Climate change activists protest proposed expansion of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, December 14, 2019.

To see Part 1 of the FlyingLess end-of-the-year update for 2019, go here.

At the end of December, Robert Del Naja (aka 3D), a singer with Massive Attack, told the BBC that the popular English music group wants to avoid flying.  In 2019, the band actively supported Extinction Rebellion. “[As musicians] we have enjoyed a high-carbon lifestyle,” Del Naja told the BBC’s Radio 4. “The challenge now is to not only make personal sacrifices, but to insist on the systemic change that’s needed. Business as usual is over.” This follows on the heels of an announcement in November by another prominent British rock band, Coldplay, that it will stop touring until they figure out how to make their concerts carbon neutral. “The hardest thing is the flying side of things,” said one of the band members.

Days after Massive Attack’s statement, a study was published that revealed that air pollution from planes using Heathrow Airport—including ultra-fine particles, which previous research has linked to brain cancer—are reaching central London, 14 miles [22.5 kilometers] away. According to Dr Ioar Rivas, of King’s College London, and a lead author of the study, “We expected traffic emissions to be an important source of ultra-fine particles in cities but we now know that airport emissions, even if located at the outskirts of the city, can travel far enough and reach population in urban areas.” Gary Fuller, also of King’s College and a co-author of the study, notes ,“Cities around Europe have policies to reduce airborne particles from traffic…but aircraft emissions are not being addressed in the same way.”

What make addressing such emissions all the more necessary is that, in the words of Barry Saxifrage, a climate reporter with Canada’s National Observer, the world’s aviation industry “has started burning jet fuel like there is no tomorrow. Its climate pollution is rocketing upward.” Based on data from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Saxifrage (who gave up flying more than a decade ago due to its impact on the climate system) finds that the aviation industry’s co2 emissions are presently rising four times faster than they did in the 1990-2010 period.

Goings-on within academia and beyond (continued from Part 1)

Ghent University in Belgium is playing a leading role in advancing sustainable travel by reducing flying by its personnel. Academic travel for professional purposes (what the institution characterizes as “business trips”), much of it by plane, makes up 15 percent of the university’s total co2 emissions. As such, Ghent has established a “sustainable travel policy” that includes a “decision tree” to reduce air travel—particularly to cities within 6-8 hours of travel by train from Ghent. A university-based activist group, De Groene Locomotief (The Green Locomotive), has worked over the years to bring about these changes. It has also actively encouraged people to sign the FlyingLess petition!

The Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA), a section of the (U.S.) American Anthropological Association (AAA), put together a roundtable for the recent joint-annual meeting of the AAA and the Canadian Anthropology Society (also known as CASCA) in Vancouver. The meeting’s theme was “Changing Climates: Struggle, Collaboration, and Justice.”

Anthropologist Jason Hickel has written that anthropologists have “an ethical obligation to reconsider how we approach our work. Perhaps this means shifting from the present culture of hit-and-run research (frequent trips for short stays) to ‘slow fieldwork’: reducing the frequency of visits, extending their duration, travelling overland wherever possible and developing research partnerships with anthropologists who live closer to our field [sites]. In addition to reducing emissions,” he says, “these changes may well improve the quality of our research, making it more thoughtful, more robust and more inclusive.” However, he argues, “the real elephant in the room” for anthropologists are the professional meetings. Hickel notes the irony of thousands of anthropologists flying in for the 2018 AAA meeting in San Jose, California, when “the region was being torched by some of the most destructive wildfires in its history. Photographs emerged of smoke seeping into conference rooms, and of participants walking around in masks – poignant images of a climate dystopia that is already unfolding.”

Reflecting such concerns, the November 2019, the SCA roundtable in Vancouver explored alternative models for both the annual AAA meting and other professional anthropology gatherings. “Reimagining the Annual Meeting for an Era of Radical Climate Change” was comprised of two sections, one titled “Assessing the Conventional Conference,” the other “Emerging Alternatives.” The SCA has posted the presentations online—both those done at the actual meeting as well as video contributions from anthropologists not in attendance—and the discussions that followed.

In the run-up to the COP25 climate negotiations in Spain in December, #VirtualBlueCOP25, an online platform focusing on ocean and climate-related themes, had a series of virtual events. An initiative of Future Earth—a network of scientists, researchers, and innovators in sustainability—#VirtualBlueCOP25 included an event of the flyingless movement. The event included presentations by Kim Cobb of Georgia Tech (USA), Lisa Jacobson of Future Earth Sweden. Kim Nicholas of Lund University (Sweden) Isabel Seeger of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (Germany), and was followed by an illuminating discussion among the participants. A video of the event is below.

Recent academic articles, working papers, and essays

Martin Young of Southern Cross University in Australia argues that there is a “symbiotic, environmentally destructive relationship between passenger air transport and economic output” under capitalism. Coupled with the fact there is not “a technologically-feasible replacement for jet fuel,” efforts to reduce flight-related emissions require an appreciation of the multiple ways in which air travel is tightly tied to the reproduction and growth of capitalist society—a matters he explores in the article. With such an analysis in mind, one way to advance a flying less agenda, he suggests in the conclusion, “may be to link air transport more closely to the emerging anti-tourist politics based around the ‘right to the city’” as well as to the “slow travel” movement and anti-airport-expansion efforts. (See Martin Young, “Capital, class and the social necessity of passenger air transport,” Progress in Human Geography, 2019: 21 pp.; DOI: 10.1177/0309132519888680)

Researchers associated with the International Council on Clean Transportation have released a working paper that measures emissions from commercial aircraft in 2018. According to the findings, greenhouse gas emissions from commercial aviation are rapidly growing. At present levels of growth, emissions are expected to triple by 2050, by which time commercial aircraft could account for a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. Passenger aircraft comprised 38 million of the 39 million commercial flights in 2018, comprising 2.4 percent of global CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels—a 32 percent increase over a five-year period. This increase was 70 percent higher than that projected by the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Flights emanating from the United States and its territories made up 24 percent of all commercial aviation emissions. Relatedly, flights associated with high-income countries, which have 16 percent of the world’s population, were responsible for 62 percent of related emissions. (See Brandon Graver, Kevin Zhang, and Dan Rutherford, “CO2 Emissions from Commercial Aviation, 2018,” Working Paper, The International Council on Clean Transportation, September 19, 2019.)

A study by a trio of researchers from the University of Iceland provides insight into flying practices. Focusing on local, domestic, and international travel habits of young adults (25-40 years of age) in the Reykjavik Capital Region, the researchers found that international travel for leisure purposes dominated the greenhouse gas emissions of the studied population. Responsibility for emissions was highly unequal with the top 20 percent responsible liable for 55 percent (responsibility was similarly unequal for local and domestic travel). Moreover, those with greater awareness about the climate crisis are more likely to have higher GHG emissions from flights abroad. Those who live in the center city, which is indicative of more cosmopolitan attitudes, are most likely to engage in leisure travel abroad. (See Michał Czepkiewicz, Áróra Árnadóttir and Jukka Heinonen, “Flights Dominate Travel Emissions of Young Urbanites,” Sustainability, Vol. 11, 6340, 35 pp.; doi: 10.3390/su11226340)

Sebastian Jäckle of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany) conducted a systematic accounting of the travel-related CO2 footprints of the last six general conferences of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR).  (All the meetings took place in Europe, except one in Montreal, Canada—which had, by far, the biggest per capita footprint given that all European attendees, who make up the vast majority of participants, had to fly.) Among his findings is that the location of meetings is key. (Had all six meetings taken place in Frankfurt, Germany, for example, GHG emissions would have been “significantly lower.”) Were the ECPR to locate its meetings accordingly, and also promote low-emission, land-bound travel, as well as allow for online participation (particularly for those residing very far from the conference city), travel-related emissions would be reduced by more than 75 percent, according to the author. Such reductions greatly dwarf those that would result from switching to vegetarian or vegan meals during the conference, or refraining from printing the conference program.  (See Sebastian Jäckle, “WE have to change! The carbon footprint of ECPR general conferences and ways to reduce it,” European Political Science, Vol. 18, 2019: 630-650.)

Meanwhile, Milan Klöwer, a PHd student of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Oxford, released a working paper just prior to the opening of the annual meeting  of the American Geophysical Union in December. He estimated that travel to and from the international conference, one that involved approximately 24,000 presenters in its most recent meeting, resulted in the equivalent of more than 69,000 tons of co2 emissions, an average of 2.9 tons of co2e per scientist in attendance. Were the AGU simply to locate the meeting to a location that would minimize travel—to Chicago in particular—it would reduce meeting emissions by 12 percent.  As a whopping 74 percent of the travel emissions come from intercontinental flights, the author further estimates that, were 36 percent of the highest-emitting attendees (those who travel the greatest distance) to participate virtually, it would reduce the co2 footprint by 76 percent. To achieve more than a 90 percent reduction would require not only such virtual participation, but also a shift to a bi-annual meeting in Chicago. (See Milan Klöwer, “The travel carbon footprint of the AGU Fall Meeting 2019,” November 2019; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3555424)

Taking steps to achieve such far-reaching cuts, argue Richard Parncutt, and Annemarie Seither-Preisler of the Centre for Systematic Musicology at the University of Graz (Austria), are matters of ethics and social equity. They contend that “today’s academic conference culture continues to put academic colleagues under pressure to burn large amounts of fossil fuels,” the concerns of climate science notwithstanding. In light of the privilege enjoyed by academics—particularly those from wealthy countries—and the fact that emerging internet-based communication technologies make possible low-co2-emitting ways to connect, the authors assert that scholars have an obligation to push for a transformation in what they call “academic conference culture.” To aid in this push, the authors offer various strategies for advocates of such transformation to work with colleagues and administrators to bring it about. (See Richard Parncutt, and Annemarie Seither-Preisler, “Live streaming at international academic conferences: Ethical considerations. Elementa Science of the Anthropocene, Vol. 7, article 55, 2019, 13 pp.)

In a spirit similar to that embodied by Parncutt’s and Seither-Preisler’s article, Ashley Dawson, an environmental humanities scholar at the College of Staten Island and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, calls upon academia to do a lot more to decarbonize. Among his concerns is academic conference-going. Their face-to-face interactions, he acknowledges, provide many benefits, especially for scholars seeking tenure or promotion. However, he asserts, “we need to ask ourselves honestly whether these benefits are worth the staggering carbon emissions that conference-going generates. Surely it is up to those of us who are fortunate enough to have tenure to challenge the norms of our profession rather than to continue acting like members of the business class.” In addition to advocating divestment from fossil fuels, he suggests that online, low-carbon conferences—he cites a model developed at the University of California, Santa Barbara—are one way to challenge those norms. (See Ashley Dawson, “Academia and Climate Change,” Social Text Online, August 2, 2019.)

Shahzeen Attari, David Krantz, and Elke Weber have followed up their article from 2016 that demonstrated that climate researchers who fly frequently and consume a lot of energy at home are less credible with the public. Reflecting back, the authors characterize the results as “troubling” due to the fact “that most climate scientists, by virtue of the current practices of their profession, have a carbon footprint significantly higher than that of the general public.” The new publication builds on the previous findings. Their data demonstrates that the size of the co2 footprint of individuals advocating for low-emissions policies “massively affect[s]” not only “their credibility and intentions of their audience to conserve energy” but also the willingness of the audience to support public policies championed by “climate communicators.”  Because those who call for for energy conservation and co2-reducing policies “must expect ad hominem arguments based on their own energy use,” it is imperative that they are seen as pursuing such practices in their own lives. The good news, the authors find, is that advocates who lose credibility because of large co2 footprints can regain it if they reform their behavior. (See Shahzeen Z. Attari, David Krantz, and Elke U. Weber, “Climate change communicators’ carbon footprints affect their audience’s policy support,” Climatic Change, June 2019, Volume 154, Issue 3-4: 529–545.)

One reason that high-flying academic mobility continues—this despite marked advances in virtual communication technologies—is that dominant discourse in the academy constructs such mobility as “essential” to the successful career, argue an international team of researchers. Interrogating a study sample of academic staff at University of Otago in New Zealand, the authors employ a lens of gender. Their aim is “to examine the subtle differences in language that create differing realities with regards to gender and obligations of care in academic mobility decisions.” They find tensions between a hegemonic discourse that elevates mobility as key to career advancement and a heteronormative one relating to parenting and care obligations. Together, they “render parenting and a ‘good’ academic career as incompatible, particularly for female academics.” In the end, the authors call for more research, Given the normalization of hypermobility at most universities, the authors call for more research to understand how such expectations are challenged and resisted, not least by those who seek to reduce their professional travel. (See Scott Cohen,  Paul Hanna, James Higham, Debbie Hopkins,  Caroline Orchiston, “Gender discourses in academic mobility,” Gender, Work & Organization, 2019, 17 pp.; DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12413)

Four geographers from Durham University and Lancaster University (United Kingdom) have assessed the CO2 emissions associated with U.S. war-making across the globe by focusing on the Pentagon’s supply chains, particularly “the acquisition and distribution of staggering volumes of fuel.” They find that the U.S. military consumes more fuel than many medium-sized countries. Furthermore, were the Pentagon a country, its annual fuel consumption would be between those of Peru and Portugal, making it the forty-seventh-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. This does not count “emissions from the electricity and food the military consumes, land use changes from military operations, or any other source of emissions.” The “bulk” of the fuel consumed—and thus the associated greenhouse gas emissions—is jet fuel. Among the authors conclusions is that “social movements concerned with climate change must be every bit as vociferous in contesting US military interventionism.” Given the centrality of controlling access to, and ensuring the flow of, oil to U.S. military strategy—which points to how U.S. militarism is key to making possible academic jet-setting and its reliance on high oil consumption—these findings highlight another dimension of the importance of FlyingLess. (See Oliver Belcher, Patrick Bigger, Ben Neimark, and Cara Kennelly. “Hidden carbon costs of the ‘everywhere war’: Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, June 2019, 16 pp.; DOI: 10.1111/tran.12319)

Climate change activists protest proposed expansion of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, December 14, 2019.

Growing numbers of people in Europe continue to choose trains over planes. Virgin Trains recently revealed that, through the first six months of 2019, 35 percent of travelers percent between London and Edinburgh and Glasgow opted for the train, constituting six growth over the previous year. This reflects a broader decline in flying in the United Kingdom, one partially explained by taxes on flights and improved train service, where domestic flights fell 10 percent in the 2007-2017 period.

In Germany, the number of people flying between the country’s cities fell 12 percent in November in comparison to one year earlier. November also marked the fourth consecutive monthly decline. Meanwhile, in the United States, which lacks the type of anti-flying advocacy one sees in many countries in Europe, Amtrak, the national passenger railroad, had the highest number of riders in its history in fiscal year 2019.

These figures are significant for climate change-related reasons, but also for matters of public health. A just-released study, conducted by University of Washington researchers over one year (2018-19), found that communities underneath and downwind of jets landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (the eight-busiest airport in the United States) are exposed to a type of ultrafine particle pollution uniquely associated with aircraft. Ultrafine particles are more likely to be inhaled and absorbed by the body than larger ones. Those associated with airplanes are so small that the can penetrate the central nervous system. According to the university’s summary of the findings, previous studies “have linked exposure to ultrafine particles to breast cancer, heart disease, prostate cancer and a variety of lung conditions.”

Goings-on within academia and beyond

Inspired by the “ClimateWednesday” self-commitment to reduce flying among academics in Germany (see our previous update), a broader regional initiative has emerged. #Unter1000 (Under 1,000)  includes those employed in scientific institutions in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Signatories promise not to fly for professional purposes if the distance is under one thousand kilometers (610 miles). More than 2,100 individuals have signed thus far.

In a similar vein, about one year ago, students at the University of Basel advanced a proposal in the Swiss university’s student senate that would require that students take the train for any university-organized trips under 1,000 kilometers. (Within this distance are destinations such as Brussels and London.)  The university’s sustainability office has now included the reduction of flight-related greenhouse gas emissions as part of its “goals and actions” for 2019-2021.

The “Beyond Oil” conference that took place in Bergen, Norway in mid-October and, as reported in our last update, involved a “conference train” from Oslo to Bergen (a seven-hour journey) was quite successful. In comparison to its 2017 gathering which involved 80 attendees, this year’s in-person/virtual hybrid conference had 130 participants. Despite a more than sixty percent increase in participation, the CO2 footprint of the 2019 gathering was half that of 2017’s. The conference organizers have put together a helpful (and inspiring) document on “lessons learned” from this year’s conference.

In November, a petition was submitted to the Council of the Society for Neuroscience. With almost 1200 signatories, the petition calls upon SfN to take various steps to “act on the climate crisis.” These include: providing and publicizing a careful accounting of all annual conference-related emissions (one that incorporates the tens of thousands of flights associated with the gathering); developing a plan to reduce the emissions “substantially” year-by-year by (among other measures) making the conference biannual, adopting a “hub-and-spokes” model that links meeting sites around the world to a much-reduced-in-size central meeting site; and considering matters of climate justice when making organizational decisions. In response, the SfN is now reportedly exploring multiple pathways for realizing reductions in the meeting’s carbon footprint, beginning with next year’s gathering in Chicago. With more than 37,000 members in scores of countries, the Washington, DC-baseed SfN describes itself as “the world’s largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and the nervous system.”

At the University of Exeter (United Kingdom), a working group put together by the vice-chancellor in response to the university’s declaration of an environment and climate emergency in May 2019, has released a “white paper” about what that emergency should mean for the institution’s operations. The working group recommends that the university achieve a 75 percent reduction in direct carbon emissions by 2030 (and 100 percent by 2040). It also recommends a 50 percent decline in indirect (or “scope 3”) emissions (which make up more than 84 percent of Exeter’s total emissions) by 2030, with a 100 percent goal by 2050; this includes a 50 percent reduction in “long haul travel” emissions by 2025. (Travel-related emissions make up 21 percent of the university’s total emissions.) Achieving these highly ambitious goals, the authors of the detailed document write, requires “fundamentally changing individual and collective attitudes and behaviours.”

On October 29, 2019, Stay Grounded held its second webinar. Titled “’System’ Change and/or ‘Behaviour’ Change?,” the webinar featured presentations by Vivian Frick, an environmental psychologist at the Technische Universität Berlin; Lars Kjerulf Petersen, an environmental sociologist at Denmark’s Aarhus University; and Michaela Leitner, a  sociologist and campaigner with Stay Grounded. Together, the presenters offer valuable insights on what drives human behavior in relation to flying and regarding how to bridge the gap between growing awareness of climate breakdown and persistent flying practices. A global network, Stay Grounded has posted an excellent summary of the webinar, a video of which—including the discussion that followed the presentations—is below.

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Because so much has been transpiring on the FlyingLess front, there is a lot to cover. We have thus decided to break up this update into two parts—to prevent it from becoming overly long. We will post Part 2 next week. It will include additional “items” under “Goings-on within academia and beyond” and summaries of “Recent academic articles, working papers, and essays.”