Richard Parncutt: Stop flying to academic conferences

If you are concerned about the future of humanity, please read this. I mean, actually read it. It's not very long.

For years, I have been writing about the urgent need to reduce flying to academic conferences, and about how to achieve that goal realistically. Many others did the same. In a nutshell, we explained that:

Global warming, if limited to 2°C, is a matter of life and death for a billion people. If allowed to exceed 2°C (and we are currently headed for about 3°C), it is matter of human survival. After global tipping points are reached and they start interacting, the game could be over. The survival of millions of other species, each of which took millions of years to evolve, is also at stake. This is now the most important issue ever, in all of history.

The personal carbon footprint of the average academic is far higher than the global average. Clearly, it must urgently be reduced. In general, richer people in richer countries must urgently reduce. Within that category, academics are in a good position to take the lead.

The contribution of flying to the personal carbon footprint of a typical academic is typically one half. The best way for an academic to significantly reduce her or his footprint is to stop flying. We cannot compensate for flying by reducing our other carbon emissions, because they are typically much smaller. Offsetting flying is better than nothing but the general consensus is that it doesn't work.

Alternative conference formats can simultaneously and seriously improve both sustainability and inclusion. Low-carbon virtual or multi-hub conferences allow colleagues from the Global South to participate who are otherwise excluded by the cost of travel, accommodation, and registration. Virtual and multi-hub conferences allow colleagues to participate despite disabilities or caring duties that otherwise prevent them from traveling. To overcome colonialism, racism, sexism, ableism, and povertyism, inclusive conference formats must urgently be promoted on all levels -- regardless of carbon emissions.

As a first priority, the political and economic systems that contribute to global warming must be changed. But middle-class individuals must also reduce their emissions, as part of a package of measures to prevent global catastrophe. The big changes will only come when large numbers of people support them. To be credible, those people must also reduce their personal emissions.

None of this is new. The main ideas have been clear for at least a decade, for those among us with open eyes, ears, and hearts. Meanwhile, after many years of increasingly shrill warnings, academic colleagues are still flying to academic conferences, and conference organizers are still inviting and encouraging hundreds of colleagues to fly. What went wrong?

The consequences of continuing to fly

Those who continue to organize single-location international conferences, and those who fly to them, are guilty of contributing to the future death toll from global warming. They are contributing to the premature deaths of future people. This is not an accusation; it is simply a fact.

Burning roughly 1000 tonnes of fossil carbon causes a future death (further information).

A typical participant at a single-location international conference burns a tonne of fossil carbon, producing 3.7 tonnes CO₂. (This figure is intended as a rough average that includes those who fly and those who don't, and different distances flown.) Therefore, a typical conference with 1000 participants, or ten typical conferences with 100 participants each, causes the premature death of one future person from negative effects of global warming.

Said another way, each individual conference participant who flies steals 1/1000 of the life of a future person. That's about one month. (Imagine someone you don't know stealing one month of your life.)

Needless to say, in every legal system of the world, it is a criminal offence to knowingly cause, or contribute to causing, the deaths of other people. It is therefore obvious that flying to academic conferences must stop. In general, all flying must stop, except in life-saving emergencies, as Extinction Rebellion pointed out long ago.

The consequences of collective denial

Most academics -- people with PhDs -- are ignoring these warnings. Many will read this and laugh. (Perhaps you have already laughed?) If climate denial is defined in terms of what people do, rather than what they say, denial is still the norm among academics. That being the case, we should not be surprised to find out that it is still the norm in the general population.

According to the drug-dealer's defence, if I don't send deadly drugs to people, someone else will. If my country doesn't sell coal to India and China, another country will. If I don't fly to conferences, other academics will, and they will reap the benefits. Therefore, I should keep flying. But that doesn't change the fact that the drug dealer is contributing to the deaths of drug addicts. Similarly, those selling or burning large amounts of carbon are contributing to the deaths of future people. The solution is first to stop these activities and then to join efforts to prevent them more generally.

It's time to think about the consequences of our failure to respond to decades of urgent scientific warnings. What if we ignore the central messages of research in the best mainstream journals? We can look forward to decades or centuries of ever-increasing global turmoil and unprecedented suffering. At the end of the tunnel, Homo sapiens will either survive or go extinct. We are now experiencing the end of a Golden Age, in which relatively large middle classes in richer countries feel relatively good about themselves and their situation, and not especially motivated to prevent the imminent Dark Age. If we don't like that idea (and I never met anyone who does), then we need to get active. If we don't get active, we are guilty, along with the rest of the deniers, whether academic or not.

I write this text knowing that, like so many related texts that so many concerned people have written, it will be ignored. People will read it and then proceed with their lives as if they did not know. People will call me an "alarmist" (which of course I am) and claim (or merely think) that I am exaggerating (which I clearly am not, if one considers the recent academic literature on global warming).

We have a choice. Either we solve this problem or we say goodbye to morality. If you thought you were a moral person, and you are still flying to conferences, or -- worse -- inviting colleagues to fly to conferences, think again. If you don't like me writing sentences like that, you know what to do.

Further information