Airplane travel is incredibly damaging to the climate and should be costed accordingly, but it’d be nice if middle-class people could still travel. What are the options?

Passenger airships (blimps, etc.) have the potential to do intercontinental transport in days. One of the coolest designs I’ve heard of is for a helium-shielded hydrogen blimp to double as a tank for fuel-cell-powered propellers. But airships are a far-out idea: we need other plans.

Cruise ships have much higher emissions per kilometre than passanger planes, but that could be because there hasn’t been much pressure on cruise ships to decrease emissions. For example, the handful of nuclear-powered surface ships are all smaller than most major cruise ships.

Freighter travel is currently considered carbon neutral because the passangers are just hitching a ride with a freighter that’s already full of cargo. Mixed passenger-cargo ships would not be as environmentally friendly.

Ships do intercontinental transport in weeks, so how do you do an intercontinental vacation when you only get 2 – 4 weeks off per year (I know people who have gone to Hawaii for a weekend)? Similarly, if you were to pay the full cost of airplane travel, you’d probably only be able to afford an intercontinential vacation every few years: how can you make it count?

The solution is obviously sabbaticals / career breaks. Apparently these are common in Australia because of the time it used to take to visit family in Britain by sailing ship. Essentially we will all go back to that rhythm of life.

If you have more time in a place, you don’t need to consume sexed-up, inauthentic exoticness. Tourists will become embedded in a culture by volunteering, working or studying. We need a cultural and legislative shift to support sabbaticals for all workers.