Right after presenting some thoughts at a session on global warming, I
encountered the article pasted below. It raises serious questions about
the wisdom of professional travel given our environmental plight. I
would love to hear some reaction on TIPS. If we were to give up the
apparently destructive habit of travel to attend face-to-face meetings,
how effective would the alternative be? I have experienced
teleconferencing using chat room technology, telephone conferencing,
video with screen shots controlled by the presenters, etc. It's a
different psychological experience with different challenges -- but in
terms of information transfer or social contact, I can't say that my
teleconference experiences have been inferior. A tough problem but one
we should think about.
--Dave
The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 25, 2008 Friday
*Academic Travel Causes Global Warming*
OK, the headline is a stretch. However, it is true that air
travel puts large amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides,
sulfur oxides, soot, and even water vapor directly into the
atmosphere, all of which makes an inordinate and unsustainable
contribution to global warming.
And academics do fly -- a lot. As the environmental writer and
activist Mark Lynas argued in the New Statesman: Probably the
single most polluting thing you or I will ever do is step on a plane.
Ian Roberts and Fiona Godlee published an editorial in the
British Medical Journal on the carbon footprint of medical
conferences. They determined that flights destined for the annual
conferences of the European Respiratory Society and the American
Thoracic Society put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than
do 110,000 Chadians or 11,000 Indians in an entire year. The
problem does not end with medical researchers. Scholars of all
stripes travel to meet, greet, and, in one of our more ironic
roles, preach the gospel of sustainability.
How do we reduce our contradictions or, better yet, our carbon
emissions? The solutions are obvious, which is why no one wants to
talk about them. They would require sacrifice, or at least a new
way of thinking about and conducting our professional lives. Bring
up the issue among a gathering of scholars and you will get
something like the following responses:
* I know that flying is an environmental problem, but travel is
essential to my work (and I really like San Francisco in the
fall). My research is a collaborative enterprise. I need to
discuss it with colleagues face-to-face (over wine and cheese).
* The importance of my research outweighs the environmental
costs of air travel.
All of those points are reasonable (despite my parenthetical
interjections).
However, only the third argument directly engages the issue. And in
some cases it might be accurate. The environmental costs of flights
by scientists whose research, teaching, and outreach deal with
environmental problems might be offset by their contributions to the
development of sustainable policies, practices, and technologies.
But what about the rest of us?
Take a conference I attended last year in Amsterdam. I flew
6,687 kilometers from Minneapolis to Holland to attend a
virtual-ethnography workshop. We discussed such problems as
research ethics, the transference of traditional ethnographic
methods to the Internet, and differences between computer-mediated
communication and face-to-face interactions. It was a fascinating
set of discussions and a great opportunity to interact with leaders
in that new field.
However, there is more than a little irony in flying thousands
of miles to discuss virtual modes of communication. As several
colleagues and friends back home asked, Couldn't you do that from here?
Unfortunately, the environmental potential of virtual
technologies remained outside the discussion in Amsterdam. As is
true throughout the academic world -- perhaps with the exception of
British thoracic specialists -- no one seems interested in
discussing the matter.
Perhaps that is because our most sacred privilege is at stake.
We love to travel.
To borrow a line from the Book of Luke, What then must we do?
Although cash-strapped administrators would love to see us travel
less, most professors would be unwilling to give up the big trips.
Conferences are viewed as equal parts opportunity, obligation, and
perk. Probationary faculty members, in particular, feel an
obligation to present at the relevant disciplinary conferences.
Maybe instead of thinking about the issue in terms of
limitations, it is better to think about new opportunities. Good
alternatives exist. Among the most promising is videoconferencing.
Last year a group of students, a colleague, and I hosted a
videoconference session with Nicole Constable of the University of
Pittsburgh, the author of Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals,
Virtual Ethnography, and Mail Order Marriages (University of
California Press, 2003). Rather than fly Nicole to our campus, we
asked her to take an hour to interact with us via video link. While
we encountered some technological and logistical difficulties, the
event demonstrated how rich and useful videoconferencing could be
if conducted on a larger scale. Distance educators have discovered
the potential of videoconferencing, and so should the rest of academe.
The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the
University of Minnesota, where I teach, has invested in
user-friendly videoconferencing technology, and we are starting to
experiment with ways to replace carbon-based forms of
collaboration, at least in cases where live conferencing is
difficult or unwarranted.
Of course, we are not alone. The University of Texas system has
taken a strong lead in academic videoconferencing, and many
institutions have discovered the economic, logistical, and
ecological benefits of working in electronically mediated
environments. Several scholars and organizations have even started
to hold meetings in Second Life and other virtual environments.
As for offline travel, a renaissance in regional conferencing
would go a long way toward reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions.
Currently, many scholars overlook regional conferences and prefer
to attend high-profile national and international meetings.
Granted, Miami is more appealing than Minneapolis in the winter,
and our grad-school buddies probably won't attend the regional
meeting. Nevertheless, some substitution of regional meetings for
national and global ones would help us replace the plane with
train, bus, or car, all of which are less destructive than air travel.
Oil is a tough drug to quit. It takes us on the most amazing
trips. Sometimes we really do need to go, but in other cases it is
an unnecessary anodyne. How many times have you found yourself
thinking, Did I really need to fly to New York to hear that?
Let's face it, academic research is usually better read than recited.
Those whose field sites are situated in other parts of the world
find it difficult to avoid flying. However, when we can reduce air
travel yet still maintain meaningful research and teaching
practices, why wouldn't we? Put in social terms, why should the
rest of society take our research conclusions seriously if we don't
take the most significant scientific consensus of our time to heart?
I would write more, but it is time to go. The gate agent has
called for rows 31 and higher to board the plane.
Mark Pedelty is an associate professor of journalism and mass
communicationat the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities who really
did write this column while waiting for a plane. He and a group of
colleagues are now planning a virtual conference for the purpose of
developing more effective means of virtual conferencing.
--
___________________________________________________________________
David E. Campbell, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology Phone: 707-826-3721
Humboldt State University FAX: 707-826-4993
Arcata, CA 95521-8299 www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/psyc.htm
--
___________________________________________________________________
David E. Campbell, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology Phone: 707-826-3721
Humboldt State University FAX: 707-826-4993
Arcata, CA 95521-8299 www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/psyc.htm
---
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