Despite a lean year of grounded flights and scuttled travel dreams, travel company Rick Steves’ Europe renewed its Climate Smart Commitment Monday, paying a “self-imposed carbon tax” of $500,000. The company will distribute the funds to 10 nonprofit organizations, carefully selected for their work in fighting climate change on the ground in the developing world and through government advocacy in the U.S.
CEO Rick Steves, a well-known travel writer and public television host, says the Climate Smart Commitment reflects the company’s core value of demonstrating good global citizenship — and he hopes other travel businesses will steal the idea.
“30,000 people took a Rick Steves tour in 2019,” says Steves. “And to help mitigate the environmental cost of all those flights, we set aside $30 of our profit for each traveler.” The result was a self-imposed carbon tax totaling $1 million, which the company invested in a portfolio of nonprofit organizations that fight climate change.
“We didn’t take anyone to Europe in 2020,” Steves says. “But we were so excited about the progress we made on our Climate Smart Commitment in 2019, this year we decided to pay half of what we would have if it’d been business as usual.”
While there are many fine organizations doing effective work to fight climate change, this year’s grant recipients were chosen for their proven effectiveness in: 1) helping farming communities in the developing world employ climate-smart agriculture and forestry techniques to mitigate their contribution to climate change and 2) advocating in Congress for US government policies to fight climate change.
This year’s grant recipients include Project Concern International, Agros International, Bread for the World, and the ZEITZ Foundation. A full list of recipients and information about their efforts to fight climate change is available in the 2020-21 Climate Smart Commitment Portfolio.
“This isn’t heroics,” Steves says. “It’s simply the right thing to do, and the ethical way to run a business—especially a travel business.”
Thank you Rick Steves for sticking to your Climate Smart Commitment. You are a business owner that always looks at the bigger picture and does the right thing.
Did Rick Steves’ Europe receive any PPP money from the government?
Huge respect for Rick Steve. I disagree with him politically on some things, but he does lead from the front. The year Berni Sanders ran for POTUS I made slightly less money than he did, but a paid quite a bit more in taxes. Hats off to people who practice their beliefs.
That said, carbon (CO2) is a good thing and the earth is doing better with increased concentrations. Geologically the planet is near the lowest CO2, and plants in this epoch have been suffocating. Vegetative mass has increased due to CO2 emissions, despite the fact that land has been over-developed by humans. CO2 emissions have been [in a way] paying the planet back. The planet loves CO2.