If you know even one person who works for an airline, you can tell from the beginning that this article is just emotional mindless trash. The author pines for

If you know even one person who works for an airline, you can tell from the beginning that this article is just emotional mindless trash. The author pines for the "good old days" of Edinburgh. Talk to anyone over 50 from Edinburgh. It wasn't great. It wasn't even nice. I mean, you're in Scotland. This was never the promised land. It's perhaps more plastic now, but the vomit was there already. Travel is one of the most eye-opening, empathy-instilling, educational practices a human can muster. What the author is really railing against is mindless tourism, not travel. But they're too narrow-minded and angry to think past their blunderous miswording. I am all in favor of limiting tourism, and virtually eliminating eco-tourism. But travel? Honest-to-god, mind-expanding, awe-inspiring, information-sharing, culture-trading, value-shifting travel? The world needs more of it now than ever. If I have to listen to another fucking nationalist prick talk about how their country needs to be more white and be more hostile to foreign nations and peoples, I'll puke. If you want to save the planet, curbing plane rides is not the way. Every nation's pollution has different causes and solutions. And pulling back from technology is not going to help us - it would cause the death of countless millions that would have died years ago if their health wasn't extended by modern innovations. Being smarter about how we use and regulate it would be the best benefit. For every tourist flying to Japan to see the cherry blossoms in spring, we should be instilling in them the need to get into the suburbs and have natto with a host family. Sitting there with their bowl of soy snot, silently contemplating how a city with no trash cans can be so clean, they might appreciate their own breakfast more, and begin to think that their world can change if they simply choose to. That's what travel can do.