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CarbonConscious Travel in Latin America How to travel with the Earth in mind
BY ALIA YOUSSEF AND SHAWN HYMERS ALIA YOUSSEF Shaw and Alia are a married 20-something engineer and photographer currently travelling full-time with a carbon footprint in mind. ROAMINGINTHEKNOW
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n the summer of 2021, we sat on a picnic blanket looking out to Vancouver’s False Creek, and wrote a list of all the places we wanted to travel. Our list of countries grew longer and the sun disappeared behind the North Shore mountains. We spent more evenings in the park revisiting the list until it morphed into a massive five-year timeline with 15 separate trips planned. We realized that our list did not fit into any of our budgets: financial, time off, or carbon footprint. Our environmental impact has been top-of-mind since we were in our teens, so we began flirting with the idea of carbon-conscious full-time travel. As the climate crisis worsens, it becomes more important everyday to curb and offset any emissions that contribute to the warming of our planet. Carbon-conscious travel is not carbon-neutral travel, it is being aware of the carbon cost of our travels. In this context, the carbon cost is the carbon equivalent of all greenhouse gases produced by our actions.
42 I Summer Outdoor & Travel Issue I IMPACT MAGAZINE
