Re: [gep-ed] fyi
Susanne Moser
Hi all -
Something irks me about this debate, which,
as we've witnessed here (and elsewhere), gets heated, not nice
at all. And that is where I think we need to begin looking:
obviously some very sensitive points get hit, something where we
have a lot of ego investment and any shift away from the status
quo starts to feel super threatening to who we are - as
individuals, as professionals, as academics. It's not your plain
old behavior change question, is it? There is something far
bigger at stake here. Why else is this such an unsolvable,
painful topic being discussed apparently all over the world.
From my own experience - having struggled, even outright suffered - with the cognitive dissonance between what I say and what I do for years - I can share that this is existential for me: if I don't meet my clients, if I don't stay visible, I will vanish from the professional fields in which I work, and not having an institutional salary, that means, I don't know how to earn my keep. I don't have parents to move back in with (nor would I want to), I don't have someone take care of me financially, so, it's me earning my keep or I live under the bridge - and yes, some of you heard me joking about my impending email switch to "su...@underthebridge.org"
So, who are we, if we don't stand on stage at professional conferences? Who are we if we're not seen in an ever growing sea of papers that no one can keep up with reading? Where is our promotion if we don't show that we have gained academic standing by being keynote speakers or presenters or panel chairs at scientific conferences? Gosh, we science-types - in this world of science being questioned (i.e. a constant barrage against what we do and who we are! - have such small square footage to stand on. With students - if you have some - sure, but it's not nearly as much respected by our superiors (and even peers) as standing in front of a large audience, is it?
This is what makes me think, maybe this
conversation needs to switch to our standing as a profession, to
our ego strength (or lack thereof) as individuals in that
profession, and to the systemic ways in which we continue to
being pushed to participate in these mass conference rituals. I,
for one, find most of them actually NOT very interesting, mostly
because most people put not very much thought into their papers
(we're supposed to be the intellectual creme de la creme, and
yet have so little time to really THINK), and so they are just
not intellectually stimulating or nourishing. I hear you say
that nourishment and stimulation happens in side conversations,
in hall ways and bars. That makes it ever so clear that the
conference itself is not giving us what we need or want. I
myself go because I want to be seen as being "in" and "in the
know" and because most of my friends (most of them also my
colleagues) go, and so I get to have a social life while taking
care of something I must do for another important reason.
Between my two emotional needs (existential economically, and
existential socio-psychologically), I'm hard pressed to give up
conferences entirely.
Now, having said that, I have much reduced
my conference visits and air travel, and I do much more of my
work virtually now, but I have not drawn the only conclusion one
should reasonably draw if one were to choose consistency between
knowing the long-term impact of emissions and the sources of
those emissions.
We could throw in every other deeply
personal, identity-related behavior and our conflicted and
contradictory behaviors. I don't have children - the most
CO2-emission reducing act of my life - others do, and it's
equally untouchable; eating meat, the size of one's house, etc
etc. - just take a look at those debates. They are equally ugly
because they all ask us to - ultimately - question who we are
and want to be. We have to look at our deeper motivations and
the systemic pressures to maintain this behavior if we want to
get somewhere. And once we have clarified what those are, maybe
the attachment to conferences lessens, and maybe we can get
creative in finding way better solutions that answer our needs.
In a word, we must be asking deeper, more
difficult questions. Possibly stimulating and nourishing to some
of us...
Susi
From: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of HARRIS, Paul [SSC]
Sent: Monday, July 8, 2019 7:23 PM
To: gep...@googlegroups.com; as...@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [gep-ed] fyi
Dear Aseem,
About a decade ago I tried hard to convince scholars, including many on this list, that we needed to stop encouraging air travel to conferences. Even then technologies existed to allow collaboration online that was vastly more connective than face-to-face collaboration at conferences. I suffered a severe backlash, including ad hominem attacks (a few from members of the ISA's ESS section). The business model of many academic associations, not least ISA, demands big centralized conferences. Things are slowly starting to change, as you highlight in your message, but my guess is that most older scholars (over, say, about 40?) will continue to dig in their heels and defend their air travel (everyone who flies seems to think that their doing so is worth the environmental cost). History won't judge this behavior kindly. The future is in the younger scholars who are accustomed to collaborating online -- after all, nowadays many people collaborate using their smart phones even when those people are on the same campus, even in the same building, and sometimes even in the same room.
All best,
Paul
PAUL G. HARRIS
Chair Professor
Global and Environmental Studies
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From: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Aseem Prakash <as...@UW.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, July 9, 2019 1:18 AM
To: gep...@googlegroups.com; stacy.v...@umb.edu
Subject: Re: [gep-ed] fyi
Hi Stacey:
Agree; we need to speak up. Universities must be leaders in climate policy and as scholars who study climate change, we should become role models.
I think GEP should take the lead in greening the ISA ('i'll be happy to share my correspondence with various organizations on this count).
Some of us may have heard of the FlyLess initiative (there is a[etition to universities on change.org -- pls consider signing it).
I received an email from them with the following information
Exciting Initiatives in Academia and Beyond
The Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland is encouraging its academic personnel to decrease its flying and has devised a chart to help them do so. In response to the efforts of the three PhD students at the French-speaking university, the institution is asking researchers, faculty, and graduate students to commit themselves to reduced flying—renouncing, for example, all flights within Switzerland and taking ground transportation to all destinations within 450 kilometers of Neuchâtel—by publicly signing a document. As of May 29, 166 individuals had signed.
Students in Europe have launched a European Citizens’ Initiative to get the European Union to end the privileged status of air travel by imposing a tax on aviation kerosene or fuel. The hope is that, by making flying more expensive, the tax will lead to a reduction in air travel and spur greater investment in sustainable modes of transportation. The initiators of the petition ask that FlyingLess supporters from EU member-states consider signing. You can do so here.
In April, the Council of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) received a petition signed by 234 AAG members. The document called upon the AAG Council to take far-reaching action to reduce CO2 emissions related to the Annual Meeting—one which sees about 9,000 attendees from the United States and abroad, the vast majority of them flying to and from the host city and producing thousands of tons of CO2 emissions in the process. Responding favorably to the petition, the Council is now in the process of setting up a task force charged with redesigning the AAG meetings and reducing their associated emissions at a depth and scale suggested by climate science and bodies such as the International Panel on Climate Change. Given the size and influence of the AAG, this development could have impacts well beyond the organization.
On May 31, 2019, the Department of Geography, Planning & Environment at Concordia University in Montreal adopted a “Flying Less Policy” that grew out of the work of its Climate Emergency Committee. The policy requires, among other things, that all faculty members in the department disclose their annual flying activity (the results of which have already been made public, collectively and anonymously, for 2018-2019). The policy also commits faculty to prioritizing travel-free meetings and video conferencing over physical travel and, when travel is needed, collective forms of ground transportation for destinations within 12 hours of Montreal. Moreover, it commits the Department to promoting a Flying Less policy at the University as a whole, and within Quebec and Canada as well (by encouraging external funders, for example, to work to decrease flying). In addition, the new policy requires that the Department encourage students to participate in activities that do not involve flying and provide financial support to make such participation possible.
Concrete initiatives and strategies to reduce air travel will be the focus of a flight-free conference in Barcelona from July 12-14. Organized by the Stay Grounded network—in conjunction with various civil society groups and the Institute for Ecological Sciences and Technology (ICTA) in Barcelona—the “Degrowth in Aviation” conference will bring together social movements, non-governmental organizations, and scientists. To register, go here.
In the Media
Efforts to reduce flying within the academy and far beyond are receiving heightened attention in the media. A May 22 article in The Guardian (“Could you give up flying? Meet the no-plane pioneers”), for instance, mentioned FlyingLess and linked to our website, leading to a huge spike in visits. Meanwhile, TRT World, an international news channel, recently broadcast a roundtable discussion addressing the question, “Can we stop flying?” Among the four participants was Milena Büchs, as Associate Professor in Sustainability, Economics and Low-Carbon Transitions at the University of Southampton (and a Flyingless petition signatory ).
The coverage manifests the growing movement in Europe critical of flying and its impact. As POLITICO Europe reports, “If it were a country, aviation would be the sixth-largest carbon polluter in the world, eclipsing Germany.” The same article, whose title refers to a “popular revolt against flying,” asserts that “campaigns to reduce air travel emissions are gaining traction” in Europe.
This is especially evident in Sweden (see “#stayontheground: Swedes turn to trains amid climate ‘flight shame’”), where the number of domestic air passengers has dropped eight percent (8%) in recent months, after a three percent (3%) decrease the previous year, while train travel has increased by similar figures. In response, the Swedish government has stated that it would like to reintroduce overnight trains to cities throughout Europe. (Elsewhere on the continent, there are other favorable signs of the resurrection of night trains.)
In France, the national government is considering a proposed ban on flights within the country on routes traveled by train in less than five hours. Regardless of what the government decides, it will push for an aviation fuel tax at the next meeting of the European Commission, according to France’s Environment Minister Francois Rugy.
Such developments have not gone unnoticed within the aviation industry. At the meeting in Seoul, South Korea of the International Air Transport Association in early June, airline executives expressed worry that anti-flying sentiment will “grow and spread” if they don’t win what one executive termed the “communications battle.” (See “‘Flight shame’: How climate guilt is the newest threat to airlines.”)
Recent academic articles
An article by researchers in the Department of Geography the University of British Columbia, one based on a sample of 705 academics at their home institution, found no relationship between the amount of professional air travel and academic productivity. They also found, using a smaller sample size, no significant difference in total air travel emissions between researchers they characterized as “Green” (those who study topics related to environmental sustainability) and “Not-green.” (See Seth Wynes, Simon D. Donner, Steuart Tannason, Noni Nabors, “Academic air travel has a limited influence on professional success,” Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 226, No. 20, 2019: 959-967.)
Another just-published article by a team of researchers at the University of Adelaide studied academic air travel—also among academics at their home institution. The authors were particularly interested between institutional pressures for academics to fly and their university’s formal commitment to sustainability. Drawing on a one-year qualitative study, they found that, while many academics are worried about climate change, only a small number are willing to fly less for fear of damaging their careers. The authors conclude that institutional and political shifts are needed to bring about individual changes in behavior on a large scale. (See Melissa Nursey-Bray, Robert Palmer, Bride Meyer-Mclean, Thomas Wanner, & Cris Birzer, “The Fear of Not Flying: Achieving Sustainable Academic Plane Travel in Higher Education Based on Insights from South Australia,” Sustainability, Vol. 11, No. 9, 2019: 2694.)
________________________________________________Aseem Prakash
Professor, Department of Political Science
Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences
Founding Director, UW Center for Environmental Politics
University of Washington, Seattle
https://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/
From: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Stacy VanDeveer <Stacy.V...@umb.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 8, 2019 10:09 AM
To: Aseem Prakash; gep...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [gep-ed] fyi
It looks like AAUP and NEA – large unions to which some of us belong – remain silent about the GND idea. Might be time to do some speaking up.
-sv
--
Stacy D. VanDeveer
Professor & Graduate Program Director
Global Governance and Human Security
McCormack Graduate School of Policy & Global Studies
From: Gep-Ed <gep...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Aseem Prakash <as...@uw.edu>
Reply-To: Aseem Prakash <as...@u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, July 8, 2019 at 12:56 PM
To: Gep-Ed <gep...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [gep-ed] fyi
This commentary might interest some GEP members:
Labor Unions And the Green New Deal: Love, Hate, Or Indifference?
thanks,
Aseem
________________________________________________Aseem Prakash
Professor, Department of Political Science
Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences
Founding Director, UW Center for Environmental Politics
University of Washington, Seattle
https://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/
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Travis Stills
Good Morning (good afternoon/evening for those not in the Intermountain West),
In response to side conversations that shall remain private, I'd like to confirm that I purposely and snarkily impugned the authors' slant on the Green New Deal and unions because I believe: 1) it is persistent; 2) it is contrived; and 3) it is harmful to thoughtful activism and the scholarship that brought me to this list in the first place.
I will carefully reconsider my use of snark in the future, as it might not be the best way to make a point on this list. However, my starting examples for re-framing the article might be something like this:
"We speculate that this silence probably reflects
internal tensionscareful consideration and caution among union leadership, which can be traced to the varying positions of unions and union members across various economic sectors and regions.on the "jobs versus environment" _______narratives."
"We speculate that this silence probably reflects
internal tensionsa union movement under persistent attack, which can be traced to the varying positions and prejudices that linger in popular media, often based on contrived and discredited "jobs versus environment" narratives."
A very different story (paper?) on the complex interplay among
unions, politicians, and environmental groups would likely emerge
from students' consideration of each. Of course, a better story
would be based on actual statement by union leaders and union
members about their so-called "silence" on GND, but who doesn't
like to speculate? My guess is that GND hasn't been formally
considered by many unions, as it it quite new and GND smacks of
political slogan (which might be its strength). Perhaps my
speculation reveals more about my own "silence and indifference"
on the contents of the GND than anything about unions.
I am still not sure it is a good idea to jump back into this
thread at this point, as it has taken an unproductive turn into
individualization (flying to conferences). However, I did so
because I think it is important to note that the discredited jobs
v environment framing promoted by the Dolsak and Prakash
article predictably (and by rhetorical design) deflects from the
interesting and important question presented (union responses to
GND) and leads almost inevitably into individualized analysis of
unrelated questions.
Respectfully,
Travis Stills
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