MANCHÁN MAGAN's tales of a travel addict
I’VE BEEN AWAITING their call for a long time now, much like a Catholic boy going out with a girl from the other side in Belfast would have awaited a call in the past. For me it was an environmental organisation rather than a paramilitary one. I knew they’d eventually come for me, demanding an explanation for my actions, my flagrant promotion of international travel and the environmental decimation it entails. How could I possibly defend myself against crimes against the ozone layer, against the propaganda campaign for ecological destruction that a travel column could be said to represent? I dreaded the call, not because I lacked a suitable reply, but because I wasn’t sure I could express what I wanted to say clearly enough.
I accept that for environmentalists my travel may appear like a criminal waste of scant resources that ought to be conserved for future generations, and I acknowledge that the travel industry produces large amounts of potentially harmful emissions. It is just that I believe foreign travel is vital for humanity right now. I stress humanity, as it is human (and animal) life that concerns me. I have no fears for the health of the planet. It is quite capable of sneezing and wiping us off if we irritate it enough, then continuing on happily without us. But overall I believe that travelling abroad has profound long-term benefits for both society and the environment. There, I said it, so hang me.
First, I should point out my own ecocredentials. I built the first carbon-neutral straw-bale house in Ireland, in 1997, I’ve managed a permaculture farm in Ecuador and I worked as an organic farmer in Wicklow, in the early 1990s. I drive the smallest-engined car I could find, and I cycle where possible. I have planted 18,000 oak and Scots pine in my forest and restrict my household waste to roughly three bin bags a year.
Yet, for all this, I am committed to encouraging more people to travel more often. For humans to really advance I see no alternative than for us to get to know each other, to talk, to trade, to travel – to break down the divide. We’ve spent too long caught up in ignorance and distrust, oblivious of our common heritage. We need to start moving towards some form of unity, and I can’t see how this can be done without travel.
Ideally, I’d like to see Irish people taking regular trips to Africa and China to get a feel for the world there – both places that we will inevitably be engaging intimately with in the future. But even two weeks on the Costa del Sol can awaken one to a new way of seeing the world, and can light the spark of curiosity about what lies beyond. One sees it most clearly with Americans going on beach holidays to Mexico; they return with a different perspective on immigration and on the reasons Latin Americans might want and need to reach the US.
Having spent years producing travel books and films, I realise they are simply incapable of conveying the essence of a foreign culture on their own. Only by walking in someone else’s shoes can one have any hope of understanding them, and, whether we like it or not, we are all going to have to get to know each other a lot better soon – population density is increasing and the inhabitable world is being squeezed between rising seas and advancing deserts caused by depleted aquifers.
Each trip abroad is a tiny stitch, knitting the world together and making us realise we are one. And while it’s true that these trips exact a toll on the planet, I believe not only that is it a price worth paying but also that the alternative – remaining divided and isolated – will lead to ruination.