(this is a blog, not a podcast)Most tourism researchers gave up on the concept of Carrying Capacity a couple of decades ago, as I discussed in an earlier podcast. Yet the media, politicians, and the general public still hang on to the simplistic belief that a scientifically-based single number carrying capacity can determined for any single place. Well, now the State of Hawaii has shown that even $1.2 million, 2,560 pages, and 5 years of research cannot determine a carrying capacity for the Aloha state...
Sustainable tourism study breaks little new ground - MSNBC.com
...
The study sidestepped any effort to calculate the state's so-called "carrying capacity," which was one of the missions set out by the Legislature when it funded the study in 2001.
Instead, the project, conducted by the state Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism, aims to provide guideposts for managing tourism so that the positives of employment and economic growth are not outweighed by the negatives of crowding and diminishing natural resources.
