A few barely connected thoughts on this: - I can't imagine that anyone doubts that face to face contact through conferences is valuable. The question is how valuable. Heating, nappies, visiting family are all valuable too. But we need to reduce carbon emissions from all of these, and there's no reason why conferences or other academic activity should be an exception.
- If anything, academic activity should aspire to be exceptional in the other direction. Universities should aspire to be utopian spaces, and to be at the forefront of pushing for progressive social change. For me this means, on carbon, that higher education should be adopting higher than mandated emissions reduction targets. They (and we) should not only be doing our bit, but be setting an example, and to be seen to be setting an example. We should not only try to avoid being hypocritical, but to help undercut the charge of hypocrisy that is so often (rightly) levelled at middle class professionals over their value and lifestyle choices. - It's a mistake to understand this problem just in terms of individual choice and responsibility, however. There are powerful structural factors at work here that make (most) academics feel that they have to attend so many conferences, as many of the contributions to this thread have illustrated. We should be countering and contesting these structural factors. For example, appointment, promotion and tenure committees should be de-emphasising conference attendance, and we should be pushing for this within our own universities. - Writing from the UK, there's an important international dimension that's worth emphasising here too. In my own discipline (IR), there's a huge structural problem with imbalance between the annual International Studies Association conference and the national equivalent (BISA). Top UK scholars go to ISA. So everyone else does too - mainly to talk and hang out with other UK people (and often, to be honest, their colleagues). The end result is that BISA is mostly pretty weak and huge unnecessary dollops of carbon are emitted on the way to the US. In my view decarbonisation requires some localisation. And one corollary of that in our own profession is that there should be a rebalancing between the major international conferences and our national equivalents. If ISA were for instance held just every second year and if it actively promoted attendance at national/local equivalent instead, as part of its contribution to decarbonisation, this would be an important step. - In my view the major structural factor is that there is no accountability over carbon use from conference attendance or business travel generally (at least in the UK). In the UK, universities are meant to be working towards 44% carbon emissions reduction by 2020 compared with 2005/6 baseline. But this only applies to scope 1 and 2. On scope 3 (indirect emissions, so including business travel) institutions don't even have to bother reporting. In other words, conference attendance is currently a matter of individual responsibility not by nature but by design. Some redesigning is clearly needed here. Why don't ISA and other professional associations set themselves ambitious carbon reduction targets, that include travel to their conferences? Best wishes Jan Jan Selby Professor of International Relations Director, Sussex Centre for Conflict and Security Research University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QN, UK Tel: +44 (0)1273 876694 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/145874 SCSR: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/scsr/ On 7 Dec 2014, at 20:48, Leslie Wirpsa wrote: Dear colleagues, I have been watching this discussion with absolute fascination. I am presently an independent scholar working a business that coaches grad students to get their theses done, and works with junior and senior scholars for grants and publication editing -- many for whom English is not the primary language. We work from Korea to California to Kenya, using mostly Skype. My partner and I had a fascinating discussion just today about the virtue or not of meeting for a second coaching session with a local client -- 30 miles driving is 30 miles for both parties. That said, I believe different interactions and creativity come forth through the FTF interactions. Thanks for this discussion. Our company is www.rampartprosolutions.com<http://www.rampartprosolutions.com>. ________________________________ From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [gep-ed] Virtues of academic conferences Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 20:39:43 +0000 Hi all, For me, the choice to conference or not is a false choice. The question is one of number and frequency. If conferences were on 18 month cycles instead on annual, we could reduce our emissions by one-third. That seems like an appropriate reduction in the near-term and a sensible middle ground. It would also provide most of the benefits of annual conferences, and conferences could even be extended for a day. I am not persuaded by the argument that academic travel for conferences is a small contributor. We have seen the small fraction argument and the commons/free rider argument as a justification for not acting in many guises. I am no more convinced here than elsewhere. Universities need to look inward and evaluate travel both for academic conferences and for study abroad programs (short, several week courses led by US faculty as opposed to junior year abroad). Jeremy From: Elizabeth De Santo <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Sunday, December 7, 2014 at 3:22 PM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: gep-ed <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [gep-ed] Virtues of academic conferences Dear all, Thanks for this interesting discussion... of course as academics teaching environmental curricula, we are introspective and self-questioning about our choices and the example we set (perhaps more so than others working in the environmental field such as government employees and NGOs, it would be interesting to see a comparison of travel/carbon footprints in different professions). Having worked in the non-profit sector as well (environmental NGOs), I join the voices here that are frustrated about the amount of air travel that is expected in both of these fields. On the one hand it's exciting that there are more and more conferences being organized, but on the other hand there is (in my view) a lot of redundancy and talking, without a lot of action. I am not including academic society conferences in that statement, they are a different beast altogether. Now that I am teaching at a small liberal arts school with limits on how much teaching time I am permitted to miss during the semester, I have narrowed down the amount of travel I do, and like others on this thread, I try to combine research within it. However there are two paradoxes we face - first, as academics in an interdisciplinary field, we need/want to try to experience other perspectives on environmental issues (I am a member of UK and US geographic societies as well as ISA and the Society for Conservation Biology, for example). We are therefore faced with a challenging choice about which conferences to attend. And second, for junior academics (like me) or others who are trying to build their reputations both within and outside of academia, we are increasingly called on to participate in expert workshops and other events that happen in between the larger society meetings. While cost of travel is often a limiting factor for me (!), if I did have unlimited funds for attending these events, I would feel torn about my potential contribution to the applied side of environmental policy, versus the carbon emissions this action entails. I like Raul's idea of offsets, and I've seen that offered at some meetings as well (as part of the registration fee). Thus I think It's a complex problem and I'm enjoying seeing how many different perspectives on it are percolating here in this thread. I'm not sure we'll find a perfect solution anytime soon, but it's important that we are willing to be adaptive in the way we look at the issue. Best, Elizabeth Elizabeth M. De Santo, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Franklin & Marshall College Lancaster, PA On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 2:42 PM, Ronald Mitchell <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Without engaging the specific conference-related questions here, I will mention that I (as others, I am sure) have found that some portion of the objectives of NON-conference travel can often be accomplished via Skype – I have done guest lectures, workshop presentations, and even a book manuscript “scrub” via Skype. My gut estimate is that Skyping allows me to reap about 70-80% of the benefits while reducing the costs to myself and the planet by about 80-90%. That said, this choice is easier for me, as I have tenure. [Also, from my perspective, the discussion and exchange on the list is valuable even if we disagree.] I will also note that my emissions have grown over the years largely due to income not travel – I tend to like pay raises and tend to spend them on carbon-emitting activities. I am working on it… :( Lastly, a recent U-Oregon audit shows the following: about 40% of UO emissions come from faculty, staff, etc. air travel. Click the pic for the full video. Ron <image003.jpg><https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8a2T0oeAWw> From:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Ronnie Lipschutz Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 10:29 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; Wil Burns; Paul Harris; [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [gep-ed] Virtues of academic conferences I suppose that the question ought to be posed differently: individual choice vs. collective action or mobilization? Consumer choice or mass action? Clearly, as a single person on a scheduled flight, one makes little difference. But as Arlo Guthrie once pointed out, "If a whole bunch of people sing it [Alice's Restaurant]. it'll be a social movement!" (or something to that effect). If academics were to begin a movement to change the social practices expected of us, the cumulative impact could be considerable and that would stand as a shared commitment. Now, I am not without sin, since, for ISA, I plan to fly to Houston, drive to New Orleans for one day and back, and fly home from Houston. (Not really what I want to do, but I made a commitment to be on one panel this year.) Yes, I am being hypocritical on this and would dearly love to find a way to interact with colleagues and not have to fly hither and thither. Ronnie On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 10:19 AM, John M. Meyer <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: My question is both broader and narrower than the one that Paul begins with. If a conference comes relatively close to me -- within a manageable day's drive (say 5 hours... for me that means San Francisco), it often feels like a less substantial climate impact to drive there and attend (sorry, no ready bus or train options, though carpooling can be feasible) than it does to fly to a more distant transcontinental or international destination for the same the same or similar event. ...and yet: when I fly to the more distant destination, I take a seat on already scheduled airlines and -- wherever possible -- local public transit. In that sense, the far longer trip generates far fewer 'new' carbon emissions, etc., than the shorter trip does. Is one better than the other? I pose the question not just as one of individual responsibility. But surely one approach, assuming Paul's is not an argument for eliminating all face-to-face meetings, is for concentrating these at the regional level. Yet it seems plausible that, at least in the US and other countries without robust public transit infrastructure, this might generate more 'new' emissions than a more distant national or international conference. Is this distinction between otherwise scheduled and new emissions sound? Is it morally and or politically relevant in this case? John On Sunday, December 7, 2014, Raul Pacheco-Vega <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: In the interest of disclosure, I sit on the Executive Committee of the Environmental Studies Section of ISA and I'm the Chair of the Professional Development Committee of AESS. And I travel quite a lot for field research and other academic workshops, so I am hardly an unbiased commenter. I do buy carbon offsets, though (this in no way makes me any less responsible for my carbon emissions, but at least I do try to offset and reduce them). I sit on the side of "there are very significant benefits to meeting face-to-face rather than online". I do a lot of online (WebEx, GoToMeeting, Skype, FaceTime) meetings, and with the rare exception of (OMG, a non-Jobs fan about to gush) FaceTime, I find almost every single model of non-face-to-face meeting sorely lacking. I wrote a defense of large-scale conferences a while ago http://www.raulpacheco.org/2014/04/in-defense-of-large-academic-conferences-my-post-isa2014-reflections/ Like DG, I combine my large-scale academic conferences with fieldwork (as I did in Japan with IASC 2013, Uruguay with CLAD 2013, Toronto with ISA 2014 and Madrid with GIGAPP 2014). I also try to go to way fewer conferences than I used to do. But it's always important to keep it in mind. On the personal side of things, there are quite a lot of downsides to extensive academic travel. I also wrote about that. http://www.raulpacheco.org/2013/11/the-downsides-of-academic-travel/ Thanks for the reminder! Best, Raul _____________________________________________________________________ Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega Assistant Professor, Public Administration Division Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, A.C (CIDE, A.C.) Campus Región Centro Circuito Tecnopolo Norte S/N, Col. Hacienda Nueva Aguascalientes, Ags. 20313, Mexico Tel. (+52-449) 994-5150 x 5196 Cel. (+52-449) 280-2484 Website<http://www.raulpacheco.org> - Twitter<http://www.twitter.com/raulpacheco> - Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/drpachecovega> - CIDE webpage<http://cide.edu/investigador/profile.php?IdInvestigador=1266> Read my publications: On Academia.Edu<http://cide.academia.edu/RaulPachecoVega> On ResearchGate<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Raul_Pacheco-vega> On Mendeley<http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/raul-pacheco-vega/> My citations: Available on Google Scholar<http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7mn6g3oAAAAJ&hl=en> Associate Editor, Journal of Environmental Sciences and Studies<http://link.springer.com/journal/13412> On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Ronnie Lipschutz <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Oops! There's that old collective action problem again: I contribute so little that my stopping would hardly matter. I know there are people looking into conferencing with robots. You get to control your little unit, complete with camera, video screen, card printer and alcohol denaturer at sites kitted out for remote conferencing. No extortionate hotel rooms, no high-priced cookies and no air travel torture. Hallway encounters are still possible (although bedroom encounters are not). Of course the life cycle emissions of such a system would be fairly great, but this is a "reusable" arrangement that can be used again and again. I admit it's not like face-to-face encounters, but... Best, Ronnie Ronnie On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Wil Burns <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: OK, Paul, I'll bite on this topic, especially since you've raised it to me in my role as President of the Association of Environmental Studies & Sciences in the past. At the risk of being subsequently castigated by you as one of those people living in "willful ignorance," I'd respond as follows: 1. A recent study pegged the CO2 emissions associated with the annual presentation of ALL scientific papers at 0.003% of total annual travel emissions (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066508<http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0066508>). Dare I say that total suspension of Environmental Studies/GEP conference travel would be little more than a symbolic gesture? 2. While you minimize the value of face to face interactions with scholars, and indicate that electronic means of interaction would yield commensurate results, I think that's a bit simplistic. Undoubtedly, we all could sit in our offices and watch each other make conference presentations on Skype. However, some of the most productive time that I've spent at conferences has been chatting in the hallways, and yes, bars, with colleagues, deriving new insights on environmental issues, hatching crazy schemes that sometimes come to fruition and may prove beneficial in some small ways. These are often happenstance encounters that I daresay would not occur in the halcyonic virtual world you sketch out in your posting; 3. Yes, young scholars often do spend a lot of time on their iphones and other electronic devices, but for me that’s yet another justification for in-person conferences. Such events help us to convey our passion for the field, our humanity, in ways that speaking to each other on a screen will never convey. Conferences are also a critical venue for networking for young people that can never totally be substituted for electronically; 4. Every effort should be made to reduce the carbon footprint of conferences. AESS has a committee researching such approaches, as does many other organizations. What these efforts can communicate to our students, and to the public, is that we're a microcosm of society, i.e. our activities do impose a carbon footprint, but every effort should be made to reduce it; 5. A reasonable compromise in this context might be to have a serious discussion about reducing the incidence of conferences, perhaps every other year, for example? In the end, however, I can't help but believe that a total cessation of conferences would do little for the environment while robbing our field of its life's blood, which is real world interaction and collaboration. wil Dr. Wil Burns, President, AESS Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment A Scholarly Initiative of the School of International Service, American University 2650 Haste Street, Towle Hall #G07 Berkeley, CA 94720 650.281.9126 (Phone) http://www.dcgeoconsortium.org Skype ID: Wil.Burns Blog: Teaching Climate/Energy Law & Policy, http://www.teachingclimatelaw.org -----Original Message----- From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of HARRIS, Paul Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2014 7:02 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [gep-ed] Virtues of academic conferences At long last, someone in a position to do something has admitted that scholars/teachers jetting around to conferences is morally questionable (not least because today's information technologies allow far more collaboration than was possible at conferences even quite recently): http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/setting-aside-a-scholarly-get-together-for-the-planets-sake.html?ref=earth&_r=0 It will be interesting to see where this goes. Will it overcome the willful ignorance of so many scholars -- those who think that THEIR work is so vital as to justify conference travel -- that such voluntary behavior is contributing, albeit perhaps in individually small ways, to profound human suffering and death in the future through climate change? Even a tiny contribution to someone else's death seems to call into question conference travel (and most other travel, at least by auto or airplane). I've broached this topic on this list several times over the years, so I realize that it's not likely to get any traction, and that there will be all sorts of excuses for continuing business as usual (“How dare you deny young scholars the right to collaborate” [these are the same young scholars who collaborate 24/7 on their iPhones, etc.]; “Collaborating via video conferencing [etc.] just isn’t the same as talking in person” [but there’s evidence that collaborating remotely can result in more scholarly productivity] – that sort of thing). ISA, APSA and all of the other big academic associations, including those devoted to environmental issues, seem to have conferences as their core business models. They don’t want to change. And we scholars don’t help. We love our conferences, right? And we, like most people, always want to leave it to others, probably people in the future, or governments or corporations, to change things. Of course we don't think about it consciously (so as to avoid guilt, maybe), but our attitude seems to something along the lines of "I teach about environmental solutions, so I don't have to be part of them myself," or, even more powerfully, "My research shows that institutions matter more than individuals, so I can justify living as I do." How many decades more will scholars take these and similar views, and continue to set the wrong example? I wonder what our students, particularly those who study climate change, think each time we jet off to a conference? The word “hypocrite” instantly comes to mind. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Ronnie D. Lipschutz Professor & Chair of Politics; Provost of College 8 UC Santa Cruz 1156 High St. Santa Cruz, CA 95064 e-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> phone: 831-459-3275/459-2543 web site: http://politics.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=rlipsch "Nothing in the world...is as old as what was futuristic in the past." (Ben Lerner, 10:04, p. 152) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- John M. Meyer, Professor Department of Politics Humboldt State University Arcata, CA 95521 USA 707.826.4497 (voice) 707.826.4496 (fax) [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> users.humboldt.edu/john.m.meyer<http://users.humboldt.edu/john.m.meyer> -- Ronnie D. Lipschutz Professor & Chair of Politics; Provost of College 8 UC Santa Cruz 1156 High St. Santa Cruz, CA 95064 e-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> phone: 831-459-3275/459-2543 web site: http://politics.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=rlipsch "Nothing in the world...is as old as what was futuristic in the past." (Ben Lerner, 10:04, p. 152) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. Jan Selby Professor of International Relations Director, Sussex Centre for Conflict and Security Research University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QN, UK Tel: +44 (0)1273 876694 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/145874 SCSR: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/scsr/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
