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Don't you find it interesting that when looking up the overall CO2 emissions of flying you found the number 2.5%, barely relevant, but when you looked up the em

Don't you find it interesting that when looking up the overall CO2 emissions of flying you found the number 2.5%, barely relevant, but when you looked up the emissions from a single long haul flight that ended up being ~10% of the average American emissions (already much larger than the global average). How can those two numbers be combined? Most of the worlds population never fly, and that's why it's a relatively small fraction of global emissions. But it's still a very sizeable portion of the emissions of people who do fly, and that makes it relevant. It's the same as saying: is it really important that people in Belgium cause large CO2 emissions? It's such a small country, barely 1 % of global emissions, there's no point to them reducing their emissions. But that's a fallacy (obviously). All emissions can be decomposed into small sets and dismissed as irrelevant. The important question is: how much benefit does these emissions cause compared to alternatives? And, would these emissions fit in the global co2 budget?

abeppu 2y ago
You're arguing against a straw man. No one is claiming that the emissions from academics flying doesn't contribute to total emissions or that there's "no point" in reducing them. That's just silly. But is it academics flying to conferences important? And is viewing academics as being somehow "accountable" for work-related emissions useful? Certainly a minority of people on the planet fly. But the people that fly regularly also are likely to live in a way that overall uses more carbon -- eating more meat, owning/driving personal vehicles, using AC more etc. Even for them, even if you believe that professional travel is the responsibility of the individual, perhaps their biggest opportunity to reduce is by a change of diet, or something else. Again, it would help to have figures on how many conference-flights per year the average academic is doing. Is it important to the rest of us? From quick searches, it sounds like ~12% of air passengers are on business travel, so talking about personal and tourist travel seems close to an order of magnitude bigger opportunity than reducing work travel. And even then, of work travel, how much is from conferences vs e.g. sales people and consultants going to meet with customers? Is the implied alternative to traveling to conferences doing everything online? Then how does stopping conference travel compare in emissions to doing all instruction online and dropping the commutes of university faculty on a day-to-day basis? This article seems more like a "gotcha" than a valuable insight. A lot of people think emissions need to come down sharply, but we're all stuck in systems that make this quite difficult. Academics are not special in this regard, and I am not convinced that conference travel is even the most important source for that small group.

abeppu 2y ago

You're arguing against a straw man. No one is claiming that the emissions from academics flying doesn't contribute to total emissions or that there's "no point" in reducing them. That's just silly. But is it academics flying to conferences important? And is viewing academics as being somehow "accountable" for work-related emissions useful? Certainly a minority of people on the planet fly. But the people that fly regularly also are likely to live in a way that overall uses more carbon -- eating more meat, owning/driving personal vehicles, using AC more etc. Even for them, even if you believe that professional travel is the responsibility of the individual, perhaps their biggest opportunity to reduce is by a change of diet, or something else. Again, it would help to have figures on how many conference-flights per year the average academic is doing. Is it important to the rest of us? From quick searches, it sounds like ~12% of air passengers are on business travel, so talking about personal and tourist travel seems close to an order of magnitude bigger opportunity than reducing work travel. And even then, of work travel, how much is from conferences vs e.g. sales people and consultants going to meet with customers? Is the implied alternative to traveling to conferences doing everything online? Then how does stopping conference travel compare in emissions to doing all instruction online and dropping the commutes of university faculty on a day-to-day basis? This article seems more like a "gotcha" than a valuable insight. A lot of people think emissions need to come down sharply, but we're all stuck in systems that make this quite difficult. Academics are not special in this regard, and I am not convinced that conference travel is even the most important source for that small group.