Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Academics enjoy their geographical mobility. Geographers, perhaps, enjoy it most of all. Geography is, after all, the world discipline. Some of us can feel a trifle despondent if we do not have a plane ticket somewhere at hand. Many of these tickets take us to conferences. Our conferences are a necessity, an expectation … and they need to change. In this editorial I make a personal plea for sustainable conferencing. Attending the AAG Annual Meeting in Chicago last March I found that a lot of people were concerned about the environmental costs of their transport arrangements. I was also intrigued to learn that Chicago was the birth place of low cost aviation. The 1944 ‘Chicago Convention’ sought to encourage the nascent aviation industry by requiring that signatory nations (who now number 185) impose zero tax on aviation fuel. It is cheap and easy to fly. And we appear dependent upon our mobility. So what are we to do? There are no quick-fix solutions. Nor can we lay the issue at the door of conference organizers and quietly tip toe away. What is needed is a cultural shift across the entire discipline. At the end of this editorial I come back to this point. For now though I want to attend to the two themes around which much of this debate circles, the impacts of aviation and the possibilities of offsetting. Air traffic appears to be one of the fastest growing causes of global warming. The figures, as well as the calculations that take place before and after they are collected, are disputed. However, the data supplied for Britain by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2004; see also Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 2002) gives us, at least, a likely scenario. It records the British government's estimate that passenger numbers in Britain will climb from 180 million in 2005 to 476 million by 2030. The Audit Committee asserts that by 2030 aviation will be responsible for the emission of 17.7 millions of tonnes carbon (hereafter MtC: the 2000 figure was 8.8 MtC). This figure can be considered misleadingly low. Releasing carbon dioxide at high altitude has a greater warming effect than releasing carbon dioxide at ground level (the Audit Committee says it is 2.5 times as great). Hence, that 17.7 MtC has the effect of 44.25 tonnes, which by 2030 will represent 45 per cent of Britain's projected total domestic emissions. Little wonder that environmentalists such as George Monbiot (2006) have concluded that ‘there is no means of sustaining long-distance, high-speed travel’. Nevertheless, the notion that we can offset the costs of air travel has gained ground. Indeed, from September 2005 British Airways has allowed passengers to make a specific donation when booking their tickets to offset environmental impacts. In the month this scheme was launched, it would have cost you £13.30 to offset a return London–Johannesburg flight. The money goes to Climate Care, one of many offsetting enterprises that have sprung up over the past decade. Climate Care funds various environmental interventions. Perhaps their best known takes place in urban South Africa and involves giving out energy efficient light bulbs in return for people's old ones. Despite the evident value of such initiatives there is something unsettling about the way the West is able to offset and, hence, continue its polluting activities by altering practices in the majority world. The first example of offsetting I know of is from 1989. In that year a US power company, Applied Energy Services, was seeking to win permission for a new coal-fired power plant in Connecticut by offsetting the plant's carbon impact (Moura-Costa and Stuart 1998). The offsetting was achieved by planting 50 million pine and eucalyptus trees in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. It is a somewhat infamous example. Local farmers complained of lack of consultation or compensation and the planting of these particular species appears to have resulted in land degradation. Unsurprisingly, the global carbon offsetting business has spawned a critical backlash. Groups such as Carbon Trade Watch and the Durban Network for Climate Justice warn that offsetting is no substitute for emission reductions. Another telling point made by these activists is that offsetting, at least as practised in the voluntary or commercial sector, is a rather wayward science. In a recent survey, New Internationalist (2006) magazine found that the same round world trip was calculated in markedly different ways by different offsetting businesses. New Internationalist report that the Carbon Neutral Company claimed that the trip will produce 4.3 MtC and could be offset by planting four trees, costing $60. By contrast, another company, Climate Friendly, told them that the same trip will produce 11.63 MtC and will cost $195, which would go towards wind farming. Carbon offsetting is a new and at times questionable enterprise. However, for all its faults, it is a necessary aspect of green conferencing. A number of recent high profile gatherings, most prominently the meeting of the G8 in 2005, have been declared carbon neutral. Moreover, support and information on green conferencing can be found from a variety of unofficial and official channels. The Canadian Government ministry, Environment Canada, has been supporting carbon neutral conferencing since 2002. Environment Canada's Green Meeting Guide (2005a) and Guide on Carbon Neutral Conferencing (2005b) offer many good ideas, as well as demonstrating how useful it is to have government support for implementing them. The Green Meeting Guide offers recommendations in respect to nearly all aspects of the organization and planning of a conference. This range reminds us that offsetting is not regarded by many of its proponents as a panacea but as a very partial alleviation of the problem. Thus, for example, the British government's move to offset emissions created by official government air travel is claimed to be the least and last of a three-step strategy: record and raise awareness of emissions at source; where possible reduce those emission, and then mitigate remaining emissions through offsetting. (DEFRA 2005) One might wonder how this guidance squares with the British government's apparent commitment to the massive expansion of airport capacity. Clearly, this is an area where organizations, as well as ordinary individuals (like me), like to express fine intentions but where it is difficult to underestimate the difficulty of translating those intentions into reality. Where does this leave us? With an on-going debate. But also with no excuse for inaction. We value and need our conferences. We all want them to thrive. But we need to have sustainable conferences. There are a range of measures – including offsetting – that are already being employed by organizations across the world to make international meetings more environmentally friendly. Conference organizers can do much … but only so much. For I want to return finally to the point I raised earlier: sustainable conferencing and, indeed, sustainable research practices, must not be about dumping responsibility onto the desks of the few. It is about a shift in culture. It is a hard thing for a geography academic to say, but the glory days of guilt-free and gleeful world winging are gone. Travel is no longer an escape. It is a responsibility.
Source: Area
Author: Alastair Bonnett
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2053009507