Travel-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions from American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Meetings

Abstract

The logo of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) proclaims it to be "Green Since 1899." Annual meetings convened by the ASLA necessitate that many attendees travel by air. Carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft operations accounted for 2-3 percent of annual global emissions in 2010. Emissions are rising, despite the need to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide and reduce global emissions by 45 percent before 2030 and 100 percent before 2050, relative to 2010 levels, to limit global warming to 1.5°C. No public estimations of travel-related carbon emissions associated with ASLA annual meetings are available. Using two web-based carbon calculators, meeting programs, websites, handouts, and ASLA meeting attendance numbers, I performed two travel-related carbon emission estimations: for 2,821 education session featured speakers who presented at annual ASLA meetings in 2011 and between 2013 and 2019; and for annual ASLA meeting attendees between 1960 and 2019. By applying findings from scientific literature to these emission estimates, I also calculated the area of September Arctic sea ice loss that may be attributed to ASLA annual meetings; the labor productivity losses in purchasing power parity that may be associated with ASLA meeting emissions; and the quantity of trees that would be needed to negate the meeting-related quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I conclude by suggesting alterations to the format of annual ASLA conferences that would eliminate travel-related emissions in the future and narrow the gap between the ASLA's actions and proclaimed values.

The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences

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A path to decolonization? Reducing air travel and resource consumption in higher education

“…This was quickly complemented by a larger wave of writings focused on measuring the GHG footprint, to bring to light the sizable impact of professional academic travel (e.g., Hischier and Hilty, 2002). Much of this literature offers concrete suggestions aimed at reducing those footprints (see, for example, Jäckle, 2019;Klöwer et al, 2020;Kuper, 2020;Ponette-González and Byrnes, 2011). A subset of this category puts less emphasis on measuring GHG emissions and instead focuses its energies on re-rethinking conferencing-and intellectual exchange more broadly-in far-reaching ways (e.g., Hiltner, 2020;Pandian, 2020;Ruddick, 2019).…”

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“…These benefits, however, come with a significant drawback: conferences can be a high resource‐demanding and emission‐intensive process (Hischier & Hilty, 2002). In the past two decades, scholars in different fields have started to disclose the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conferences, especially conference travel, showing alarming figures (Jäckle, 2019; Kuper, 2019). For instance, Klöwer et al.…”

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“…These benefits, however, come with a significant drawback: conferences can be a high resource-demanding and emission-intensive process (Hischier & Hilty, 2002). In the past two decades, scholars in different fields have started to disclose the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conferences, especially conference travel, showing alarming figures (Jäckle, 2019;Kuper, 2019). For instance, Klöwer et al (2020) found that the per-capita footprint of scientists traveling to the 2019 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union was about 3 tons of CO 2eq , greater than the amount many citizens around the world emit over an entire year.…”