Too easy! That's travel done in Ireland. ;)

I think the only definition would be "travel that's done with an earnest desire to be as efficient as possible." It's not catchy, but anything else runs the risk of being semantically argued to death.

Your comments about the green marketing are important; just the other day, TMZ (my wife was watching it, I swear!) reported that Paris Hilton bought a hybrid SUV. It would seem that car companies are using the gas crisis not to push people into smaller cars, but to get them to spend more money on the same car that gets 5-6 more MPG. It would seem to me that buying the non-hybrid and learning to drive *less* would save as much--if not more--amounts of money, gas, and emissions. Might solve the "obesity epidemic" too.

But no company wants to run commercials saying "hey, how about you get off your lazy ass and use more 'human' energy to do your day-to-day activities?"

I agree, this is a really important question. I am continually frustrated by what I perceive as the low standards around what is takes to proclaim one's business 'green'. Maybe it would help to have standards for certain elements of travel along the lines of a guidebook:

How you get there and get around - What mode of transportation? How far do you travel? Do you use local forms of transportation? Public trans?

Where you stay - Home stay? Hotel? B and b? Guesthouse? what kind of consumptive practices does your host have?

Where you spend your time and money - Are your dollars supporting the local economy of your destination?

How you engage with place and people - Is there a community service element to your trip? Are you sensitive to local customs and cultures? Is your vacation a cultural learning experience? How do you interact with local environments (i.e. are tourists trashing the place)?

And maybe other categories too

I'd love to be part of the conversation about what green travel should mean at Matador, especially since tourism as a sustainable development strategy is something I have done research on and hope to work on in the near future in Bolivia.

Air travel!

What 'commonsense' hasn't come to accept just yet is that if everyone on the planet was to make an eight hour plane trip once in their lifetime it would take more than one entire Earth to soak up the damage done. I'm talking about polusion and the use of natural resources.

Someone is saying that you shouldn't fly ever again but in a few lines someone starts telling a happy story, so read on.

I'd already flown more than my fair share before I knew this but when I took the trip from England to Brazil I worked out another way. 35 days on a cargo ship to Buenos Aires followed by a ferry across the river to Uruguay and hitch hiking and busses to Brazil.

It was incredible, without a doubt the best two months of my life. While the season passed magically from a European Winter to a Latin American Summer the ocean passed endlessly below. African ports were stopped at. Dolphins, whales and flying fish were sited. One evening the sun set on one side of the horizon and five minutes later a full moon rose out of the ocean on the other side.

The journey was unforgettable but was it green?

It could certainly have been greener. We live in a culture that isn't 'green' and has only recently started to realise that green even matters. Defining green travel is only temporary like setting the high jump bar that needs to be constantly raised if new records are to be broken.

Green Travel as an impossible to acheive ideal: Something to aim at that has you breaking out of the obvious and impressing yourself. A reason to re-evaluate 'common sense' travel options, find yourself in new situations using your imagination, taking risks and having fun in whole new ways.

Everyone has there own way of stepping out of the norm. When I travel I'm often seeking something new, so even if it was green last time I'm still going to try to make it greener next time.

Have fun!

Peace,dog

Terrific post, MonkeyZ, great discussion all around everyone.

Let's try this one on for size:

Travel is "green" when it is not an escape from reality, but an attempt to get deeper into reality.

- borrowing words from the war photographer James Nachtwey above...

Then again, as MonkeyZ says, air travel is devastating. I wonder if reality seeking travelers need to fly, though, to try to counter the travelers who fly to drop bombs...

the world is what we live in. go slow.

here's a good article on green travel by one of my favorite writers, Josh Kearns.

http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2007/10/12/five-reasons-why-slow-travel-beats-going-on-vacation/