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Tourists ‘defiling' the Dales
The Yorkshire Dales Society estimates that visitors in cars are responsible for 38,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, reports the Yorkshire Post...
IT has no power stations and little sign of pollution, but those who love the Yorkshire Dales National Park have an appalling carbon footprint – equivalent to a small power station.
More than 90 per cent of visitors to the Dales travel in their own cars. Even if there were three people per car – above the average – this represents 2.4m journeys per year.
The society's calculations are based on a round trip of 100km or 60 miles – Leeds to Grassington return – in a small, modern fuel-efficient car (not a 4x4) which achieves 160 grammes per kilometre, slightly less than the current EU average for new cars.
This equates to an actual output of 16 kilogrammes of CO2 per 100km trip. If this is multiplied on an annual basis by 2.4m trips it would create, at an absolute minimum, 38,400 tonnes of CO2 from all those nice family trips to the National Park.
Based on similar figures used elsewhere, this equates to a large industrial plant or small power station and these figures are almost certainly gross underestimates.
Regrettable lack of research
The estimates are contained in the latest edition of the Yorkshire Dales Review, the society's quarterly magazine edited by Fleur and Colin Speakman.
The article expresses surprise that neither North Yorkshire County Council nor the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has done research on driving patterns and their subsequent emissions because they are claimed to consider traffic and transport issues in the Dales as a "low priority".
Mr Speakman observed: "So much for meeting the Government's CO2 reduction targets and the park's reputation to be at the cutting edge of conservation. The negative environmental impact of tourism traffic is, to quote Al Gore, too much of 'an inconvenient truth'."
He continued: "if for only one journey in five, visitors could be persuaded to walk, cycle, share a car, enjoy a day on the superb Settle-Carlisle line or take the excellent Dalesbus network for a point-to-point walk, that would achieve a massive saving of 7,680 tonnes of CO2 per annum – a really worthwhile reduction in the Dales carbon footprint."
Park authority ‘acting irresponsibly’
The society is critical of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority for reducing the provision and marketing of the Dalesbus network, which it describes as "irresponsible – a complete contradiction of what the National Park was set up to achieve".
The authority's head of park management, Jon Avison, said the importance of the carbon footprint of visitors was recognised and they were encouraged to stay longer and use public transport where possible.
But the key decisions on public transport provision were not the responsibility of the authority," he said.
"We belong to the Yorkshire Dales Sustainable Travel Partnership and we are all trying to promote sustainable transport to and from the Dales. We still have a lot to do, but to say we are acting irresponsibly is just not true."
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