The “Global Warming of 1.5ºC” special report by the IPCC in 2018 acted as a shock in academia. Over the next few years, many initiatives, like A4E or Labos1point5, appeared in order to make research more sustainable. Following a seminar at my institute (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, in the South of France) in 2019, presenting its carbon footprint, I evaluated the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of my own research activity (at least the travels) since I started my PhD. This completely opened my eyes: I was part of the problem with up to 20 t CO2e per year, just for my academic travels. Half of these greenhouse gas was emitted in travels to reach ESO’s La Silla observatory in Chile while the other half was to attend scientific conferences, project meetings, some in-person ESO, ESA, and NASA committees (for 2 days), as well as working visits to my collaborators’ institutes.
Therefore, I decided to ban air travels from both my academic career and my personal life. I cut my frequent flyer cards and started to explore alternatives to air travel. Fortunately, I already had a permanent position in Europe, with a good train network, which allows me to continue my research activity on exoplanets. Thanks to these early-career flights, I was also able to develop a good professional network with whom I can now continue collaborating using emails and zoom. So, the only change is that I am not attending meetings anymore if they can’t be reached by train or followed remotely.
Using the method developed by Labos1point5, I was able to monitor my academic travels’ carbon footprint. Since 2021, these GHG emissions have dropped by a factor 50 (from about 10 t CO2e/yr down to ~200 kg CO2e/yr), with no impact on my publication records (compared to 2017 – 2019). Over the last 5 years, I have traveled by train across Europe, mainly in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and the Czech Republic, with a low impact on the climate.
Although travels are a relatively minor part of the overall GHG emissions of astronomy, it is relatively easy to decrease their climate footprint with little-to-no consequences on the research activity, at least for tenured researchers working in countries with good train networks.
If you want to know more, please, contact Alexandre Santerne directly in Slack.
