Scholarscarbon footprint
Usually researchers travel a lot to attend to conferences, meetings or field work.
It is important to meet people from different countries, share work and discuss ideas.
But we should rethink how often scholars fly from all over the places to meet just for a few days.
A group of 56 scholars launched a petition calling upon universities and academic professional associations to greatly reduce flying-related footprint as part of effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Why?
Because flying contributes significantly to global climate change.
It is responsible for 2-3% of annual global CO2 emissions–about the same percentage that Germany and the city of Beijing, for example, contribute each year.
Flying’s share of global emissions is growing steadily as the growth in total flying miles outstrips improvements in fuel and engine efficiency.
Because flying releases various pollutants at high altitude, its detrimental impact is far greater than that caused by CO2 emissions alone.
One round-trip flight from New York City to London or San Francisco incurs a warming effect equivalent of more than two metric tons of carbon emissions per economy passenger–about 20 percent of the total annual emissions of a typical person in Finland, and more than 100 percent of those generated by an average person in India.
Is it sometimes important for academics to fly?
Yes. When we discuss the themes of this petition, our faculty colleagues mention important flights that they would not want to miss.
On some travel occasions by air, our colleagues have given brilliant conference papers, collected novel data, formed life-long collaborations, influenced public policies, developed action plans to address humanitarian emergencies, and changed the world for the better.
Rest assured that these are not the flights we propose to reduce.
...
We sometimes ask colleagues what fraction of their flights could be reduced without impairing their productivity and career success.
The answer often is surprisingly high, reaching half or more of all flights.
One might ask why faculty members sometimes fly to conferences and meetings that are unrewarding.
One common answer is that they feel pressure not to miss the same events that other people in the field are attending.
Collective action and coordination will help us alleviate the air travel arms race, allowing us each to scale back comparatively less productive travel without sacrificing the flights that really are most important.
It is important to meet people from different countries, share work and discuss ideas.
But we should rethink how often scholars fly from all over the places to meet just for a few days.
A group of 56 scholars launched a petition calling upon universities and academic professional associations to greatly reduce flying-related footprint as part of effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Why?
Because flying contributes significantly to global climate change.
It is responsible for 2-3% of annual global CO2 emissions–about the same percentage that Germany and the city of Beijing, for example, contribute each year.
Flying’s share of global emissions is growing steadily as the growth in total flying miles outstrips improvements in fuel and engine efficiency.
Because flying releases various pollutants at high altitude, its detrimental impact is far greater than that caused by CO2 emissions alone.
One round-trip flight from New York City to London or San Francisco incurs a warming effect equivalent of more than two metric tons of carbon emissions per economy passenger–about 20 percent of the total annual emissions of a typical person in Finland, and more than 100 percent of those generated by an average person in India.
Yes. When we discuss the themes of this petition, our faculty colleagues mention important flights that they would not want to miss.
On some travel occasions by air, our colleagues have given brilliant conference papers, collected novel data, formed life-long collaborations, influenced public policies, developed action plans to address humanitarian emergencies, and changed the world for the better.
Rest assured that these are not the flights we propose to reduce.
...
We sometimes ask colleagues what fraction of their flights could be reduced without impairing their productivity and career success.
The answer often is surprisingly high, reaching half or more of all flights.
One might ask why faculty members sometimes fly to conferences and meetings that are unrewarding.
One common answer is that they feel pressure not to miss the same events that other people in the field are attending.
Collective action and coordination will help us alleviate the air travel arms race, allowing us each to scale back comparatively less productive travel without sacrificing the flights that really are most important.