ABSTRACT

The international political arena in recent years evidences a substantial shift in terms of the environmental agenda, as set out in the early 1990s in Agenda 21 (Dodds 2002), away from sustainability and increasingly on climate change (Leslie 2009a). This emphasis on climate change and thus on greenhouse gas emissions has generated substantial debate and led to the current popularity of terms such as ‘carbon footprint’, ‘carbon offsetting’ and ‘carbon tax’ and the politically driven campaign for renewable energy. At the same time global demand for energy continues to increase, particularly of fossil fuels and hence the emergence of trading schemes and carbon taxes. The inescapable outcome of this is increased (and increasing) energy costs, a fact which all enterprises have to address. Such increased costs are also influencing the prices of consumer goods and services, especially those involving a travel element, which holds substantial implications for the tourism sector (see Hall and Gossling 2009, Gossling and Hall 2006). It is not just the impact of energy costs that is of concern, but what steps are being taken in the wider context of sustainability, which is encompassed in the concept of the environmental performance of enterprise; This includes addressing those issues specific to climate change. This broader area of sustainability is what lies at the heart of this chapter.