The lucky young have their whole lives ahead of them. They can dream of adventures and plan for them in the future. Great times. However, as we age and we realize that there are only a limited number of days before we are too old to travel then planning becomes serious. Often we create a Bucket List; a list of things we want to do before we die. Many, if not all, items on the list consist of travel. To be a tourist. That’s lucky.

Tourism has become quite an industry. One source has it generating $7.6trillion in 2014. Close to 10% of global GDP. Another sources sets international tourist arrivals at 1.4 billion in 2018; that’s about 20% of the global population. Tourism generates 319 million jobs world wide; that’s about 10% of the estimated global employment. All told, tourism is expansive and growing.

Now let’s appreciate what tourism is all about. Tourism is leisure. Tourism is neither a necessity nor a right. We don’t need to be a tourist to survive. Tourism is a luxury. And after all, a Bucket List is all about ‘wants’ rather than ‘needs’. Now what does this ‘want’ cost us in energy? Let’s draw a direct comparison between energy and money. Therefor, if tourism uses 10% of GDP then we claim that it uses 10% of global annual energy usage. This amounts to 5.67e19 Joules which is almost equal to the world’s total electrical energy consumption. Think about it. We are effectively allocating all of world’s electrical production to tourism.

If the supply of clean, useful energy was limitless then using a good portion of it for leisure doesn’t represent a problem. And today, with little concern for energy future’s there seems to be little concern about how we allocate its usage. But what happens when the supply of energy diminishes? How should we discriminate between needs and wants? Are we ready to remove items from our Bucket List so that future generations can prosper?