To the editor: In her op-ed about the glories of travel, writer Lisa Niver laments lost luggage, missed flights and LAX. She neglects to mention the environmental cost of leisure air travel.
She notes the thrill of swimming with jellyfish, seeing a giant Buddha statue and the joys of simple international, intercultural human interactions. While cross-cultural communication is a positive idea, it is not dependent upon repeated global flights.
Our fragile planet is so compromised by human-caused climate chaos that we can no longer afford to gallivant around the world on airplanes without further dire consequences.
Do you want to commune with other cultures over a meal in L.A.? Check out restaurants in Little Bangladesh or Koreatown. A little international music perhaps? Try the Ukrainian Festival or Mariachi Plaza. Little Armenia, Thai Town, Pico-Robertson and Little Tokyo are just a few of the culture-rich neighborhoods nearby.
The kind of air travel Niver suggests is energy-intensive and dependent on fossil fuels, and is the whimsy of a privileged class. It is simply not sustainable.
Margaret Baker Davis, Claremont
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To the editor: I was reading Niver’s article extolling the virtues of her globetrotting lifestyle with increasing bemusement, but it was her next-to-last paragraph that moved me to write.
In it she related how the Palau government requires its visitors to make an environmental pledge. Does she not realize that by flying all over the world, she is doing one of the more environmentally destructive acts an individual can do?
Gordon Anderson, West Hollywood