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The future is not written. We can secure the prosperity of future generations through our actions today. We can make choices that determine how we ultimately manage the climate and human climate crises, AKA the twin crises, of our time. We need both policy and individual actions to address these crises, and while individual actions are small in terms of contributions to the CO2 footprint, changing norms and influencing the policy requires individuals to take part in the process by raising awareness. We influence the people in our circles.
Everyone wants to see friends, family, and colleagues in person and enjoy activities we can do together. Conference travel has taken me to places I wouldn’t have traveled to otherwise, and I have been able to meet new people and learn new ideas via work-related travel. No one wants to travel more than I do, and I understand how going virtual impacts people.
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But my thinking has drastically changed the past few years, and now I’ve come to the conclusion, where I strongly believe we need to do things differently in higher education. We should plan virtual meetings and conferences post pandemic as the default (with allowances for regional hubs). More and more faculty are concerned about our role in the climate crisis, and some believe we should do our part to reduce our carbon footprint and set an example for other sectors of society. My individual actions are tiny compared to what professional societies and institutions can do, and purchasing an electric car or reducing my air travel is minuscule in relation to what the math profession or the larger education sector contributes.
How much CO2? For one of the 2019 IBL workshops offered by AIBL, the total flight miles was about 90,000 miles traveled by just 33 participants and facilitators. These flights created about 24 tonnes of CO2, and does not include airport transfers, conference room service, and if family or significant others also traveled.
Conferences create orders of magnitude more carbon footprint than a single, small workshop. One large example is the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). “Take the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) — the world’s largest Earth- and space-science conference — held in San Francisco, California, last December. We calculate that its 28,000 delegates travelled 285 million kilometres there and back — almost twice the distance between Earth and the Sun. In doing so, they emitted the equivalent of about 80,000 tonnes of CO2 (tCO2e).” (Link). The Joint Math Meetings or MathFest are much smaller, yet still could account for thousands of tonnes of CO2.
I think most people understand generally why this matters. David Wallace-Wells wrote about some terrifying studies in his book, “The Uninhabitable Earth.” Half of all CO2 emitted in history has been during the last 30 years. In one study just the difference between 1.5C and 2.0C and only looking at air pollution (and not other factors) results in an estimated 153 +/- 43 million deaths. This is unconscionable, especially given that poorer, developing regions and BIPOC communities will bear the greatest burden, and they have contributed far less to the crisis (Link to cited article). Not only is climate the largest problem we have faced, it is also the largest social justice problem we have ever faced. What scientists have learned is that we are on the path past +2C, and that climate change is a dial, not a binary on-off switch. The less carbon we emit, the less suffering there will be, and humans control how far we turn this dial.
Another major reason why I believe in the value and promise of virtual options is equity. There are a handful of groups of people that often are not able to participate in professional development workshops or travel to conferences. These are people with small children or other people in their care, people with health issues or disabilities that prevent them from traveling, non-tenure track faculty, and instructors who do not have access to travel funding, who often work at 2-year colleges and regional institutions.
Even before the pandemic, people in these categories were not able to travel to conferences or workshops. For those who have been able to travel in the past for work and are looking forward to doing it again, imagine all the people working in our profession who have not had such opportunities. During the pandemic some of them were able to attend virtual JMM or a virtual IBL workshop, and if things open back to the way they were, these groups will once again be locked out. Even if we had the technology to create zero-carbon air travel, equity will persist as an issue.
One overlooked consequence of going back to 2019 is that it puts the onus on individuals to try and navigate systemic issues. Individuals would have to choose between the climate or attending a conference to advance their careers. Some individuals will not be able to attend, and all they can do it email the organizers, if there will be remote participation options. This is one way systems perpetuate social problems, and hence it is the responsibility of professional societies and institutions of higher ed to work on these issues and develop systemic solutions to system induced, contributed, or created problems.
One aspect of addressing the climate and equity crises is the essential role of policy. In our small corner of the world of math associations, policies could be crafted that help us do better in both reduction of our carbon footprint and increasing access for all people in the math profession. Otherwise, we will continue to add to climate problems and maintain social inequities.
Biennials, regional hubs and virtual attendance can significantly reduce emissions (Link). Carbon offsets can be purchased to mitigate absolutely necessary travel (and could be built into the cost of registration fees. I personally use Native Energy). I We can also develop virtual events during conferences and workshops to include activities for informal community building, recreating some of the valuable informal time at in-person conferences. We can innovate how we organize these sessions and utilize technology to make these experiences check all the boxes.
One oversimplified mental exercise is to ask, "Would I rather spend part of our carbon budget on work travel or on visiting family once a year?" This is not a real choice. It's an exercise in engaging in defining priorities and attempting to connect to our values.
As a profession we say we care about climate and equity, and if we go back to the way things were in 2019 after the pandemic, then it’s tantamount to looking the other way. Looking the other way normalizes human suffering and inequities, which is exactly the opposite of the collectivist values needed to pull us together to deal sufficiently with the twin crises of our time. So let’s not look the other way and languish in complacency, because we need a more empathic, active response. Let’s look forward and think creatively to recreate better and more inclusive ways to meet and do our work.
