Climate Change And Effects On Hospitality Industry Environmental Sciences Essay

This report overall discuss about the global climate change or global warming and its serious impacts on the whole world. In detail it discusses about how global warming is caused, what is the main epidemic for the climate change, its direct effects on the hospitality industry. Further it tells about the latest IPCC report which tells how deep is everyone in water and discusses about the future projected changes. Later this report discuss about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed by Australian Government where it briefly tells about what is CPRS and its impacts specially on Australian tourism industry. This report also analysed one of the world’s leading 5 star properties in terms of how eco friendly is that property. In the end of the report it discuss about the recent conference held in Copenhagen regarding the global climate change and the new laws and issues that were raised by keeping tourism in focus.

Climate change had begun a long time ago, but it knocked the unconsciousness of human mind a bit late when theses changes were at their peak. In other words people actually started to pay serious attention to these changes when they heard from the mouth of scientists, when they saw on T.V. that the meetings were been held all around the world and saw the consequences with their own naked eyes and believed that this is not a joke but is a matter of serious consideration. The change in climate started to occur more than 2 decades ago. Now the question that arises over here is ‘who is responsible for all this and how to cope up with the situation like this?’

Further this report will discuss about the factors due to which the planet earth is facing devastating changes in its environment, its impact on the innocent people and also on the Australian hospitality industry.

Global Warming and its impacts on the whole world

This report basically discusses about the changes that are taking place in the earth’s environment. The term environment refers to features that lie outside the system under consideration and separated from the system by a boundary. The boundary acts as a control on the flows that take place from the system into the environment. This flow could be of anything, it could be the flow of money, pollution or information. But our major concern in this report is the flow of earth’s ecological system. Now the boundary of our ecological system has become totally semi – permeable which was permeable before. Semi – Permeable boundary simply means that the boundary is getting thick day by day that it is preventing all the green house gasses such as methane, nitrogen etc. and other invisible radiation to escape, which in turn increasing the temperature of earth constantly resulting in Global Warming. The term global warming is defined as a system of multipliers devised to enable warming effects of different gases to be compared. Global warming is not just about warming of the planet, its also about the imbalance which gets created in the environment. For example over the past few years some irrelevant changes have been seen in few countries such as the place which is supposed to get good amount of rain faced severe drought and on the other hand the places which were meant to be dried got heavily flooded. From the latest research it has been found that the amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere has crossed 300ppm which had never happened in 650,000 years. The limit has gone above more than 382ppm where 450ppm being the dangerous sign. The reason is fairly simple i.e. increased pollution in the earth’s ecological system which in turn has increased the green house effect as well and the increased human activities. Green house gases consists gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and CFC’s. One thing to be noticed over here is that the major contributor of green house gases is carbon and as discussed above the annual carbon emission has grew above 80%. Because of the green house effect the icebergs down in arctic are melting and rising the sea level all around the world, due to which the oceans are getting hotter and hotter by absorbing the huge amount of carbon radiation resulting into hurricanes, typhoons and tornados. The increase in the emission of GHG’s is because of increasing human activities day by day. These activities involve the burning of fossil fuels such as crude oil, coal etc. that are limited in quantity and non renewable sources of energy. This means the more the, people more the burning of fossil fuels and more the pollution will be created. Human influences have very likely contributed to rise in sea level, likely contributed changes in the wind patterns leading to storms, typhoons, hurricanes etc. Not only human beings contribute to global warming, animals also contribute such as cows, sheeps etc. They release methane gas which when comes out becomes more poisonous because of the way their digestive system is created.

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According to recent IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) the annual Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk from 2.7% to 8% per decade since 1978, which is an increase of 5.3% resulting in declination of snow and glaciers in both hemispheres. There is a medium confidence that the continuous change in climate is also affecting the agriculture at northern hemisphere such as early spring planting of crops and alternations in disturbance regimes of forests because of inability to adapt changes. As the earth is getting hotter and hotter the amount of water present on the earth is decreasing because of evaporation. Mount Everest which is the source of water for many countries such as India, Nepal, China etc. is losing the ice continuously which is not a good sign. Everything has some negative effects and some positive effects which can be proven by the simple example of melting of ice, good effect is that some countries get water to drink whereas the bad effect is that it also leads to rise in sea level.

This is not only affecting human beings its also affecting the natural habitat. Due to global warming the bird babies and other babies are getting born immature and weak and also prior to their actual birth timings. This pollution has also decreased the protective layer which protects from mosquitoes and lots of other deadly infections, the major protective layer is the ozone layer. The depletion in the ozone layer has increased the chances of skin cancer. The movie ‘Six Degrees’ tells that how does earth changes its form even if the overall temperature of earth just increases by 1 degree centigrade. The increase of 1 degree can result into bushfires that is one of the common things for Australia. Six degrees is the last stage and beyond that earth will no longer exist

Future climate changes and its impacts

As per the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) in the next 20 years there will be 70% increase in global GHG’s with no fossil fuels left. Furthermore there is projected warming of 0.5 degrees centigrade for next two decades even if all the GHG’s are kept under control, a further warming of 0.2 degrees centigrade is expected. In the regional areas snow contraction and increase in thaw depth is likely to occur. Increase in frequency of hot extremes, tropical cyclones and increase in precipitation in high latitudes are some of the expected changes. Some of the systems and sectors that are very likely to be affected by the climate change would be terrestrial areas such as tundra, mediterranean type of ecosystems because of reduction in rainfall, coastal and marine areas due to multiple stresses, population living in low latitudes. The most vulnerable part of the world which will be affected would be Asia and Africa because of large population and high exposure to sea level rise.

Effects on Hospitality Industry

The hospitality industry is an international industry emerging worldwide. This industry is extremely important for the economy. Climate change can now be seen as a fundamental issue with major influences on tourism. Hospitality industry does not cause any kind of environmental pollution nor does it consume large amounts of non – renewable sources and therefore this industry is not in the front line of environmental concern. This industry is made up of vast majority of small operations which intakes minute amounts of energy, water, food, paper etc. but it does add small amount of pollution to the environment in terms of noise, smoke, chemical pollutants. The hotel industry damages the environment by releasing some carbon emissions and CFC’s that comes out of the air conditioners and refrigerators, by wasting energy, food, water. These are some of the ways by which the hospitality industry ruins the environment a bit. Now because of this pollution the hospitality industry has also been affected. The hotels that rely on the nature itself for example snow, mountains, lakes or oceans etc. will no longer exist because as the temperature is increasing there will be no ice, sea etc. Climate change has a large potential to totally destroy the hospitality and tourism industry. Climate change will heavily have its impact on this industry by changing the destination patterns and by changing the decisions of the industry. Since tourism industry totally depends on natural environment certain types of tourism will get affected such as winter sports, lake and sea, mountain, fishing etc. The coral reef that are present under water have started to dry out, the sea animals have started to die and this will eventually result into less number of tourist which means less profit and less profit is equal to deep loss for the hotel. The reason is people actually want to see natural beauty, they don’t to see just the empty ocean. If the local environment near the hotel will not be clean no one will go to that hotel.

If a hotel is situated at a location where due to climate change that place is getting heavy rains that place could end up in flood, because of which the tourist would feel unsafe to go there even if the hotel is offering good incentives. Overall it has been seen that the industry is very much vulnerable to bad news or events, this is the only industry which contributes the maximum amount to the country’s GDP.

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

Australia is a hot and dry country and has started to face the impacts at a very high speed. In last 12 years the country has experienced 11 hottest years and it is expected that by the end of this century the temperature will rise by 5 degrees, as a result the national treasures including Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu etc. that support the industry will be in danger. Carbon pollution reduction scheme will led industries to pay for the pollution they create from the carbon in other words putting tax on the usage of carbon and this will set a limit on Australia’s contribution to carbon pollution. This scheme is a cap and trade emissions model created to decline Australia’s emissions of green house gases. This scheme covers emissions from transport, industrial wastes, overall this scheme will cover 75% of Australia’s green house gases. This scheme’s main objective is to reduce green house emissions by between 5 and 15% below 2000 levels by the year 2020 and 60% from 2000 levels by the year 2050

If all the industries in the country follow this scheme there will be a reduction of 15% for sure. This scheme is the lowest cost way to protect the interests of business and households, it will also motivate the major polluting industries to move towards the cleaner future. The CPRS affects the tourism industry in very much economical way. Tourism industry accounts a total of 3.7% of total GDP and it contributes around 10.5% of total exports of goods and services because of international relations. With the CPRS the real GDP will fall because the emissions price under this scheme act as a tax which as a result will reduce the economic efficiency and the tourism industry will slightly experience a contraction with the general shrinkage of the economy as whole. Moreover this scheme will push up the costs for tourism industry which could make Australia more expensive destination.

As the Australian tourism industry is vulnerable to climate change it will influence all the natural assets on which the industry depends and the rise in price of travel and tourism caused by CPRS will further decline the tourist demand. Within this industry aviation is the one which will face a larger consequence from the CPRS as aviation is the core part of Australian tourism industry. The CPRS is going to increase the emission because of the increasing fuel prices. Furthermore the CPRS is expected to affect particularly leisure and regional routes which in turn limits the airlines to pass through cost of carbon. The CPRS will increase the potential for the substitution by increasing the price of domestic aviation. Therefore giving a negative impact on domestic tourism and providing incentives for outbound travel making Australia an importer of tourism and eventually resulting in high risk of carbon leakage. The CPRS will reduce real disposable incomes which will then reduce the domestic tourism within Australia.

Environmental analysis

Sheraton Mirage in Port Douglas is one of the finest 5 star properties. This property is a resort type of property with natural beauty all around. This property is very serious in regards to environment. According to the primary research this hotel recycles the oil instead of draining it away, which could result into sea pollution. They simply recycle it every time and use it for future purposes. They use CFC free chemicals used to clean toilets, glasses and all. They also use solar energy throughout the hotel which helps them to save a lot of electricity. Since it is a golf resort they actually use electric golf carts instead of using the one which runs with petrol or diesel.

From the secondary research it has been found that the water which gets waste, they recycle it and use it for watering the areas such as golf course. They offer guests to use bath towels in order to reduce the detergent amount. Electricity is also reduced by using the CFL bulbs and lights and guests are asked to turn off their lights when not in use. This hotel practise waste minimisation and separate glass, paper and plastic for recycling. Sheraton Mirage has a large swimming pool where it uses the sea water that directly comes there.

Copenhagen Conference

Recently there had been a conference in Copenhagen in Denmark regarding the global climate change in which all the countries around the world took part. In the conference a lot of suggestion were been given such as if petroleum based economy is converted into sun based economy. This will enable human kind by combining intellect and technology to enable advance human activities. A lot of issues were raised in relation to transport as it emits 870 million tonnes of carbon each year. The UNFCC decided to take necessary actions in two ways, one is by including emissions in national totals and taking it as a purely accounting measure and the other is by setting the target for the two sectors and mandating IMO and ICAO to agree on global sector policies within a limited timeframe. The shipping industry could rise their annual allowances by $ 25 billion.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this report that comes out is that the whole world is in danger as the global warming is at its peak point. But this is not the end of the world, it can still be controlled if everyone starts to think over it. This is not a joke, its the time to get serious. If the people will take serious action over it such as by adapting new policies which will then help them to cope up with the climate changes. The only recommendation that could be made at this point is that people should start measuring the amount of carbon they use and by recycling the stuff rather than to throw away and by saving the resources as much as they could.