Can universities learn to leave behind air travel?

We have a terrific opportunity for universities to demonstrate a key missing piece of the vigorous climate action that the world so desperately needs: the courage to transform industries not just when the change is costless, but also when the change involves some reasonable costs or tradeoffs. University-based researchers often find themselves advising audiences to show more ambition in facing these costs and tradeoffs. For example, experts in urban design find themselves encouraging municipalities to invest scarce dollars in expensive rail transportation projects. Experts in climate diplomacy find themselves encouraging China and India to forego coal in favor of greener energy sources. How can academic communities recommend such changes to other audiences if we are unwilling to transform our own sector? The international #flyingless initiative (flyingless.org) is a loose network of academics that for almost 10 years has been petitioning universities to take four steps: (1) to include all university-related flying in their environmental impact measurement; (2) to support virtual conferencing and low-carbon forms of transport for faculty, staff, and students; (3) to set ambitious goals for emissions reductions in line with the cuts suggested by climate science; and (4) to use their influence with professional associations and funders to reduce flying and promote alternatives to flying. Our petition has 2000 supporters and we serve as a communications hub for more specific low-carbon conferencing initiatives in diverse fields of study. Within academia, a FlyingLess initiative in Germany provides a toolbox for university actions (flyingless.de). A crowdsourced resource guide led by Ryan Katz-Rosene and colleagues provides dozens of articles, tools, statements, and evidence summaries (link). These academic initiatives are related to allied efforts around the world. Focusing more on individuals, the FlightFree movement organizes people around pledges to not fly for a particular time period (flightfree.org). Dozens of community efforts work to limit the local noise and pollution harms from airports (for example, schipholwatch.nl). The Stay Grounded movement connects more than 200 participating organizations (stay-grounded.org).

The great news is that universities can sharply reduce their aviation emissions while still preserving the good we do in the world and the joys of academic life. If climate-friendly university transformation really required sacrificing the contributions universities make to science and the public good, we truly would face a bitter dilemma, but fortunately this is not the case. When I do public speaking about our #flyingless initiative, I often get challenged with a comment that focuses on particular flights the questioner found most valuable: for example, to apply for a career-defining new job, to reach a research site that offers groundbreaking contributions to climate science, or to visit much-missed family scattered by the world’s violence and injustice. Let me assure you, these most valuable flights are not the focus of our initiative. After delivering this reassurance, I often ask the questioner about their other flights: the cross-continental flights to deliver the fourth talk on a panel of speakers in a 60-minute session, where the first three speakers ran over their allotted time. My academic colleagues delight in recounting such experiences, which are widespread. I ask audience members to imagine a horizontal line with a ranking of all their air travel ranked from lowest to highest value per unit of greenhouse gas emissions. Starting with the lowest, what number of flights can we reduce without harming our core goals and accomplishments? Many friends and colleagues respond that they could sacrifice half of their flying without losing what is most essential. Almost 10 years ago, as my awareness of this issue rose, I undertook an experiment to give up unnecessary flying, with the stipulation that the definition of “necessary” should be frank and self-reflective. For example, if a flight were required for keeping my job, or would be my only chance to see my aging parents, I would do it, but modest sacrifices at the margin to professional visibility or convenience would be tolerated. I was shocked to find that none of my flying was necessary. I haven’t flown since. I know that zero flying is not the right number for everybody, but I still hope this experiment provides useful information for others. Along the way, I have been taught many helpful lessons about a greener approach to academic life. I report these experiences in a lightly satirical academic travel and tourism show called Lifestyles of the NOT Jet Set (link) and in an interactive travel map feature for my university’s online publication TuftsNow (link).

This is an important question. I never ever tell scholars who are in early career, located in the Global South, or struggling against the unfair gatekeeping of university life in the USA and Europe, not to take a flight that they have judged to be sufficiently valuable to justify the carbon emissions. I trust their judgement. I have far greater concerns for the much greater aviation emissions from more established academics. In the journal Nature Human Behavior, Sarabipour and colleagues (2021) studied 270 national and international academic conferences in-person before the pandemic. Far from effectively nurturing early career and underrepresented scholarship, they found these conferences often replicate the existing structure of privilege. I am particularly inspired by conference innovations that go beyond merely Zoom presentations and experiment with the human and social aspects of conferencing. For example, even before the pandemic, a leading conference series in the field of music and psychology switched to a format of linked in-person hubs, with special emphasis on justice and inclusivity, with sites in Argentina, Australia, the UK, and Europe (Parncutt et al., 2021). In a comparative quantitative analysis in Nature of low-carbon conferencing options, Klöwer and colleagues (2020) found this format to greatly reduce emissions. Overall, we can satisfy our human goals for interpersonal connection, and our thirst for justice and fairness, even while redesigning the role of aviation in academic life.