By Stewart M. Patrick – As vacation photos from exotic locales pile up in Facebook and Instagram feeds this summer, it’s easy to take far-flung tourism for granted. Well-heeled friends riding elephants in Thailand or camels in Giza might as well be at the Jersey shore or beside a lake in the Adirondacks. Mass international tourism, like the free flow of goods, services, money and data, has become a hallmark of globalization.
This is neither accidental nor trivial. The ability of those with with means and passports to travel the world is a function of international cooperation. It is also a force for global understanding, a potential antidote to the resurgent nationalism that now infects this era. Achieving such cosmopolitan ideals, however, requires a tourism focused on people-to-relpeople contacts and mutual benefits, rather than perpetuating self-contained bubbles of privilege.
At the dawn of the 20th century, foreign leisure travel required no passports. But it was the province of aristocrats and plutocrats of the sort that populated Henry James novels. The advent of jet travel, followed by package tours and declining airline fares, hastened mass tourism. According to the World Bank, between 1995 and 2017 the number of international tourist arrivals rose more than 250 percent, from slightly above 500 million to more than 1.3 billion, while tourist expenditures more than tripled, from $463 billion to $1.45 trillion. The United Nations estimates that tourism now accounts for 10 percent of global GDP and 7 percent of exports, and supports one out of every 10 jobs. Tourists still flock to Paris and Acapulco, but new, once unimaginable destinations from Antarctica to Zanzibar have also emerged.
Back in 1795, the philosopher Immanuel Kant famously outlined three preconditions for “perpetual peace.” The first two are more well-known: the emergence of self-governing constitutional republics and open international commerce. Kant’s third precondition is more often overlooked. It is the principle of “universal hospitality”: the right of all “citizens of the earth” to visit and be welcomed in all lands, regardless of their country of origin.
Kant believed that humans should act according to moral imperatives regardless of the precise effects of those actions. But his concept of hospitality still carried a utilitarian logic, since if universally practiced it would contribute to a cosmopolitan peace. more>
By John Toon – Researchers have created a new type of tiny 3D-printed robot that moves by harnessing vibration from piezoelectric actuators, ultrasound sources or even tiny speakers. Swarms of these “micro-bristle-bots” might work together to sense environmental changes, move materials – or perhaps one day repair injuries inside the human body.
By Elizabeth Taylor – The phrase “fail to prepare or prepare to fail” comes to mind as we enter an era in which governments and communities must band together to mitigate climate change. Part of what makes our next steps so uncertain is knowing we must work together in ways that we have – so far – failed to do. We either stall, or offer up “too little, too late” strategies.
By Umair Irfan – Humans are pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate. But climate change is a cumulative problem, a function of the total amount of greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the sky. Some of the heat-trapping gases in the air right now date back to the Industrial Revolution. And since that time, some countries have pumped out vastly more carbon dioxide than others.
