Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Sterling suggests turning environmental disasters into tourist attractions, noting the irony of repurposing dead ecosystems.
In plain terms
If the reef dies, we might turn the ruins into a tourist site.
What can you take from it?
Disasters often get repurposed for commerce or entertainment.

Where it applies

  • tourism planning
  • climate fiction
  • environmental policy

Putting it to work

  • plan eco-tourism
  • study disaster zones
  • analyze adaptation

Questions to consider

  • How do we monetize loss?
  • Is disaster tourism inevitable?

Another view

This view risks trivializing the severity of ecological collapse.

More from Bruce Sterling

  1. My hero keeps coming up with these elaborately justified schemes. He's delusional. He does redouble his efforts when he loses sight of his aims.

    Permalink to quote #41
  2. One of the points about distractions is that everything that they do is destabilizing.

    Permalink to quote #43
  3. Last week I was in Italy hanging out with Linux freeware activists in a college event sponsored by a dance club that's run by some kind of anarchist dive with …

    Permalink to quote #40

Related quotes

  1. Give me a half-tanker of iron, and I'll give you an ice-age.

    John MartinJohn Martin quote #1
  2. The Administration should never have walked away from the Kyoto Treaty. Global warming is real and it is here today. The facts aren't the issue. The policy is …

    Ted KulongoskiTed Kulongoski quote #9
  3. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.

    Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert quote #35