


Carbon emissions from tourism are rising disproportionately fast
The industry is failing to make itself greener
Tourists have been getting a lot of flak recently. Venice has started charging €5 ($5.30) for day-trippers and limits the size of tour groups. Rome is considering a €2 fee to see the Trevi fountain. New Zealand has upped fees for visitors. A new study, published this week in Nature Communications, is not going to help the tourists’ cause. Researchers, led by Ya-Yen Sun at the University of Queensland, in Australia, found that between 2009 and the start of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, global emissions from tourism grew by an average of 3.5% a year, double the rate of emissions in general. In 2019 tourism led to 5.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide—almost 9% of the world’s total. Of that, aviation accounted for the bulk (52%) of direct emissions. Utilities, such as the electricity used in accommodation, were the main cause (34%) of the indirect ones.
Explore more

Why China is building a Starlink system of its own
When it is finished, Qianfan could number 14,000 satellites

Lots of hunting. Not much gathering. The diet of early Americans
What they ate is given away by the isotopes in their bodies

Stimulating parts of the brain can help the paralysed to walk again
Implanted electrodes allowed one man to climb stairs unaided
Can anyone realistically challenge SpaceX’s launch supremacy?
And if its boss now tries to kill NASA’s own heavy lifter, will that matter?
Dreams of asteroid mining, orbital manufacturing and much more
Ideas for making money in orbit that seemed mad in the 1960s now look sane
Elon Musk is causing problems for the Royal Society
His continued membership has led to a high-profile resignation