[News] Will travelers trash or treasure the planet after the pandemic?

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Let's journey back to a different time. One that feels far away. Early January 2020.

Travelers were gearing up for another booming year of adventures -- from visits to Japan for the Olympics to cruises galore. But while we aimed for another year of far-flung trips, environmental activists continued their warnings about a growing climate catastrophe and the role travelers were playing.

Some people had been heeding their calls and trying to plan more sustainable trips. Tips on going green from CNN Travel and other sites were po[CENSORED]r reading then.

But for the most part, travel projections were for more of the same. We couldn't let problems such as emissions and overtourism keep us at home -- we had a world to see in 2020!

Meanwhile, a new and different kind of threat -- one that couldn't be so easily swept aside -- was about to be unleashed. Reports were coming out about a new, mysterious virus in the interior of China. It wasn't SARS. It had infected dozens of people. But what was it?

We had no idea that our world and the travel industry with it were about to be turned upside down.

A disquieting quiet

Almost in the blink of an eye, everything changed because of that new virus. It swept the globe.

Countries closed their borders. The Summer Olympics were postponed. Cruise ships desperately searched for harbors to let passengers off. Airports were nearly empty. Beach resorts were deserted. Amusement parks became ghost towns. Covid-19 and coronavirus soon became household words.

Then, we noticed something rather nice -- a silver lining of sorts -- during the spring shutdown.

In normally polluted cities such as Los Angeles, skies were clearer. So was water -- people could see marine life in Venice's normally turgid, busy canals. To our delight, birdsong became easier to hear.

There seemed to be a cause and effect at work. And it raised a lot of questions.

Did the sudden drop in global travel really have an unexpected benefit for the environment? Are there ways to keep the perceived benefits going if or when the virus is under control? And perhaps most importantly, can we return to roaming the world one day but be better stewards of our planet while doing so?

As with everything else involving the pandemic, the answers are hard and complicated.

Emissions and carbon footprints

One statistic -- a seemingly small number -- had big things to say about tourism and its effect on the environment before the pandemic: 8%.

That's how much tourism contributed to global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a groundbreaking study from researchers at the University of Queensland Australia and University of Sydney in May 2018. (Greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and cause the planet to warm quickly.)

That was some four times higher than previously estimated. And the majority of this carbon footprint (the total amount of greenhouse gases we generate with our actions) came from high-income countries.

The study also found the fast rise in tourism demand was "effectively outstripping" the technological improvements the industry was making toward reducing its carbon footprint. The study didn't have a sunny outlook going forward, either.

"We project that, due to its high carbon intensity and continuing growth, tourism will constitute a growing part of the world's greenhouse gas emissions."

Everything goes out the window

No one knew in 2018 that we'd have a history-making coronavirus pandemic in 2020. That threw everything out the window about where we thought we'd be.

The quarantines and shutdowns caused unprecedented slowdowns in the air transport and tourism industries, according to a July 2020 study from the University of Sydney. It found that overall global emissions dropped by 4.6%. That happens to be the largest drop in history.

But while the environment got a break, the world's economy got slammed. Transport and tourism have been the worst-hit sectors, the study found.

Arunima Malik of the University of Sydney's Business School and one of the authors of the study, put it this way in the study: "We are experiencing the worst economic shock since the Great Depression, while at the same time we have experienced the greatest drop in greenhouse gas emissions since the burning of fossil fuels began."

Small countries hit hard

Ya-Yen Sun, senior lecturer at the University of Queensland Australia's School of Business and another author on the studies, told CNN Travel that countries heavily reliant on tourism have been devastated.

"We know tourism is one of the largest [economic] sectors in the world. It contributes about 10% of the global GDP and one in 10 jobs are related to tourism," Sun said.