Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Vatican asks tourists to green their vacay


Summer travel season is here, and Pope Benedict wants you to remember one thing: harming the environment is a sin. So, watch out all you globetrotters! The increasingly eco-friendly Vatican released a set of travel tips to the devout this week, including suggestions on how to make your vacation more environmentally responsible. Apparently, the word on the street in Vatican City is: "One can choose to be a tourist at odds with the Earth or in favor of it."

The message comes as the latest in a series of environmentally-conscious initiatives by the Vatican -- like going carbon-neutral and defining pollution as a "new sin." The Pope's travel tips aren't really all that enlightening. They range from simply bringing less luggage on planes and other gas guzzlers, to offsetting your travel footprint by planting trees. Still, it's pretty significant that Catholicism is going green. It kinda seems to raise the question: is any form of tourism truly eco-friendly? Shouldn't we just abolish vacation and work all the time? I'm kidding.

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