Kermit was right. It’s not easy being green.

Seems like no matter how hard we try, some days we can’t win for losing. Three major industrial fires over a ten-day period, and "poof", our sparsely-populated little province has just blown off more greenhouse gases than the sum of emissions from every farm tractor in Saskatchewan for 3.5 years, and laden the atmosphere with enough carcinogens to outweigh the health benefits of smoke-free workplaces for at least a decade.

Or perhaps not. Or maybe it’s even worse than that; I don’t pretend to have a handle on the numbers, but I do know bad things happen despite all the regulations. It is a bit discouraging, though, when you consider that – regulations or not - some folks are making every effort to ensure the total impacts of their personal and business activities contribute as little damage to our world as possible.

But it’s an uphill battle. Just the simple (and involuntary) act of breathing adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, let alone all the other pollutants generated by simply going through a human lifecycle. When we were all hunter-gatherers, sustainable food harvesting consisted of being where the food was already growing, and sustainable tourism was the process of getting to that place - on foot, of course. Things are a little more complicated now; we all seem to want to live in cities and have the food delivered to us on demand, and we are apparently enthusiastic about embracing the concept of a forever-growing worldwide population (presumably because we need more markets and bigger tax revenues to support this new-found lifestyle of ours.)

There is yet another disconnect in our cultural logic: travel has become the latest in a string of new "human rights". Remember that bit about our hunter-gatherer ancestors having to travel for food? Nowadays we not only expect our food and water delivered, but we think we are entitled to travel anywhere we want, anytime we want, just for the hell of it. And we seem unwilling to include walking in our travel plans; how many people do you know who crank up that new hybrid car engine and drive over to the walking-jogging-cycling paths so they can feel good about exercising? I know some, and I see lot’s of ‘em!

So how is a person in the tourism business supposed to respond? To carry on with hope and faith may be an appealing option, although without action, hope and faith are no better solutions than doing nothing while harbouring an abiding cynicism. Maybe, just maybe, our clients (despite themselves) may prod us to move in the right direction. There are signs of a new consumer maturity moving forward along with that sense of "travel entitlement"; it appears this new entitlement may include an expectation that the tourism and travel industries will actually deliver a more responsible product, rather than simply fill brochures with "greenwash". Industry leaders – and ultimately industry survivors - will do so because it is the new business imperative.

That is the thinking behind the Canadian Sustainable Tourism Advisory Council, (CSTAC), an initiative of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. CSTAC is calling on input from a number of professionals in the tourism industry to develop sustainable tourism business criteria and – ultimately – a certification process which will principally function as an instructive tool for tourism practitioners to help their businesses meet global expectations.

PGK