Five years of no flying
✈️ ❌ ➡️ 🚅 ✅
5 years ago, I realised that my #academic travels were emitting way too much #greenhouse #gas #GHG (up to 20 t #CO2 / yr) and hence that my #professional activity was not #sustainable. I thus decided to completely ban air #travel (#plane) and travel mainly by #train within #Europe.
5 years later (i.e. now), my professional travels' #carbonfootprint dropped by **a factor 50**, without impacting my #publication records (compared to 2017 - 2019).
I wrote a post for the #blog of @a4e about my experience. Check it out: astronomersforplanet.earth/fiv…
cc @labos1point5 @LAM_Marseille @CNRS_INSU @academicchatter @astrophysics @StayGrounded_net
#Research #Science #sustainability #ecology #Earth #NoPlanetB #Climate #academicchatter #academicmastodon #ClimateChange #ClimateAction
Five years of no flying - astronomersforplanet.earth
The “Global Warming of 1.5ºC” special report by the IPCC in 2018 acted as a shock in academia. Over the next few years, many initiatives, like A4E or Labos1point5, appeared in order to make research more sustainable.Volker Ossenkopf-Okada (astronomersforplanet.earth)
Andreas Brunthaler
in reply to Dr. Alexandre Santerne 🌍 • • •This is great. I have also reduced my flights drastically during the last 10 years. But it doesn't make a big difference for the whole field, if only a handful of people do this, while others seem to spend more times on planes than on the ground. It also seems to get more difficult as more and more conferences are going back to in-person only meetings. And I definitely noticed that this approach doesn't help my career. We are indeed privileged that we can do this, having permanent positions with already established networks. Unfortunately, this is not an option for younger researchers. And I don't see any momentum to change this at the moment. 😔
@a4e @labos1point5 @LAM_Marseille @CNRS_INSU @academicchatter @astrophysics @StayGrounded_net @AlexSanterne
Dr. Alexandre Santerne 🌍
in reply to Andreas Brunthaler • • •@brunthal that’s one of the reasons why I am communicating on this: alone it doesn’t change anything significantly. If, thanks to this post, I can convince just a few folks to do the same, then to convince a few others each, it will end up being significant.
Well, my position regarding conferences is just boycott them if they are in-person only. These conferences are just a reason for very privileged people to do some tourism payed by public fund. Networking is obviously important but you don’t need to send 1000 researchers in the same place for that. They were relevant at the time when researchers were spending their time writing physical letters to their colleagues. Nowadays we have good alternatives.
I have also questioned a lot what we (I) was doing. Are the GHG emissions fully justified compared to what I’m studying in academia? We can’t answer all scientific questions, some are more relevant than others. However, where is the threshol
... Show more...@brunthal that’s one of the reasons why I am communicating on this: alone it doesn’t change anything significantly. If, thanks to this post, I can convince just a few folks to do the same, then to convince a few others each, it will end up being significant.
Well, my position regarding conferences is just boycott them if they are in-person only. These conferences are just a reason for very privileged people to do some tourism payed by public fund. Networking is obviously important but you don’t need to send 1000 researchers in the same place for that. They were relevant at the time when researchers were spending their time writing physical letters to their colleagues. Nowadays we have good alternatives.
I have also questioned a lot what we (I) was doing. Are the GHG emissions fully justified compared to what I’m studying in academia? We can’t answer all scientific questions, some are more relevant than others. However, where is the threshold?
If we ask the general public about which scientific questions are worth significant GHG emissions, I’m afraid they would not raise ours (mine).
@academicchatter