After Everest, we have to rethink the places we are loving to death | Van Badham

The solution to overtourism is more than just spreading the crowds more evenly"Everest is over," declared the Atlantic earlier this month. The conclusion came at the end of a tragic climbing season on the mountain. Eleven new deaths added more bodies to "the world's highest garbage dump", even as tourists to the summit posted photos to social media of their passage past corpses that had been there so long, they had become landmarks. Accumulating with the tonnes of spent oxygen cylinders, tents, gas cartridges, plastic and human turds left by a literal queue of visitors to Everest's peak, is the globally shared concern with overtourism.Cheap flights, internet bookings, opportunistic businesses and no small amount of status competition is driving record crowds towards popular destinations. In 1995, global tourist arrivals numbered 525 million; last year, they reached 1.4 billion. Continue reading...