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===Climate hypocrisy===
===Climate hypocrisy===


How much scientists fly affects their credibility when they communicate to the public on climate change.<ref name="Fois 2016"/>  
How much scientists fly affects their credibility when they communicate to the public on climate change,<ref name="Fois 2016"/> and prevents them from exercising leadership in reducing emissions.<ref name="Higham">
In particular,  
In particular,  
a 2016 survey has found that climate researchers' carbon footprints have a large effect on their credibility, and on participants' intentions to reduce their personal energy consumption.<ref name="Rosen 2017"/><ref name="Attari 2016"/>  
a 2016 survey has found that climate researchers' carbon footprints have a large effect on their credibility, and on participants' intentions to reduce their personal energy consumption.<ref name="Rosen 2017"/><ref name="Attari 2016"/>  
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<ref name="Brierley 2020">{{cite web | last=Brierley | first=Craig | title=High flying academics | website=University of Cambridge | date=2020-02-10 | url=https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/highflying | access-date=2020-03-14}}</ref>
<ref name="Brierley 2020">{{cite web | last=Brierley | first=Craig | title=High flying academics | website=University of Cambridge | date=2020-02-10 | url=https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/highflying | access-date=2020-03-14}}</ref>
<ref name="Westlake">{{cite journal | last=Westlake | first=Steve | title=A Counter-Narrative to Carbon Supremacy: Do Leaders Who Give Up Flying Because of Climate Change Influence the Attitudes and Behaviour of Others? | journal=SSRN Electronic Journal | publisher=Elsevier BV | year=2017 | issn=1556-5068 | doi=10.2139/ssrn.3283157 | page=}}</ref>
<ref name="Westlake">{{cite journal | last=Westlake | first=Steve | title=A Counter-Narrative to Carbon Supremacy: Do Leaders Who Give Up Flying Because of Climate Change Influence the Attitudes and Behaviour of Others? | journal=SSRN Electronic Journal | publisher=Elsevier BV | year=2017 | issn=1556-5068 | doi=10.2139/ssrn.3283157 | page=}}</ref>
<ref name="Higham">{{cite journal | last=Higham | first=James | last2=Font | first2=Xavier | title=Decarbonising academia: confronting our climate hypocrisy | journal=Journal of Sustainable Tourism | publisher=Informa UK Limited | volume=28 | issue=1 | date=2019-12-02 | issn=0966-9582 | doi=10.1080/09669582.2019.1695132 | pages=1–9}}</ref>
}}
}}


[[Category:Air travel]]
[[Category:Air travel]]
[[Category:Academia]]
[[Category:Academia]]

Revision as of 22:44, 14 March 2020

Air travel is an essential part of the professional lives of many academics, and a major source of pollution from that sector. In the context of the climate crisis, there have been appeals to reduce air travel by replacing it with other modes of transportation, replacing it with videoconferencing, or renouncing inessential trips.

Role of air travel in academia

The individual emissions of academic researchers are high compared to other professionals, "primarily as a result of emissions from flying to conferences, project meetings, and fieldwork".[1][2] Beyond their usefulness for doing research, these travels are motivated by career incentives, as decisions to award faculty positions or research funding depend in part on the applicants' activity as speakers at international conferences. Touristic opportunities also contribute to motivating these travels, which are considered as a perk of the profession.[1]

While conferences and meetings are important for exchanging ideas and nurturing professional relationships, this can also be done using alternative modes of communication such as videoconferencing and social media. It has been argued that the benefits of face-to-face meetings might be outweighed by the benefits of the alternatives. (These benefits may include reaching wider communities.)[1] A 2019 study found that air travel was correlated to salary but not to scientific productivity, and concluded that "air travel has a limited influence on professional success".[3]

Attitude of academic institutions

A 2014 study of three New Zealand universities found that rhetoric on sustainability coexisted with assumptions about the necessity to travel, and policies that encouraged travel.[4] A similar phenomenon was observed in Australia, where "a normative system of ‘academic aeromobility’ has developed".[5] Australian universities could be divided into three groups, depending on whether they recognize the sustainability issues with air travel, and if yes whether they seek to substitute air travel with videoconferencing.[6]

Attitude of academics

A 2017 survey found that conservationists' environmental footprint was only slightly lower than economics' and medics', and that exposure to environmental information had little impact on researchers' behaviour.[7]

Flying often has been argued to be incompatible with anthropologists' research ethics.[8] In the case of archaeology, flying often while knowing about the problem of climate change has been denounced as a case of cognitive dissonance.[9]

Climate hypocrisy

How much scientists fly affects their credibility when they communicate to the public on climate change,[2] and prevents them from exercising leadership in reducing emissions.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag [10] [11] [1] [4] [12] [13] [14] [2] [15] [7] [5] [16] [8] [6] [17] [9] [18] [19] [3] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] }}

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Towards a culture of low-carbon research for the 21st Century". Tyndall Working Paper 161. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Fois, Mauro; Cuena-Lombraña, Alba; Fristoe, Trevor; Fenu, Giuseppe; Bacchetta, Gianluigi (2016). "Reconsidering alternative transportation systems to reach academic conferences and to convey an example to reduce greenhouse gas emissions". History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (Springer Science and Business Media LLC) 38 (4). doi:10.1007/s40656-016-0126-x. ISSN 0391-9714.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Wynes, Seth; Donner, Simon D.; Tannason, Steuart; Nabors, Noni (2019). "Academic air travel has a limited influence on professional success". Journal of Cleaner Production (Elsevier BV) 226: 959–967. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.04.109. ISSN 0959-6526.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Hopkins, Debbie; Higham, James; Tapp, Sarah; Duncan, Tara (2015-09-12). "Academic mobility in the Anthropocene era: a comparative study of university policy at three New Zealand institutions". Journal of Sustainable Tourism (Informa UK Limited) 24 (3): 376–397. doi:10.1080/09669582.2015.1071383. ISSN 0966-9582.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Glover, Andrew; Strengers, Yolande; Lewis, Tania (2017). "The unsustainability of academic aeromobility in Australian universities". Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy (Informa UK Limited) 13 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1080/15487733.2017.1388620. ISSN 1548-7733.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Glover, Andrew; Strengers, Yolande; Lewis, Tania (2018-05-08). "Sustainability and academic air travel in Australian universities". International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education (Emerald) 19 (4): 756–772. doi:10.1108/ijshe-08-2017-0129. ISSN 1467-6370.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Balmford, Andrew; Cole, Lizzy; Sandbrook, Chris; Fisher, Brendan (2017). "The environmental footprints of conservationists, economists and medics compared". Biological Conservation (Elsevier BV) 214: 260–269. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2017.07.035. ISSN 0006-3207.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "In an era of climate change, our ethics code is clear: We need to end the AAA annual meeting". anthro{dendum}. 2018-01-13. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Reynolds, Natasha (2018-11-02). "Decarbonising archaeology". Nature Research Ecology & Evolution Community. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
  10. ↑ Spinellis, Diomidis; Louridas, Panos (2013-06-26). Bohrer, Gil. ed. "The Carbon Footprint of Conference Papers". PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science (PLoS)) 8 (6): e66508. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066508. ISSN 1932-6203.
  11. ↑ Holthaus, Eric (2014-10-02). "I Went a Year Without Flying to Help Fight Climate Change". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  12. ↑ Stroud, James T.; Feeley, Kenneth J. (2014-12-02). "Responsible academia: optimizing conference locations to minimize greenhouse gas emissions". Ecography (Wiley) 38 (4): 402–404. doi:10.1111/ecog.01366. ISSN 0906-7590.
  13. ↑ Song, Guobao; Che, Li; Zhang, Shushen (2016). "Carbon footprint of a scientific publication: A case study at Dalian University of Technology, China". Ecological Indicators (Elsevier BV) 60: 275–282. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.06.044. ISSN 1470-160X.
  14. ↑ Attari, Shahzeen Z.; Krantz, David H.; Weber, Elke U. (2016-06-16). "Statements about climate researchers’ carbon footprints affect their credibility and the impact of their advice". Climatic Change (Springer Science and Business Media LLC) 138 (1-2): 325–338. doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1713-2. ISSN 0165-0009.
  15. ↑ Rosen, Julia (2017). "Sustainability: A greener culture". Nature (Springer Science and Business Media LLC) 546 (7659): 565–567. doi:10.1038/nj7659-565a. ISSN 0028-0836.
  16. ↑ Hasan, Mejs. "New University Rules Encourage Scientists to Avoid Air Travel". Wired. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
  17. ↑ Gunster, Shane; Fleet, Darren; Paterson, Matthew; Saurette, Paul (2018-06-11). "Climate Hypocrisies: A Comparative Study of News Discourse". Environmental Communication (Informa UK Limited) 12 (6): 773–793. doi:10.1080/17524032.2018.1474784. ISSN 1752-4032.
  18. ↑ Gunster, Shane; Fleet, Darren; Paterson, Matthew; Saurette, Paul (2018-11-06). "“Why Don't You Act Like You Believe It?”: Competing Visions of Climate Hypocrisy". Frontiers in Communication (Frontiers Media SA) 3. doi:10.3389/fcomm.2018.00049. ISSN 2297-900X.
  19. ↑ Coroama, Vlad C.; Hilty, Lorenz M.; Birtel, Martin (2012). "Effects of Internet-based multiple-site conferences on greenhouse gas emissions". Telematics and Informatics (Elsevier BV) 29 (4): 362–374. doi:10.1016/j.tele.2011.11.006. ISSN 0736-5853.
  20. ↑ Kjellman, Sofia E. (2019-05-27). "As a climate researcher, should I change my air-travel habits?". Nature (Springer Science and Business Media LLC). doi:10.1038/d41586-019-01652-2. ISSN 0028-0836.
  21. ↑ Hendy, Shaun (2019). #NoFly: Walking the Talk on Climate Change. Bridget Williams Books. doi:10.7810/9781988587080. ISBN 978-1-988587-08-0.
  22. ↑ Langin, Katie (2019-05-13). "Why some climate scientists are saying no to flying". Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)). doi:10.1126/science.caredit.aay0230. ISSN 0036-8075.
  23. ↑ "Shaun Hendy - How Much does Flying Contribute to Climate Change?". Brave New Europe. 2019-11-28. Retrieved 2020-03-14.
  24. ↑ Brierley, Craig (2020-02-10). "High flying academics".
  25. ↑ Westlake, Steve (2017). "A Counter-Narrative to Carbon Supremacy: Do Leaders Who Give Up Flying Because of Climate Change Influence the Attitudes and Behaviour of Others?". SSRN Electronic Journal (Elsevier BV). doi:10.2139/ssrn.3283157. ISSN 1556-5068.
  26. ↑ Higham, James; Font, Xavier (2019-12-02). "Decarbonising academia: confronting our climate hypocrisy". Journal of Sustainable Tourism (Informa UK Limited) 28 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1080/09669582.2019.1695132. ISSN 0966-9582.
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