Living like a Tourist

Coming from a big traveling family, I definitely support the effort to increase environmental responsibility in the tourism industry. Whenever I travel abroad, one of my favorite aspects is the ability to live differently for a while, and appreciate the lifestyle of another culture. It is impossible to do this if one stays in a resort and only eats food prepared for them in the fancy Western-style restaurants. Immersing yourself into a culture is usually much less environmentally harmful than contributing to the consumer-driven tourism industry that the resorts have to offer. One of my favorite travel experiences was when I visited a few different European countries a couple summers ago, and stayed in hostels the entire time. We traveled by train, ate in small local restaurants and markets, and slept in low energy rooms with communal bathrooms. I felt like my personal impact on the countries, as well as my view of their cultures, was greatly improved.
As for the air travel, I find this issue to be much more difficult. I fully appreciate the devastating toll that jet airplanes have on the environment, and it seems completely ludicrous that they remain so popular and prevalent. However, I fly 2-3 times per year, because of where my home is in relation to my school, and whenever I travel abroad I obviously have to fly as well. I would not be able to live the way I do without air travel, plain and simple. Therefore, it is much harder to compromise on this issue. In addition, our global economy relies on the ability of multinational businessmen to travel all over the world every week. I cant honestly think of a solution to this problem. I can only hope that (using a more market liberal approach) we come up with more efficient aviation technologies in the future. Perhaps we can begin to limit our use of planes to overseas trips, and rely more heavily on fixed rail transit within land masses. The incredible train network in Europe can be duplicated elsewhere, and perhaps decrease our collective carbon footprint when we travel.