The place is Britain.  The year is 2118.

Emma has just finished planning the family holiday.  Cycling from their home to the Mediterranean coast of France, getting the train back.  One short, one long route each day on the way out, to cater for tastes and energy levels.  Mix of B&Bs and chambres d’hotes on the way down, a week’s airbnb near the coast.

Before the Resource Wars of the 21st century, people used to fly everywhere on holiday, oblivious to the land and sea they were crossing en route.  Man-made global warming, with transport contributions making up the largest sectoral share, led to catastrophic changes in rainfall patterns in the U.S. and the first Water War – a land grab  of western Canada by the Americans, with the Canadians hopelessly outgunned – ensued in 2068.  This was closely followed by the second Water War in the Middle East and the third, a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan over the latter’s water security in Kashmir.  In other parts of the world such as sub-saharan Africa, people just died in greater numbers without a named conflict to mark the occasion.  All told, experts put the number of deaths related to water shortages globally at close to a billion during the second half of the century, with Asia and Africa suffering the greatest losses.

Any yet it wasn’t primarily the shocking spectacle of these wars that dissuaded people from flying.  Increased turbulence from more disturbance in the atmosphere (faster surface evaporation associated with climate change led to increased energy levels in the stratosphere, and consequently to stronger and more variable winds) put off those with a poor stomach.  But the real impact was from much higher fuel prices as eventually the supplies of jet kerosene started to wane.  (Batteries had been made to work for short-haul flights but proved physically impossible for long distances.)  It just became too expensive for most of us to afford.

Needs must, not only practically but also psychologically.  As people experienced the disappointment of the intercontinental holidays enjoyed by their parents becoming inaccessible to them, they began to question the merit of those holidays and to talk up the advantages of nearer destinations that one could reach on land and by boat.  Schools started to teach not only about the damage caused by long-distance travel – both in terms of climate change and also the spread of disease (an antibiotic-resistant superbug epidemic killed tens of millions in western Europe in 2071) – but also about its motivation in the following two additions to the national curriculum in education.

Firstly, humanities classes taught that it was no longer necessary to travel far to experience different cultures: excellent communications let us see them on our screens at home.  Our cities had become so cosmopolitan that most of the world’s languages and cultures could be experienced in them without having to visit their places of origin.  And it was taught that becoming broad-minded and tolerant is about noticing, thinking about and caring for people and other life forms around us – and about always being willing to admit that one’s own views might be mistaken – rather than about travelling thousands of miles to similar hotels at dissimilar latitudes.

Secondly, in a growing emphasis on the subject of psychology, pupils were taught about the causes of restlessness.  It was increasingly understood that if people are over-fed, under-exercised (mentally as well as physically), lonely, and/or over-exposed to tempting or disturbing images – not to mention images of people who are better-looking or just better at something – their restlessness grows, with manic travel being one possible outlet.

To assist the psychologists in countering this restlessness, a few enlightened politicians drove through a variety of measures – in the workplace as well as in schools – to increase the population’s participation in local sports, societies, on-going education and charitable ventures.  The belated introduction of standards for internet content was also finally agreed on an international scale.

There was also the more prosaic influence that travel became less interesting.  For instance, study of the Great Barrier Reef was added to the history syllabus in schools: apparently a quarter of the world’s fish species used to congregate in a large coral reef off Australia’s east coast, before the coral was killed by rising temperatures and acidification, and unceremoniously pulverised for building material.  With no wild places left on Earth, travel lost a bit of its romance.

So Emma has not lost too much sleep over the fact that when she was her eldest’s age, her parents took her to the Maldives (now under water).  She does not think the cycling trip to Nice is mean by comparison.  After all, Nice is now just as warm in summer as the Maldives were then; and the mode of transport will be much more comfortable and illuminating (not just cheaper) than a plane.  After a hot swim, the family will still be able to eat from a wide range of global cuisine, or watch a film in any language.

If she has a tinge of regret that Nice is hardly exotic, it is easily tempered by the knowledge that nowhere is anymore.