia, a fifth telescope took its first data as part of the system. This new Cherenkov detector, comprising a 614.5 m^2 reflector with a highly pixelized camera in its focal plane, improves the sensitivity of the current array by a factor two and extends its energy domain down to a few tens of GeV. The present part I of the paper gives a detailed description of the fifth H.E.S.S. telescope's camera, presenting the details of both the hardware and the software, emphasizing the main improvements as compared to previous H.E.S.S. camera technology.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in NIM

Denying bogus skepticism in climate change and tourism research

This final response to the two climate change denial papers by Shani and Arad further highlights the inaccuracies, misinformation and errors in their commentaries. The obfuscation of scientific research and the consensus on anthropogenic climate change may have significant long-term negative consequences for better understanding the implications of climate change and climate policy for tourism and create confusion and delay in developing and implementing tourism sector responses

Exploring Tourism/ Leisure GHG Emissions in 2050 : the Case of France

International audienceThis paper deals with the prediction of French tourism/leisure mobility demands in 2050, and associated greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis is based on a model of household tourism/leisure mobility patterns based on four modes of transport. A sensitivity analysis quantifies possible changes in greenhouse gas emissions according to hypotheses related to demographics, economic situations, the international security context, transport technology and policy, the tourism market, lifestyles and cultural change. The results show the high sensitivity of the model to economic parameters, and that French tourism travel still has considerable growth potential. Any technological improvements could be offset by low investment in transport infrastructure and by permissive 'transport pricing'. 'Business as usual' trends imply that French tourism/ leisure GHG emissions could increase by 90% by 2050, and passenger-kilometres by 200%. Very long distance trips and air transport are identified as major problems, caused by a small group of frequent travellers

Tourism and Climate Change: Proposals for a Research Agenda

National audienceThis paper explains the evolution of research into tourism and climate change, illustrating how early work concentrated on the impact of climate change on tourism, whereas current work also explores the impact of tourism on climate change. It goes on to elaborate a research agenda on both topics. The need to open up tourism research to other fields and professional worlds - such as climatology, the International Panel on Climate Change and transport research - is stressed, as is the need to organise the research community on a global basis, with more collaborative and comparative research

The potential impacts of climate change on French tourism

International audienc

Les émissions de gaz à effet de serre du tourisme des Brésiliens

This paper aims at contributing to the assessment of the emissions of the tourists from emerging countries through an evaluation of the current emissions of tourism from the Brazilian population, within their country and internationally. It starts from a double idea often mentioned in the literature of these last 10 years: i.e. that tourism currently contributes significantly to the emissions of greenhouse gases (around 5% of worldwide emissions) and that in the future such emissions will grow while emerging countries will bring a much larger contribution to them. All previous research on the emissions from tourism clearly shows that the bulk of emissions is related to travel. So, the assessment starts from statistics on flows (tourist numbers and distances: p.km) which are split according to means of transport and multiplied by the corresponding emission coefficients. An assessment of the emissions from accommodation is also done. The evaluation of current emissions from tourism is dependent upon the metrics used: 32 or 34 million tonnes when considering CO2 only or CO2 equivalent, 55 million tonnes if an uplift factor taking into account the specific features of aviation (in terms of radiative forcing) is used. The interpretation of such results strongly depends on the specificity of Brazilian emissions, i.e. the importance of the emissions linked to land use change and forestry (LUCF). In 2010 tourism represented about 3.2% of national emissions (1034 million tonnes CO2 equivalent) LUCF excluded. The corresponding world average is 4.9% percent. If an uplift factor for aviation is included, the share of emissions from tourism reaches 5%