University researchers have been branded “hypocrites” for condemning air travel as bad for the planet but then flying to conferences anyway. The Times has more.
A study found that about a third of the academics at a leading U.K. university had flown to at least one meeting in the previous year, despite a large majority expressing concerns about aviation emissions.
“There is a level of hypocrisy: academics know that flying is bad for the environment,” said Professor Jonas De Vos of UCL, the lead author of the study. “But still, we often fly to international conferences, often to [make the argument] that society should be more sustainable.”
Aviation is estimated to account for about 4% of global warming and almost all climate scientists agree that reductions in air travel would be needed to meet the 1.5ºC Paris target. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a shift to holding conferences and other events online.
However, in a study published in the journal Global Environmental Change, De Vos and his colleagues describe how flying remains “deeply embedded in how the global academic system functions”.
Aviation emissions are produced by a small minority of the global population, they add, which means they are often seen as “a particularly unjust” form of pollution. “Academics are one of the groups with privileged, yet highly unsustainable, lifestyles,” they write.
“Despite ever-increasing volumes of academic research and teaching on environmental sustainability… air transport remains a large contributor to academic carbon footprints, even among scholars researching environmental or climate topics.”
The new study provides one of the most detailed snapshots yet of the attitudes of researchers, lecturers and other university staff on flying, and how they ultimately end up travelling. More than 1,100 members of University College London filled in surveys. More than 80% of them said flying was detrimental for the planet.
He said researchers often feel pressured to travel, with presenting work at international conferences seen as necessary to win promotions and funding.
Three quarters of the academics agreed that international conferences should be organised in cities easily accessible by high-speed trains, and that trains should be cheaper and rail networks expanded. Online alternatives to traditional conferences were not seen as offering the same opportunities to network.
On the website NoFlyClimateSci.org, several climate scientists explain why they have decided to cut down on flying for work. They include Dr. Lennart de Nooijer of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, who describes how he became uneasy with work travel when he realised many of his colleagues were planning to stay on for a personal holiday after a conference being held in Chile. “Isn’t part of the attraction of attending conferences and meetings the sheer pleasure of visiting other countries?” he said.
Worth reading in full.
You can read a summary of Professor De Vos’s paper in Nature here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Flying Hypocrites Fly to Climate Events
97% of climate scientists would be unemployed if there was no climate crisis. Their behavior is far worse than just hypocrisy. They are members participating in a cult like movement actively and knowingly destroying millions of people’s lives.
Most of the politicians bureaucrats media pop stars and actors will not have the slightest clue about this issue. —–If we ask that plonker Lammy eg how much CO2 is in the atmosphere and how much is emitted by humans he likely won’t know. ——-“Climate Change” to all of these people (or most of them) is simply a concept. It is to them, without realising it, something that has been decided as fact elsewhere, and they don’t have to know about it. All they need to know is “Climate Change is real and happening now”. The details are not necessary. ———–Well actually the opposite is true. The details are absolutely necessary, and on closer inspection there are no details, or science that supports the idea of a “climate crisis”——Yet nearly every politician we see on TV and most media commentators brainwashed by the groupthink and supporting it for political purposes speak of “climate change” as if it were all ultimate truth —-IT ISN’T.
Global Warming was debunked years ago yet it still tips up now and again. Why do so many fools lie to themselves and others about all this stuff? Half an hour of research tells you all you need to know about this crap.
Climate Change certainly exists; there wouldn’t be a planet if it didn’t but man made is conceited and incredibly ignorant. Hopefully the bubble will burst before it is too late but I fear it will not.
Who?
As Jarvis Cocker once said, ‘Everyone hates a tourist’…. except when that tourist happens to be them!
I am utterly shocked by this revelation….
The most important question arises when you ask yourself, what can I do to stop this hypocrisy or these flights? Very little because they have spent every year since 2008 in reinforcing their bunker. Acknowledgment of our current status is an important first step.
Ideas of self-poisoning are very common at the end of empire. You can call them crisis cults. Any lapse in self-discipline can leave you open to ideas of self-abjection. We didn’t do anything bad to ourselves in the post-war era. In fact in terms of anti-imperialism we gave up our empire very quickly and civally. Regardless of your point of view the behaviouor the British after 1945 was exemplary and civil. And for a short while we had an independent system of science. Graham Greene was asked in 1962, what is wrong with the world. And he gave a one word answer – America.
“Four legs good, two legs bad.
Four legs good, two legs not such a bad idea.
Four legs best for you kafir, two legs for us.
Get back in your pen!”
I wouldn’t stress too much about this agenda. If you live in England then you can be rightly worried as the Brits are the prgenitors but if you look at the money it is being pulled out very quickly because those people know how to respond rapidly to changes in public sentiment. Look at the major car manufacturers. You will not see much new investment in ‘renewables’ because they know that people rightfully hate them in their current form. I garantee you that within 2 years the green agenda will be utterly destroyed. It won’t be a pleasant time and the insects won’t come back but at least we will be more concerned with serious issues. Unravelling the Great Poisoning will take several decades.
And the Reset!
Of course they do. They’re the new aristocracy and what they do and where they travel is of paramount importance. It’s the rioty little people in their stinky blue and yellow planes that need to be stopped.
Yes the dirty people with tattoos that go to Spain and watch Football. We can’t have that!
flying around “necessary to win promotions and funding” It’s all a scam.
“There is a level of hypocrisy: academics know that flying is bad for the environment,” said Professor Jonas De Vos of UCL, the lead author of the study. “But still, we often fly to international conferences, often to [make the argument] that society should be more sustainable.” “
Translation:
Even though we know we are all a set of hypocritical and lying Next Tuesdays we are still going to carry on with our jaunts. F. the plebs.
They aren’t completly lacking in self-consciousness so the will be aware of the hypocrisy. Some will justify it based on dubious utilitarian calculations. The greater good will be served. A problematic way of thinking but most are worse than that. They see themselves as a cut above. Subject to different rules and regulations and beyond good and evil. It’s a nice racket if you can get it. With the caveat that in order to be able to behave like this you have to be venal or stupid or both. The internal life of a hopelessly addicted masturbator.
Yes, the old ‘Greater Good’ theorem. Now a popular BA DisHons degree available at Cambridge, and other leading red-bricks.
There is no point in calling these wankers hypocrites.
The hypocrisy is part of the process, of rubbing our noses in it.
It is like the delicious steak dinners and private jets at Davos.
I can think of a solution but don’t want to seem to incite murderous violence on this wonderful site.
Just wait until the pampered middle classes realise the true extent of the damage to the countryside and freedoms people like “Red Edd” are cooking up with Agenda 2030.
I suspect reality may come along sometime between now and 2030 and hit Miliband with an almighty uppercut. ——Reality is a very hard enemy to defeat, and I predict as Muhammad Alli used to do that Miliband and the phony planet savers in the Labour Party will fall in the third round