Carbon emissions associated with air travel to professional conferences make up a sizable fraction of the emissions produced by researchers in academia.
Carbon emissions associated with air travel to professional conferences make up a sizable fraction of the emissions produced by researchers in academia. Andrea Gokus, a McDonnell Center postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is advocating for a reduction of these emissions.
In a paper published in PNAS Nexus, Gokus and collaborators estimated the CO2-equivalent emissions for conference travel to all 362 open meetings in the field of astronomy in 2019.
The total is an estimated 42,500 tons, or about 1 ton per participant per meeting. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
“Networking and discussing new scientific developments at meetings is important for advancing the field, but adjustments can be made to reduce their hefty carbon cost,” Gokus said.
Read more at Washington University in St. Louis
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