Having done a lot of traveling along with a lot of reading (often at the same time), just reading about a place is a good start, but there's no substitute for actually going there, meeting real people, eating the food, dealing with public transportation and the weather, experiencing all the tiny inconveniences and innovations that shape life. It broadens your worldview, confirming beyond a doubt that the way things are done in your town is neither the only nor the best way, just one of many, and that the people who live "over there" are in fact people, not just statistics.

I agree that the environmental impact is a big problem. But perhaps if more people traveled, we would be more likely to get the kind of international cooperation we need to tackle climate change systemically.

Nope. Having traveled a bunch myself and talked to many other people who have traveled, traveling to a place can easily be one of the worst ways to actually learn about how the people live. Being a tourist in a place teaches you nothing about the voting process there, the community councils, the property tax codes, etc.

Essentially, traveling to another place without living there for many months only gives you an understanding of the most superficial aspects of life.

> we would be more likely to get the kind of international cooperation we need to tackle climate change systemically

This doesn’t even make sense. People who live in the same cities struggle to cooperate on even super local problems like housing. Ted from Kansas City flying to Europe to eat a steak in Florence is not going to help anything.

Bending over backwards for the enrionment at the cost of living life is paperclip maximizing - the point of maintaining the environment is to keep it sustainable for our wants and needs.