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Hi everyone,

Please see the petition below, and the related press release. Please feel free to distribute!

I can’t help but wonder whether it’s hypocritical that geographers talk so much about climate change and the anthropocene at conferences such as the AAG, which for most of us involves flying long distances. So as we discuss the dire state of the planet with each other in person, we contribute to worsening the situation through emissions caused by our air travel.

(For the record, I do not take a “holier than thou” position on this question, as taking my kids to see my family in the US involves a flight from Stockholm to New York, and thus I have not totally given up flying personally. But there’s much we can do professionally to reduce our contributions to a problem that, as we keep hearing, seems to be worse than we thought. I think it’s a discussion we need to have.)

To sign the petition, visit: https://www.change.org/p/universities-and-professional-associations-call-on-universities-and-professional-associations-to-greatly-reduce-flying?recruiter=294645973&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

Geographers are good at talking the talk; maybe it’s time to walk the walk.

cheers,
Dave Jansson


PETITION:

Link: http://www.flyingless.org 19 October 2015

• We petition universities and institutions of higher education: (a) to include all university-related flying (whether directly paid by the university or by others) in their environmental impact measurement and goal-setting; (b) to support and work to realize marked reductions in flying by faculty, staff, and students commensurate with the cuts suggested by climate science; (c) to establish and publish short- and medium-term benchmarks for reductions; and (d) to use their influence with professional associations to reduce reliance on flying for academic and research conferencing.
• We petition academic professional associations: (a) to measure and report the environmental impact of their conferences; (b) to radically reduce the amount of flying needed for conferencing; (c) to establish and publish short- and medium-term benchmarks for reductions; and (d) to work with university-based members to meet key professional objectives in ways that do not require flying and that are sustainable.

Signatories:
Carlo Aall (Western Norwegian Research Institute, Sogndal, Norway)
Joana Almeida (Cascais, Portugal)
Kevin Anderson (University of Manchester, UK)
Mark Anderson (University of Maine, USA)
Ugo Bardi (University of Florence, Italy)
Alastair Bonnett (Newcastle University, UK)
Alice Bows-Larkin (University of Manchester, UK)
Milena Büchs (University of Southampton, UK)
Stuart Capstick (Cardiff University, UK)
Adam Corner (Cardiff University, UK)
Kristof Decoster (Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium)
Giuseppe Delmestri (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria)
Janet Dickinson (Bournemouth University, UK)
Mark Diesendorf (University of New South Wales, Australia)
James Dwyer (Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York)
Eke Eijgelaar (NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, Breda, Netherlands)
Brett Favaro (Memorial University St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada)
Alejandro Frid (University of Victoria, Canada)
Stefan Gössling (Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden)
Malcolm Green (Imperial College London)
Trisha Greenhalgh (University of Oxford)
Paul G. Harris (Hong Kong Institute of Education)
James Higham (University of Otago/Te Whare Wananga o Otago, New Zealand/Aotearoa)
Debbie Hopkins (University of Otago/Te Whare Wānanga Otāgo, New Zealand/Aotearoa)
Eric Holthaus (Weather and Climate Journalist, Slate Magazine)
David Jansson (Uppsala University)
Max Koch (Lund University, Sweden)
Susan P. Krumdieck (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
Daniel Lemire (Université du Québec) 
Panos Louridas (University of Economics and Business, Athens)
David J C MacKay (University of Cambridge)
Petter Næss (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Oslo)
Joseph Nevins (Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York)
Kimberly Nicholas (Lund University)
John O’Neill (University of Manchester)
Richard Parncutt (University of Graz, Austria)
Mark Pedelty (University of Minnesota)
Alexandra Ponette-González (University of North Texas, USA)
Rupert Read (University of East Anglia, UK)
David Reay (University of Edinburgh, Scotland)
Arianne C. Reis (Southern Cross University, Australia)
Ian Roberts (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Jens Rolff (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
Clare Saunders (University of Exeter, UK)
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (Yale-NUS College, Singapore)
Juliet Schor (Boston College, USA)
Clive L. Spash (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria)
Diomidis Spinellis (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)
Erica Thompson (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Timothy Waring (University of Maine, USA)
Elke U. Weber (Columbia University, USA)
Parke Wilde (Tufts University, Boston, USA)
John Wiseman (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Nick Woodman (University of Southampton, UK)
Richard Wright (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA)
Simon N. Young (McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
Laurie Zoloth (Northwestern University, Illinois, USA)


PRESS RELEASE:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, October 19, 2015

Academics Champion Far-reaching Reductions in Flying

Group of 56 scholars launches petition calling upon universities and academic professional associations to greatly reduce flying-related footprint as part of effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions

A group of 56 scholars from more than a dozen countries launched a petition today calling upon universities and academic professional organizations to greatly reduce their flying-related footprints as part of the effort to limit the destabilization of the climate system. The signatories represent a diverse set of academic disciplines—from psychology and medicine to sociology and philosophy—in addition to fields (e.g. environmental studies, geography, and earth science) normally associated with climate and other ecological concerns. One is also a former flight instructor and licensed commercial pilot, turned scholar of climate policy and ethics, who no longer flies for conferences and vacations.

Launched less than two months before the international climate negotiations open in Paris, the petition’s release comes on the heels of increased attention to climate change during the U.S. visit of Pope Francis in September. It also comes one week after  a study published on October 12 in Nature Geoscience that foresees a doubling of surface melting of Antarctic ice shelves by 2050, and a significant risk, if high amounts of greenhouse gas emissions continue, of their collapse by century’s end, a development with potential implications for rising sea levels.

Such signs, and the fact that emissions are cumulative, are why signatories and climate scholars Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin at the University of Manchester (U.K.) saythat “radical and immediate emission reductions” are needed to avoid extremely dangerous levels of climate change. Professor John Wiseman, another signatory and Deputy Director of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne (Australia) highlights the important leadership role which institutions of higher education can take in reducing emissions from aviation. “Universities and academic professional associations often embrace sustainability,” he notes, “but they also tend to have very large carbon footprints—to a significant degree due to frequent flying by members of their academic communities.”

Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist and Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University (U.S.A.) as well as the former president of the American Academy of Religion (2014), contends that the changes demanded by the petition are matters of environmental justice. “They may seem trivial,” she says, but “they are cumulative, part of a world so clean and easy for people with wealth, so hard and dirty for the poor. It is a world in which the wealthiest have garnered the vast majority of wealth, burning the vast majority of carbon at the expense of the lives and the health of the poor.”

With moderate sacrifice, university-based faculty, administrators, and students can make large reductions in their total greenhouse gas emissions and, in the process, help bring about a more just and sustainable world. The petition makes some concrete suggestions on how to reduce flying as part of an effort to bring about a broad-ranging discussion within academic communities.

Background: Flying contributes significantly to global climate change. It is responsible for 2-3% of annual global CO2 emissions--about the same percentage that Germany and the city of Beijing, for example, contribute each year. Flying’s share of global emissions is growing steadily as the growth in total flying miles outstrips improvements in fuel and engine efficiency. Because flying releases various pollutants at high altitude, its detrimental impact is far greater than that caused by CO2 emissions alone. One round-trip flight from New York City to London or San Francisco incurs a warming effect equivalent of more than two metric tons of carbon emissions per economy passenger--about 20 percent of the total annual emissions of a typical person in Finland, and more than 100 percent of those generated by an average person in India. 

For more information, please visit http://www.flyingless.org, or write us at [log in to unmask].