Who Gets to Fly?

In this chapter, we posit that academics need to reduce their flying in line with the ‘Carbon Law’ if we are to attain the agreed-upon targets of the Paris agreement. This entails reducing emissions in general as well as reducing emissions from flying by at least 50 per cent every decade from 2020 and on. We present data from KTH Royal Institute of Technology regarding our flying and use two specific departments as examples. We unpack this data, using material visualisations (i.e. post-it notes and poker chips) to raise questions that are not immediately apparent when looking at top-down statistics about flying. Our material visualisations instead present data about flying patterns and habits in a format that viscerally displays the differences (‘inequalities’) that exist between and within departments. Such visualisations emphasise that reducing the frequency and the length of air trips will inevitably lead to discussions and negotiations about who gets to fly (or not), as well as discussions about exactly what constitutes ‘unnecessary’ flights. The chapter ends with a reflection about the limitations of our language and how the task of reducing carbon emission from flying necessitates a reinvention of how we think and talk about flying.

Academic Aeromobility in the Global Periphery

Academics are part of a small minority that are responsible for disproportionate air travel emissions. Responding to high aviation emissions requires that the complexities of academic air travel practices are understood in specific geographical and institutional contexts. This chapter addresses the work-sociology of academic aeromobility in the context of the global periphery. We report on a programme of interviews conducted prior to COVID-19 with academics at the University of Otago (Aotearoa/New Zealand), where the aeromobility practices of academics are uniquely shaped by extreme geographical distance. Our empirical contribution is presented in the four themes that emerged from our analysis: complex drivers; selective substitution; ‘Don’t weaken me!’ and assorted scalar accountabilities. We then discuss aspects of resistance to change but also avenues of opportunity to reimagine academic air travel practices, which have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We specifically address the emergence of a post-COVID ‘new normal’ and conclude with the urgent need for collective action that is coordinated among individual academics, institutions, disciplinary associations and conference organisers. Entrenching the ‘new normal’ will be critical to resolving the unsustainable aeromobilities of academics and institutions that are globally distant.

The Virus and the Elephant in the Room: Knowledge, Emotions and a Pandemic—Drivers to Reducing Flying in Academia

This chapter explores individual incentives and barriers to reducing air travel, with the focus on people who have taken a decision to reduce flying due to climate change. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, six semi-structured interviews were performed with academics—three who had already cut down on flying and three who were grounded due to the pandemic. They were compared with a set of interviews with 26 Swedish citizens, performed in 2017–2018, which had shown that internalised knowledge of climate change was an important driver to change behaviour. Awareness led to negative emotions and a personal tipping point where a decision to reduce flying was made. However, among these interviewees, even people with a strong drive to reduce flying felt trapped in practices, norms and infrastructures. The academics reported similar incentives and barriers as the broader group but also specific challenges for them as researchers. Surprisingly, the pandemic was perceived as a testbed for new travel habits, and not as a big obstacle for their scientific work. None believed that they would return to an equally aeromobile lifestyle, and two of them described it as a chance to reconcile habits with their pro-environmental values.

Academic Air Travel Cultures: A Framework for Reducing Academic Flying

As primary producers of knowledge, academics are required to create and disseminate research. The advent of internationalisation has given great emphasis to the importance of travel as it pertains to the success of an academic career and the international standing of an institution. However, academics who are highly aeromobile—particularly researchers working in the field of climate change—are now facing allegations of hypocrisy that in some cases may compromise the efficacy of their (climate) research. The novelty of this chapter arises from the application of the cultures framework to the study of academic air travel. It highlights three key elements—cognitive norms, practices and material culture. In this chapter, the cultures framework is adopted to provide a structure within which to consider individual and institutional pathways to achieve a reduction in academic flying. By exploring the interplay of cognitive norms, practices, material culture, support and barriers, the gap between academic theory and institutional realities and practices can be systematically explored and fully elaborated. Furthermore, in doing so, academics may be encouraged to engage in critical self-reflection of the cognitive dissonance between personal intentions to reduce air miles and behaviours to the contrary.

The Carbon Footprint of Travelling to International Academic Conferences and Options to Minimise It

This chapter focuses on the carbon footprint of travelling to academic conferences. The cases I present are the last seven General Conferences of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), which are the biggest European conferences in political science, with up to 2000 participants. My estimations show that the travel-induced carbon footprint of a single conference can amount to more than 2000 tons of greenhouse gases—as much as approximately 270 UK citizens emit in a whole year. The average participant produces between 500 and 1500 kg of CO2-eq per conference round-trip. However, by applying three measures (more centrally located conference venues, the promotion of more land-bound travel and the introduction of online participation for attendees from distant locations), the carbon footprint could be reduced by 78–97 per cent. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a general shift towards online conferences—the ECPR switched to a virtual event as well. Estimating the carbon footprint of this online-only conference in a more detailed manner shows that the travel-induced carbon emissions—if the event had taken place in physical attendance as originally intended—would have been between 250 and 530 times higher than those from the online conference.

How Environmentally Sustainable Is the Internationalisation of Higher Education? A View from Australia

In a world of increasing awareness of the many drivers of anthropogenic climate change, all of which fall under the larger rubric of global capitalism with its emphasis on profit-making, economic growth, and a strong dependence on fossil fuels, many universities, particularly in developed societies, have proclaimed a staunch commitment to the notion of environmental sustainability. Conversely, the growing emphasis on internationalisation of higher education, particularly in Australia, entails a considerable amount of air travel on the part of university staff, particularly academics but also support staff, and overseas students and occasionally domestic students. Australia is a generally highly affluent country which is situated in the driest inhabited continent and increasingly finds itself functioning as a “canary the coal mine” with respect to the ravages of anthropogenic climate change. Ironically, climate scientists and other observers often refer to various regions, such as the Arctic, low-lying islands, the Andes, and Bangladesh, inhabited by indigenous and peasant peoples as the canaries in the coalmines when it comes to the adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change. It is often said that those people who have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions are the ones suffering the most from climate change, a more than accurate observation.

The End of Flying: Coronavirus Confinement, Academic (Im)mobilities and Me

This chapter focuses on how the coronavirus pandemic disrupted ‘normal’ academic life and travel through an analysis of my own travel history over the past decade. After contextualising the ways in which quarantines and confinement radically decreased travel, the chapter has three parts. In the first part, I document my own curriculum vitae of academic travel over the past decade and quantitatively measure my estimated CO2 emissions. Next, I seek to situate the value of such academic travel in both quantitative and qualitative terms, through extrinsic measures such as publications and impact and through intrinsic values such as the experience of different cultures and places. Lastly, I look at the transition to virtual events and my own participation in online events during the past nine months and consider the relation between physical and virtual meetings within academic practices. Insofar as the pandemic demonstrated our ability to transform academic travel and accelerate the use of remote meetings within academic practices, a pressing concern is how to find ways of extending this into the post-pandemic phase. Among the questions I ask in conclusion are: What possibilities are there for more seriously extending remote no-fly meetings to address the climate emergency? And what are the implications of such changes, both positive and negative?

Means and Meanings of Research Collaboration in the Face of a Suffering Earth: A Landscape of Questions

The Earth is speaking to us in its own language of suffering—rising average temperatures, increasingly extreme weather conditions, mass extinction of species and so on. Academic habits of travelling long distances and/or frequently, as many of us have, affect the Earth and its inhabitants. This chapter argues the need for changing habits not just by developing technical infrastructure but through developing awareness among academics of the issues involved including the dynamics that may be slowing down change. The chapter contributes by discussing the means and meanings of research collaboration in this context. We explore the role of collaboration across distance in scholarship (Erkenntnis), various ways (technical and otherwise) that materialities can affect remote collaboration and reflect on the ethics of commitments intrinsic to academic work. The challenge facing academics is to integrate these three aspects—sharing, the material/technical and the ethical—in developing ways of working which are responsive to the Earth crises. To support this, we indicate a set of questions which can be helpful to consider when, as scholars, we make decisions about why and how to collaborate.

Aeromobilities and Academic Work

Increasingly academic air travel in recent decades is part of a larger transformation and globalisation of modern work life away from the industrial and hierarchical work towards much more flexible, networked and mobile work where air travel often is a critical component. However, the climate crisis and COVID-19 have put such work practices under pressure. Therefore, the chapter first examines the importance of aeromobilities for late modern work, which sets the context of contemporary academic work practices. Next, the chapter particularly examines academic work, where especially physical meetings and face-to-face interaction play a central role in academic work and aeromobilities. The chapter argues here for a more diverse understanding of the meaning and role of such meetings if a lower climate footprint should be achieved. Following, it present a tool that provides a better understanding of which types of meetings particularly require co-presence and face-to-face communication, and which types of meetings that just as well—or perhaps even better and more efficiently—can be carried out as virtual meetings. However, as stressed in the conclusion, such an approach seems to require a much greater focus on ‘aeromobility management’ at academic institutions in the future.

Introduction: Ending the Romance of Academic Flying

In this introduction, we note how academic work has come to be ever more closely entwined with air travel, and point out that we, in the face of climate crisis, are obliged to transition to other means of academic communication. Such a transition requires a reliable documentation of the consequences of academic flying; a deep understanding of the various reasons why academics fly; as well as sophisticated insight into what can replace flying and how. The introduction explores these themes first through David Lodge’s novels Changing Places and Small World, and then explains how the book’s chapters follow up the research agenda on academic aeromobility, as well as how this agenda can contribute to practical change.