The carbon footprint of a scientific community: A survey of the historians of mobility and their normalized yet abundant reliance on air travel

Abstract

This paper presents a survey conducted among the community of transport historians, on the occasion of the annual conference of the main association in this field, T2M. The survey collected quantitative and qualitative data on air travel by these scholars during 2019. The paper discusses the weight of social factors (gender, academic position, age) in the carbon footprint of these researchers due to flying. It shows the strong dependence of this community on flying, perceived as the only system likely to meet the need for physical encounters, particularly for conferences and the life of academic networks. It also shows that these historians see the issue of the airplane as a moral problem for which their institutions are expected to propose solutions. However, the scale of the weight of long-haul flights seems to be underestimated by the scholars' perception, while it raises questions about the ability to find alternative solutions.

Towards post-COVID-19 responsible academic air travel

“…For instance, inequities exist in seniority when senior academics have more opportunities to travel than early-career researchers (Mega, 2020; Ciers et al , 2018). Inequities also occur in terms of gender, where male academics are found to have higher carbon footprints than female academics (Passalacqua, 2021). Inequities between academics did emerge in our interviews.…”

Concerned yet polluting: A survey on French research personnel and climate change

“…Almost all the studies on the environmental impact of research concern the use of air travel [4,8,17]. This is justified by the fact that flights generate a large share of the GHG emissions of research activity.…”

“…Climate and environmental researchers stand apart from other researchers as their credibility and ability to raise awareness of the urgency of reducing GHG emissions might hinge on their own behaviour [5]. But researchers in other disciplines are also paying increasing attention to the impact of their occupational activities ( [6] in geography, [7] in astronomy, [8] in the history of transport).…”

Decarbonizing the academic sector: Lessons from an international research project

“…Awareness is growing on the carbon emissions generated by research activities (e.g., Ciers et al, 2018;Tao et al, 2021;Waring et al, 2014), although researchers lack estimations of the relative contribution of different activities to their carbon footprint and guidance on how to minimize them (e.g., Passalacqua, 2021). As scientists are often frequent travelers (Ciers et al, 2018;Kjellman, 2019) and as travel related to research activities (e.g., field work, research dissemination and outreach) is one of the main sources of carbon emissions in the sector (Ciers et al, 2018), most attention on the topic has focused on the impact of air travel to attend scientific activities including fieldwork and, particularly, scientific conferences (Achten et al, 2013;Ciers et al, 2018;Kjellman, 2019).…”

“…For example, Ciers et al (2018) find that simple measures such as restricting air travel to economy class, replacing short trips by train, and avoiding layovers can reduce academia's travel-related carbon emissions by 36%. In the same line, researchers are also advocating transitioning from in-person to virtual conferencing (e.g., Passalacqua, 2021), which can substantially reduce the carbon footprint by up to 94%, or using hybrid conferences with carefully selected hubs that could maintain more than 50% of in-person participation, while reducing carbon footprint and energy use by two-thirds (Tao et al, 2021). Beyond travel, other measures have been proposed to reduce research-related emissions, such as increasing teleworking (Hook et al, 2020) and limiting the use or the quality of video during online meetings (Obringer et al, 2021).…”