Unpacked: S2, E19: Rick Steves Wants to Save the World, One Trip at a Time
In the world of travel, Rick Steves is a household name. Since he launched his company in 1976, he has sent millions of Americans abroad, either through his guided tours or via his many, many guidebooks. But his mission—to get people to travel, no matter where—comes with a carbon cost. And Rick decided to do something about it. This week’s episode of Unpacked is part one of a two-week series that highlights his climate commitment, as well as his fascinating, wide-ranging views on “road as school.”
Read the transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/ouckrb4
Discover more episodes of the podcast here: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
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Read the transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/ouckrb4
Discover more episodes of the podcast here: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
----
CONNECT WITH AFAR
Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com
Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters
Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia
Follow AFAR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afarmedia
Follow AFAR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afarmedia
Follow AFAR on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/afarmedia
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TravelTranscript
00:00 I'm Aislinn Green and this is Unpacked, the podcast that unpacks one tricky topic in travel
00:09 each week. And this week, we're unpacking climate change and travel and a whole bunch
00:16 of other stuff with none other than Rick Steves. I'm sure you know of Rick Steves. He's been
00:22 around for decades. Most people adore him. He has dozens of shows, a podcast of his own.
00:30 But funny story, I kind of grew up with Rick. I was born and raised in Washington State,
00:35 not far from his headquarters in Edmonds, Washington. And my grandparents, who were
00:39 both huge travelers, were big Rick Steves fans from the moment he set up shop. So growing
00:45 up, we had the Rick Steves backpacks, the whole family, the Rick Steves money belts,
00:51 and yes, the Rick Steves guidebooks. So I took him for granted. I didn't think of him
00:56 much beyond like, okay, yeah, he's the Europe guy and I have his money belt. But as an adult
01:01 traveler who works in the travel industry, I've come to see Rick in a different way.
01:06 I've seen him as an activist, as a thoughtful pilgrim and a scholar of the world, as someone
01:12 who encourages people to leave their comfort zones and revel in the wonders of the world.
01:17 And I see him as an environmentalist who wanted to find a way to reconcile his push for travel
01:22 with the issues around travel and climate change. So he came on the show to talk about
01:27 his Climate Smart commitment, which is essentially a self-imposed carbon tax. See, for every
01:33 traveler his company takes to Europe, they pledge $30 to a variety of very carefully
01:38 selected nonprofits. We're going to be hearing more about the program in next week's episode,
01:44 but this week we're just going to hear from Rick. Our conversation was wide ranging. It
01:49 was surprising. We touched on climate change, flying, dual narrative travel, borders, and
01:55 so much more. Let's listen in.
01:57 Well, Rick, welcome to Unpacked.
02:04 Nice to be with you.
02:05 So we're going to be unpacking climate change and travel, which is a topic that's really
02:10 near and dear to our hearts here at AFAR. We've spent a lot of time discussing it. I
02:14 believe that you have as well. And when we speak with Craig Davidson, your COO, we're
02:21 going to be learning about your Climate Smart commitment. But for right now, I'd love to
02:25 just focus on the more personal side of it, because I really admire your ethical approach
02:30 to the world. So why is climate change so important to you?
02:34 Well, it's a big deal for everybody, or it should be. It's just some people are too
02:39 indignant and some people aren't. And whether you're in travel or not, it should be of
02:44 a concern. And I think slowly we're waking up, but it's time to blow some whistles
02:50 and get people going on this. And of course, I'm in the travel business, and that's
02:54 the big white elephant in the travel industry. We're all excited about travel. We all
02:59 love the world. We're all environmentalists and so on. But we all make money by taking
03:03 people on the road, and we're contributing to the problem. So we have to decide what
03:11 are the ethics of travel in a warming world?
03:13 What was the thought process in your mind that eventually led to this very concrete
03:18 program?
03:19 Well, we've been looking around for a solution to how can we be an ethical tour organizer
03:24 for more than 10 years. And we've been trying different things. For a couple of years,
03:30 we were buying trees. Somebody told us it costs two bucks a tree, and if you buy six
03:34 trees, that'll mitigate the carbon cost of flying to Europe and back. Well, okay. Take
03:39 100 people, that's 600 trees, and we're all good. But that just felt a little too
03:43 easy. And then there's a lot of developed world corporations just buy into carbon offsets.
03:50 And we looked into that, and I just didn't like a broker and investing in a rich company
03:55 in a rich world. I wanted to connect with the developing world. And I believe that climate
04:01 change is an existential threat to much more than tourism. I mean, to our way of life,
04:08 to civilization. And from a Gaia point of view, maybe human beings are just a rash on
04:15 this planet, and it's time for us to get out of the way. And we're doing a good job
04:19 of that. But I don't like to think it in that terms. I like to think that this beautiful
04:26 planet we're blessed with is something we can be good stewards of. And to me, I just
04:32 wish there was a way that we could very confidently and assuredly and honestly pay for our carbon.
04:42 And that's what we're looking for. And I think that we contribute to climate change.
04:47 There's no doubt about that. There is climate change. There's no doubt about that. And
04:51 it's got to be dealt with better now than later. There's no doubt about that. But
04:55 there's also a real value in travel more than vacation. I'm all over having a good
05:01 vacation on the road. But over the years, I find myself mixing in being a tourist, being
05:07 a traveler, and being a pilgrim. And when you get out, you get to know more about the
05:12 world. And you fall in love with the world. And you have an empathy and a better understanding
05:17 of the 96% of humanity that's outside of our borders.
05:21 And coming out of COVID, I'm pretty convinced that the challenges confronting us in the
05:27 future are going to be blind to walls and conventional weaponry. And they're going
05:32 to require a respect for the environment and ability to work with other nations. The challenges
05:37 that we're going to be dealing with, whether it's a pandemic or climate change, it can't
05:41 be a win-lose thing. It's got to be win-win. If you win north of the border and people
05:46 are losing south of the border, it'll just blow over the border and we're all in trouble.
05:50 So we need to be smart about this. And we've got to work with a globalized community. And
05:55 we do that through travel. A long-winded way of saying travel is an important part of the
06:00 equation for us to be sustainable on this planet. We need to know each other.
06:05 The trend lately is to build walls and hunker down and treat everybody as a threat. But
06:12 that's a prescription for all sorts of problems down the road. I really think the beautiful
06:16 thing about travel is you bring home the most wonderful souvenir. And that's the mindset
06:20 where you're more inclined to build bridges and less inclined to build walls. So that's
06:24 the plus of travel. And I think it's a responsibility, kind of a stewardship responsibility. If you're
06:30 going to spend the time and the energy and contribute to environmental problems by your
06:35 travels, you need to maximize the value of your travels. Why do a billion Muslims aspire
06:41 to go to Mecca once in their lifetime? It's important to get out of your home and see
06:45 the rest of the world. That's what Muhammad was all about. He said, "Don't tell me how
06:48 educated you are. Tell me how much you've traveled." And progressive Muslims say, "You
06:52 don't need to go to Mecca. You just got to go on a trip, get away from your home and
06:56 think about it." And I'm similar to that in my own philosophy of road as church or road
07:02 as school.
07:03 We learn so much more about our home by leaving it. So we need to maximize the benefit of
07:09 our travel by traveling thoughtfully and we need to pay our way. We need to pay our carbon
07:16 costs. Now, if you don't believe in mitigation, well then, forget what I'm going to say. But
07:22 for me, mitigation is just arithmetic. You create X bad, okay. You can not create X bad
07:30 or you can create X good in a way that zeros out the bad. And that's kind of what mitigation
07:36 is. So I believe the scientific reports that I've read that explain if you smartly invest
07:44 $30 in climate change action, that creates as much good as one individual flying from
07:53 the United States to Europe and back creates.
07:55 So our program, the Climate Smart Initiative, it's nothing to brag about. It's just baseline
08:01 ethics. It's just we're making too much money on our tour program when we take 20 or 30,000
08:05 people to Europe in one year. We should be paying the cost, which is $30 smartly invested
08:11 per person. And then again, it's nothing heroic. For me, it's just if we had an honest accounting
08:17 system in this country of ours, we'd be taxed for that and then it would be invested smartly
08:21 because that's the cost to society. That's a cost to the future. That's a cost to the
08:26 whole world when we contribute to climate change. But we live in a world here in the
08:30 United States where it's all about the quarterly profit statement.
08:35 So we need to give ourselves a self-imposed tax to pay for our carbon and that's what
08:40 we do. So each year we multiply the number of people that take our tour by $30. This
08:46 year for instance, we're taking 30,000 people on Rick Steve's tours, multiply that by $30.
08:52 It's $900,000 rounded up to a million dollars. We have a portfolio of 10 organizations, nonprofits
08:59 working with farmers in the developing world to help them do their work while contributing
09:03 less to climate change. And we invest in them $100,000 each on average, these 10 organizations
09:09 and we love it. It's a cool program and it's just a part of a new, I think, awareness of
09:15 how can we travel ethically in a warming world.
09:19 Yeah, absolutely. So the flight shame movement kind of emerged in 2017 and then it really
09:26 took off in 2019 when activist Greta Thunberg kind of took that intentional two-week sale
09:34 instead of flying. Was that something, like what was your initial reaction to that and
09:39 did that spark this thinking for you?
09:43 Well flight shame to me doesn't mean taking a boat, it means not traveling.
09:47 Yeah, okay, interesting.
09:49 That's an option. I mean it's not practical that people are going to take a boat. It'd
09:53 be nice if they would, but I'm a little more pragmatic. And you can choose not to travel,
09:59 that's a very reasonable decision. But I believe that if you travel and you pay for your carbon
10:07 and the travel makes you a citizen of the planet, a global citizen. I've been dealing
10:13 with the ethics of travel long before there was climate change. I've been teaching for
10:17 40 years and I struggled with this back in the last century. And it was an ethical issue
10:23 of when there's so much hunger, why should I spend five years wages for a struggling
10:29 family to go to the Nile or to go to India or to go to Guatemala and take photographs
10:36 of idyllic scenes at the well with women with jugs on their heads, you know? You can romanticize
10:42 that. But I know that there's a lot of economic injustice in the world. And I struggled with
10:49 this before there was climate change, just the ethics of travel. And I talked to a lot
10:53 of people, did a lot of thinking about it, and I concluded if you want to be an ethical
10:57 traveler, you have an ethical responsibility if you want to travel to come home with a
11:01 broader perspective and employ that broader perspective in the voting booth. Who wins
11:06 our election impacts people south of the border more than it even impacts you and me. But
11:13 what a weird sensibility to take into the voting booth to vote for something other than
11:16 your own self-interest. But an enlightened, thoughtful traveler does exactly that. I vote
11:24 routinely for causes and candidates that are not in my self-interest. I just do it because
11:31 I've been exposed to the world and I'm thoughtful.
11:35 And you're also, or the organizations that you work with are involved with lobbying the
11:40 US government. Is that correct?
11:42 I'm a big fan of advocacy. I mean, advocacy organizations don't like to call themselves
11:48 lobbyists, but that's what they are. Lobbying in itself is not bad. And you can lobby for
11:54 government policies that are more smart and compassionate for people who are hungry domestically
12:02 and or internationally. You could lobby for a carbon tax. And what we're doing is, my
12:10 major philanthropic thing is supporting advocacy organizations that fight hunger because 10%
12:18 of humanity is in extreme poverty, trying to live on less than $2 a day. And that's
12:24 hopeless. And my philosophy is even if you're not a love your neighbor kind of person, if
12:29 you know what's good for you, you don't want to be filthy rich in a desperately poor country.
12:33 It's just not a nice place to raise your kids. You want stability, you better fight hunger.
12:39 And I think we're going to wake up to the fact that if you want stability, you better
12:42 fight climate change because we get all crazy and freaked out about immigrant problems.
12:48 We don't know what immigration problems are until we get hundreds of millions of climate
12:52 refugees. That's coming our way. This is just the first couple of drops. And a lot of the
12:57 people trying to get in our country are the first of the climate refugees. They have not
13:04 been able to make it on their land. They've gone into the cities where it's too dangerous
13:08 and they realize the only place we can go is north to the United States. I think that's
13:13 an impact of climate change that a lot of people don't recognize. So, you know, this
13:18 is very complicated stuff, but I think if we can raise awareness and be smart about
13:23 it, there's a reasonable solution. But we have to get serious about minimizing our carbon
13:28 and then paying for the carbon that we create. You know, it's coming. There's a sensibility
13:32 in Europe right now that people take the train instead of fly. Of course, they got good train
13:38 system. And why would you fly from Madrid to Barcelona when you can get there by train
13:44 in two and a half hours? That's just, you don't need to be an environmentalist to see
13:48 the wisdom in that. It's just smarter.
13:50 And it's more pleasurable, right? Like taking the train is such a delight.
13:53 It's delightful. I love stepping onto the train and enjoying the view and stepping off
13:57 and not have to go to the airport and everything. And it's very green. It's very exciting. And
14:02 you know, there's another example. If an American goes to Spain and sees how good their public
14:07 transit is and how many alternatives there are to fossil fuel, they come home and it
14:12 creates a different political environment where we can get something done.
14:16 Yeah, absolutely. I know if only we had a train system. Well, kind of going back to
14:21 that idea of mitigation, because this is something that we of course have also struggled with.
14:25 And we just did a story about, you know, a climate change reporter who is trying to fly
14:33 less, not not fly, but fly less. So that's something that we have started to encourage
14:38 is, you know, be more thoughtful about your trips. Go for a longer period of time. Do
14:42 you also encourage that with your travelers?
14:45 Well, yeah. But I would just encourage that in your everyday adulting decisions.
14:52 Yeah, sure.
14:53 Does it make sense for 50,000 people to fly back to their alma mater for a football game?
14:58 I mean, the environmental consequence of people flying for sports is really powerful. The
15:05 environmental consequence of a needless war is really powerful. The environmental consequence
15:10 of people flying to conventions. We used to fly 100 of our tour guides from Europe to
15:15 Seattle every January for years, for 10 years. So we flew our guides into Seattle for a week-long
15:20 workshop. Now, because we've learned a lot during the pandemic, we do it with webinars.
15:26 And you know, it's a shame that we don't have that personal connection. And we will probably
15:30 do it every few years, but you don't need to do it every year. So there's moderation
15:34 in these kind of things. I just really, I spend a lot of energy trying to think of how
15:42 in our divided society can we not win and defeat the enemy politically, but how can
15:50 we come up with reasonable solutions that everybody can embrace? So, you know, I know
15:56 that the aeronautics industry is working on much more efficient airliners. There's huge
16:01 potential there.
16:02 Yeah.
16:03 But we can do things now that don't take the environmental cost or just the economic
16:08 cost. We spent a lot of money flying 100 guides into Seattle, putting them up for a week.
16:13 You can just have a webinar. I mean, when I pay for my Zoom webinar license, I do it
16:19 with giddiness. It's just a beautiful alternative to flying people here, you know. So, you know,
16:24 there's ways to really cut back on the carbon cost of our travels, whether it's domestic,
16:35 for work, for entertainment, or exploring the world. There's ways to cut back on that.
16:40 And then when we get over there, there's ways to travel in a way that minimizes. But I really
16:44 believe that when we come home, we need to be changed by our travels. I love when I'm
16:51 on the road to be a cultural chameleon. I transform from country to country. And then
16:55 when I come home, I'm changed also.
16:57 You know, that reminds me that you've spoken a lot about that kind of dual narrative travel,
17:03 and that that's something that you kind of look for. Will you explain for listeners what
17:06 you mean when you say that?
17:08 Yeah, dual narrative travel. You know, I have an appetite for traveling to places that get
17:14 me out of my comfort zone. And I'm not any big hot shot adventurer. I don't go to war
17:20 zones or anything like that. But I go to places we're generally not supposed to go. And those,
17:25 what I think back are my best travel experiences. You know, back in the old days, going to the
17:30 Soviet Union, going to Iran, going to Palestine, going to Cuba. That's where it's at. I mean,
17:36 to get to know your enemies. I say that with quotes, but you know, people are supposed
17:39 to be our enemies. It's really powerful.
17:42 You realize how ethnocentric our approach to many of the world's great problems are.
17:46 There are walls, physical or metaphorical, that we need to understand. I can't think
17:53 of a good wall. And a wall keeps people apart. And you know, when I think about the wall
18:02 between Palestine and Israel, it was built by the Israelis to protect them from violent
18:08 incursions by bad guys in Palestine that were going to come in and bomb their buses and
18:13 so on. Well, okay, let's just say that's a reasonable investment and a reasonable fear
18:17 on their part. It's a complicated issue, but let's just say that. What was the consequence
18:22 of that wall? Well, it's made it tougher maybe for people across the border with bad intentions.
18:27 But I think even greater than that, it has kept the young people on both sides of that
18:31 wall saddled with their parents' fears and their parents' baggage and unable to talk
18:38 to each other. I learned that when I was traveling there, scouting my TV show that I did on the
18:44 Holy Land. My Israeli guide, who is a wonderful guy, Aby, and my Palestinian guide, a wonderful
18:50 guy named Kamal, it was very, very complicated for them to even find a place where they could
18:55 park their cars next to each other so I could go from one car to the next. So the whole
18:59 system is designed so Palestinians and Israelis really can't connect with each other. I mean,
19:05 you might have a gardener coming across the wall in the morning to garden in your fancy
19:09 house at a cheap price, and then he'd go back home. But generally, people never broke bread
19:15 together. Kids didn't play together. They all had their own gated communities or refugee
19:20 camps, and they played with kids whose parents' baggage impacted them. So the moral to the
19:27 story is you cannot understand a wall unless you talk to people on both sides of that wall.
19:32 It's dual narrative travel. When you go to Belfast, now there's dual narrative tours
19:38 of the wall that separates the Protestant and Catholic communities. And you don't just
19:44 take a taxi tour with an angry Catholic or an angry Protestant. You take a taxi tour
19:52 that has two different drivers. And for half of the tour, you're with a Catholic, and for
19:57 half the tour, you're with a Protestant. And you have quadruple the learning experience.
20:03 That's a beautiful thing about travel. And that's what I enjoy as a travel teacher is
20:07 inspiring people to have fun, not spend a lot of extra money, do things efficiently,
20:12 don't wait in line needlessly, know how to pack, all that kind of stuff. But also, travel
20:17 in a way where you get out of your comfort zone and travel in a way where you broaden
20:20 your perspective. Travel in a way where you think of culture shock not as something to
20:27 avoid but as a constructive thing. Culture shock to me, I've been thinking about this
20:32 lately, is the growing pains of a broadening perspective. And it's important, culture shock.
20:39 And it just needs to be curated. So as the tour guide, I get to curate culture shock.
20:44 I love that. I think it kind of de-centers the traveler and the narrative a little bit,
20:50 right? Like, you're not the most important thing there, right?
20:55 You know, you just nailed it. You just nailed it. My favorite country is India. And people
21:01 don't think of me in India, they think of me in Europe. But for me, Europe is the springboard
21:05 for world exploration for an American. Go there. And then if you have a good trip, you
21:09 can go beyond. But my favorite travel experiences are India because India wallops my ethnocentrism.
21:17 I like to say it rearranges all my cultural furniture. Because even if we're hip people
21:22 that feel like we have this global perspective, we're all ethnocentric. We all think we're
21:28 the norm. And people with spoons and forks aren't the norm. People who sit on something
21:34 when they go to the bathroom are not the norm. We're the oddballs. And we don't realize that
21:38 unless we travel. And unless we travel to places where there are different norms. And
21:43 you have to have an appetite for that. For a lot of people, I know as a tour guide, that's
21:47 not what they want to hear. It's not what they want to hear. They draw back and they
21:53 clench their fist and they think, "Are you telling me we're wrong? That we're not the
21:56 center of the world? That the world's not a pyramid with us on top and everybody else
22:00 trying to figure it out? That people don't aspire to be American?"
22:04 What do you say to that? How do you respond? I say, "The world is not a pyramid with us
22:10 on top." And I thought it was until well into my adulthood. And then I met a guy in Afghanistan
22:16 when I was hitchhiking through Afghanistan. I mean, I've got a lot of little anecdotes
22:20 like this, but I always like to say. I was at a cafeteria in Kabul and this guy sat down
22:25 next to me. He said, "Are you an American?" I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, I'm a
22:29 professor here in Afghanistan and I want you to know that a third of the people on this
22:33 planet eat with spoons and fork like you. A third of the people eat with chopsticks.
22:38 And a third of the people eat with their fingers like me. And we're all civilized just the
22:42 same." And I remember, I can remember it like it was yesterday, the wording he said, "And
22:47 we're all civilized just the same." And he actually, his mission was to sit down at the
22:53 tourist cafeteria every day at lunch with some sort of an American backpacker and let
22:59 him know we're all civilized just the same.
23:02 Absolutely. And talking about climate change and wastefulness, no plastics utensils going
23:08 into the landfill.
23:09 Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So this is why I enjoy my work so much because as a tour guide,
23:16 I spent 25 years with the mic and I had the bully pulpit. The door's locked. I got the
23:22 mic, you're going to listen to me. And I learned over years how you can abuse the bully pulpit,
23:30 but I also learned the value of travel over the years as my travelers were gradually and
23:35 artfully having their perspectives broadened through this travel experience. And that's
23:41 how I would assess the value of my work is what kind of an impact did I have on my travelers?
23:48 And Europe is tame for an experienced traveler, but Europe is a challenge for a lot of people.
23:55 And we like to joke where I work, I work with a hundred colleagues here in Seattle at Rick
23:59 Steve's Europe, and we joke that our mission is to equip and inspire Americans to venture
24:06 beyond Orlando. And there's nothing wrong with Orlando or Vegas, but if you've been
24:12 there six or seven times, why don't you try Portugal? It's not going to bite you. And
24:17 then if you don't like it, you can scurry back to Disney World. But I think there's
24:22 one book that outsells my Rick Steve's Italy guidebook and it's the guidebook to Disney
24:26 World. Is it really? Yeah, it's a huge market and it's escape travel, it's la-la land, and
24:34 for a lot of people, they don't want anything more than that. I like a quote from Thomas
24:38 Jefferson, he said, "Travel makes a person wiser, if less happy."
24:42 You mentioned this evolution from tourist to traveler to pilgrim. Do you think it kind
25:02 of helps solidify your own evolution as a traveler and as a travel teacher?
25:08 Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know, it's nice to be introspective and thoughtful when
25:17 you have an experience. And a lot of people, they're raised not to be introspective. They're
25:23 raised never to write a poem. As a tour guide, I used to really stress out my groups by saying,
25:29 "On the last day of the tour, we're all going to share a poem that we've written over the
25:32 next two weeks." And everybody had to write a poem. And for some people, it was just a
25:36 limerick. But other people, they wrote very thoughtful poems and they astounded themselves
25:42 at how they could be a thoughtful traveler. I just love the thought that Wordsworth would
25:49 walk through the beautiful lakes of Cumbrian Lake District, the great poet Wordsworth,
25:54 and he'd be inspired by the bird song and the blowing clouds and the ripples on the
26:00 lakes. And we need that. It's good for our soul.
26:05 It sure is.
26:06 It's a beautiful thing.
26:07 And articulating it, right? Like articulating that it's-
26:09 And articulating it. You got it.
26:11 Because I think that can help make it more concrete within ourselves and allow us to
26:17 take it home in a different way.
26:19 Isn't it? Yeah. That's a beautiful thing. And it's raising the bar as a tour guide.
26:24 I've always been thankful for the caliber of people that choose to work with us. And
26:29 they are guides that embrace this idea. And if you're a tour guide, you're working really
26:36 hard, you're living on the road away from your home, and you're surrounded by people
26:39 on vacation all the time, and you're working. And it can just be making a buck, or it can
26:47 be really contributing. And the guides that I'm really blessed to call workmates and colleagues,
26:56 they have the same mission as me. They have this great opportunity to take a group of
27:01 wonderful Americans out of their comfort zone and gently curate their culture shock.
27:08 Do you still require or ask them to write a poem at the end of it?
27:15 Well, no. But we encourage our guides to create a sprit de corps on the bus, a meaningful
27:24 family atmosphere. Because everybody can just be very, very superficial, hardly know each
27:32 other's names. Or we have what we call reflections periods. I love a reflections time, where
27:37 you've just been to the concentration camp, Dachau. And then you've been to the beer hall.
27:44 And then you've gone to this amazing church, this Wieskirch, the Rococo church in the foothills
27:50 of the Alps. And then you settle into your fancy chalet in Austria. And before dinner,
27:57 you spend an hour just moderating the discussion. And the tour guide's now not the teacher,
28:04 but he or she is the moderator. And you just encourage people who are comfortable doing
28:09 this to talk about emotionally what they've been going through. And to be able to orchestrate
28:14 that is really rewarding. It's a challenge, and it's raising the bar for a tour guide.
28:20 That's for sure. But most tour companies, they tell their guides, just don't talk about
28:25 religion, politics, or soccer. Because those are things that are going to just upset people.
28:32 But I just tell my guides, hey, if you want to raise the bar, talk about religion, talk
28:37 about politics, and talk about football. But do it in a respectful way that inspires your
28:43 Americans to be broader in their thinking. Because you hear about ugly Americans. That's
28:48 a term we don't hear much anymore. But it's not a bad person, the ugly American on the
28:53 road. It's just Americans tend to be ethnocentric. The ugly American is an ethnocentric traveler
29:00 who thinks, where's my ice cubes? Why can't I have a bottomless cup of coffee? I need
29:04 fast service. I need the service right now. They're just naive, and they're steep on the
29:07 learning curve. They're good people, and they're far from home in their learning.
29:12 If you're buried deep in the middle of our country without a passport, and your whole
29:15 world is shaped by the TV channel you choose to watch, what is your worldview? Probably
29:21 very ethnocentric. Are you afraid? You're probably very afraid. Do you want walls or
29:27 bridges? You probably want walls. What about people who travel a lot? They're not so afraid,
29:35 and they want bridges. I love that.
29:38 Yeah, or they know also what to be afraid of. I feel like they're afraid of the-
29:43 That's a good point. Yeah, they know what the real risks are. That's the irony.
29:47 Exactly, of not traveling, of not expanding your world.
29:51 The irony is people who want a wall, they want a wall in order to be safer. I firmly
29:55 believe that a wall does not make you safer. A wall makes your future less stable, but
30:02 that takes a little more of an attention span for a lot of people to think about. You can't
30:08 put it on a bumper sticker.
30:09 The first-hand experience, the time.
30:12 Yeah, first-hand experience, what a concept. See, that's getting back to our conversation
30:19 about travel. That first-hand experience is more and more important.
30:24 Well, going back to climate change a little bit more broadly, you've had kind of a front-row
30:28 seat to some of the changes throughout Europe and beyond, and I'm just curious to know what
30:33 you have witnessed in that capacity.
30:36 You know, Aislinn, that's something I've wanted to do for ages, would be to make some kind
30:43 of a TV show or travel essay or something that just showed the silly impacts of climate
30:50 change on privileged, developed world people on their vacations. It's not like a new dry
30:57 land in Guatemala that's impoverishing formerly well-off farmers. It's just skiers, there's
31:05 no summer skiing anymore in the Alps. I grew up being fully aware that it's so fun to rent
31:10 some skis when you're traveling, ride the lift up and ski in the summer. Well, they
31:13 don't do that anymore.
31:15 So I can just think of the examples around Europe. In Spain, they used to have bullfights
31:21 where you could buy tickets in the shade or the sun. The cheaper tickets were in the sun
31:25 and the more expensive tickets were in the shade. It got so hot that they moved the bullfights
31:29 later and now everything's in the shade.
31:32 Oh, interesting.
31:33 That's just to accommodate climate change. I'm going to be flying to Spain next week
31:36 and I know there's canvas shade panels above the roads, the streets, so pedestrians can
31:44 actually walk in the street without the sun beating down on them. That's new. You find
31:49 flood barriers now built into the little towns all across South England, little towns that
31:54 have been there for centuries that didn't used to have the problem of the sea washing
31:58 up their main street. They've got a flood barrier there.
32:01 The Dutch, who are famously frugal, are spending billions of euros moving mud and sand to beef
32:07 up their dikes in anticipation of a rising sea because half of the Netherlands are below
32:12 sea level. There's a storm surge barrier just outside of Rotterdam that to me it's like
32:18 two Eiffel Towers on their side on wheels that can roll shut in the threat of a rising
32:24 sea. We saw what happened in New Orleans and in New York when you had that storm surge.
32:29 Well, that can happen again and every city is going to need storm surge barriers to survive
32:36 that. What else? There's not a ski lift in Europe these days that doesn't have plumbing
32:42 built in with it. You don't build a ski lift without plumbing because you got to make your
32:45 snow. River boats are having a crisis, that whole industry, because the water is either
32:51 too high or too low and they can't get to where they promised their travelers they're
32:53 going to get. So they have to have buses that follow them and half of the itinerary is done
32:59 by bus on a "river cruise." So it's disturbing. I guess people acknowledge there is climate
33:07 change and most people acknowledge that humans are contributing to it, but do we have the
33:13 ability to pay for something now that will help people 10 or 20 years from now? Or do
33:20 we just want to bully our way through our lives and have our vacations without dealing
33:25 with the sustainability aspect of it? That's to me why we need government action. I'm a
33:31 great capitalist, but I know that capitalism needs a referee and that's what governments
33:37 are for. If we're going to have capitalism in a couple of generations, we need a government
33:43 to step in now and enforce expensive sustainability issues because human beings by their nature
33:53 just they want it now. It's a very unusual person that can say, "I will deny myself that
34:00 now so people two generations from now can have a little bit of it."
34:04 Yeah, I mean I hear people, sometimes people who have children or grandchildren, like you
34:09 did, I listened to your January presentation. I think the one that you were referencing
34:13 earlier where you, instead of flying everyone in, and you mentioned your young grandson
34:19 Atlas. Congratulations right away. That's an amazing name.
34:22 Yeah, isn't it?
34:25 And just wanting to see him travel, allow the world to be in a place and-
34:29 Yeah. Now when I give my talks, if I give a talk that's a political talk or an ethical
34:34 talk, I've added a shot of beautiful little baby Atlas, Rick Steves' grandson. And then
34:42 I show a shot of my daughter Jackie just adoring her little beautiful baby. And then I show
34:47 a shot of a nameless father and infant in South Asia. And I make the very important
34:55 case that that father's love is just as beautiful and important as mine. And that little child
35:01 is just as deserving and important as mine. And it makes all the notions that a traveler
35:10 takes home, it drives them home in a more strong way, in a more undeniable way when
35:17 you have a grandchild in your arms.
35:19 Yeah.
35:20 It should.
35:21 Absolutely.
35:22 Some people, they'll just want more walls if they got a grandchild in their arms. But
35:27 I don't think a traveler, a thoughtful traveler would be inclined to want more walls. They'd
35:32 want more bridges with a grandchild in their arms.
35:35 Yeah. More bridges and more government action.
35:39 Yeah. More refereeing, more sustainability. Why can't we pay? It's so clear to me. I spend
35:46 a million dollars a year to mitigate the carbon that our travelers take when they fly to Europe
35:51 to meet our tours. It's a million dollars. I could have made that profit, but I'm making
35:56 too much money. I'm stealing from the future. It should be taxed and then invested smartly.
36:03 But I'm not going to just complain about it. I'm just going to tax it myself and invest
36:06 it myself. And by the way, what gets done with the investment from our Rick Steves Climate
36:13 Smart Initiative in these 10 organizations that work in the developing world supporting
36:18 farmers, it is so exciting what gets done. It makes a difference on our website. It's
36:25 quite a complicated essay that we've written explaining the whole rationale and the thinking
36:30 behind the Rick Steves Climate Smart Initiative.
36:32 And right at the top, it says, "If you're a tour operator, steal this program and do
36:38 not credit us." Don't credit us. I mean, it's just use it. It's innovative.
36:43 I love that.
36:44 I think it's good business. One of my mantras during COVID was, I was realizing good business
36:51 is good business.
36:52 Yeah.
36:53 I like that because you don't need to compromise your viability as a profit-making corporation
36:59 to be ethical. And if you can build your business with a clientele that appreciates your ethics,
37:06 that's a nice clientele to have.
37:08 Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that you show your work in that way. You're showing the
37:14 kind of impact that these programs are having and putting the personal to the problem, I
37:20 think can really connect with people more than just the larger looming terror of climate
37:26 change.
37:27 I think there's a hunger for candor and transparency.
37:31 Yeah.
37:32 And in our society, there's a hunger for people to talk straight and respectfully about how
37:38 together we can be constructive and deal with this problem. And that's kind of my, because
37:44 I'm really into marketing. I love to market. And just from a straight marketing point of
37:48 view, it just seems like people go, "Yeah, thank you for telling me the straight story."
37:53 You referenced this a little bit, but you spent your whole career kind of encouraging
37:56 people to travel. And does it ever feel like a weight in some of these issues, that kind
38:03 of sense of responsibility? Or have you made peace with it because of all the things that
38:08 you've said throughout this last hour?
38:09 No, I constantly struggle with it. Or not constantly struggle with it. I mean, I don't
38:13 lose sleep about it, but it's a very important issue. And it frustrates me that there's not
38:19 some kind of better housekeeping seal or something like that. Some government studied and blessed
38:26 kind of ordained kind of smart way to pay for your carbon. Because we read all these
38:33 reports and we think we've got it figured out, but maybe there's just not a definitive
38:37 answer. But I wish the government had a very credible way of saying, "If you want to cover
38:43 your carbon costs, this is how much it costs and this is what you can do." But it needs
38:47 to be credible. My frustration locally with the conventional stuff was we learned about
38:53 it from brokers. Brokers who sell carbon offsets. And they're businesses. They may say they're
39:02 motivated by the environment or altruism, but they're just making their commission off
39:07 what they sell. And it just was hard to feel it was really credible. But if there was some
39:12 really accepted and clear way that we could understand what is our carbon cost and how
39:19 can we mitigate it, that would be really great. And we're doing our best right now to do that.
39:24 And then as I said, there's two sides to the coin because we need to be empowered to do
39:31 good by taking home that most beautiful souvenir and that's a broader perspective.
39:36 Well put. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I appreciate
39:44 your sense of responsibility and transparency.
39:47 Well thank you, Aislinn. I really enjoy an interview where it causes me to try to put
39:53 the thoughts I'm struggling with into some sort of a smart sort of text. And I actually
40:00 come out of the interview learning more about what I'm thinking than I would in the interview.
40:05 So that's great. So thanks for raising awareness about this important issue.
40:14 All hail the mighty Rick. Thank you, Rick, for your time and your thoughts. If you want
40:19 to learn more about the Climate Smart Commitment, tune in next week as we chat with Craig Davidson,
40:24 Chief Operating Officer of Rick Steves Europe. We talk more about the very careful selection
40:30 process for these nonprofits that they donate to, the types of projects that they're involved
40:35 in which revolve around farming and education for women and girls, and the questions that
40:40 they still ask themselves around this whole issue of climate change and travel. It's a
40:44 great conversation, so be sure you tune in. In the meantime, you can always explore more
40:48 at ricksteves.com and subscribe to his podcast, Travel with Rick Steves. In our show notes,
40:55 we'll also link to our own stories about carbon offset programs, flying less, and other climate
41:00 change issues. See you next week. Ready for more unpacking? Visit afar.com and be sure
41:07 to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We're @afarmedia. If you enjoyed today's exploration,
41:13 I hope you'll come back for more great stories. Subscribing makes this easy. You can find
41:18 Unpacked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And be sure to
41:23 rate and review the show. It helps other travelers find it. This season, we also want to hear
41:28 from you. Is there a travel dilemma, trend, or topic you'd like us to explore? Email us
41:34 at unpacked@afar.com. This has been Unpacked, a production of Avar Media. The podcast is
41:40 produced by Aislinn Green and Nikki Galteland. Music composition by Chris Gollin. And remember,
41:46 the world is complicated. We're here to help you unpack it.
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