This document, prepared by Political Scientists for Sustainability, provides information and recommendations relevant to the Fly Less, Connect Better petition.
The proposal
To reduce harms associated with climate change and foster greater scholarly inclusion, the Fly Less, Connect Better petition recommends that, during a trial period of four years, the four largest U.S. political science associations – the American Political Science Association (APSA), Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), Southern Political Science Association (SPSA), and Western Political Science Association (WPSA) – alternate every year between in-person and fully online meetings. We suggest that APSA hold in-person meetings when the larger regional associations hold online meetings, and vice versa. The principles guiding this proposal are the need to foster inclusion and the need to maximize the scholarly value of our activities while minimizing their external harms. We call for adoption of this plan as soon as possible. While we hope that all four associations will embrace this proposal, there is no reason for any one of them to wait for the others.
Why act? The climate
Action and leadership are needed in the face of mounting death and devastation and looming catastrophe tied to climate change. The world faces a finite and rapidly shrinking carbon budget, meaning the amount of greenhouse gasses that can be emitted without a dangerous average temperature increase greater than 1.5°C. To have a reasonable chance of remaining within the 1.5º C limit, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that annual greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 43% by 2030 and 84% by 2050. (1) Recent research shows the need to reduce emissions even faster.(2) Every increment of global warming will intensify harm to humans and non-humans.(3) If 1.5°C is exceeded, further temperature increases must be limited as much as possible.
One person’s round-trip non-stop economy flight from Seattle to Newark has a footprint of 1.36 tons of CO2 equivalents, as calculated by Atmosfair.(4) In the world today, the average person emits 6.90 tons of greenhouse gas emissions over an entire year.(5) To meet the IPCC targets, this number must fall to no more than 3.66 tons by 2030 and 0.90 tons by 2050.(6) Contributions to greenhouse gasses are highly unequal. The annual per capita contribution in the United States is 17.58 tons. It is 74.7 tons for the richest 10% of U.S. inhabitants (those with roughly over $200,000 in household income).(7) It is 2.80 tons in the world’s 28 poorest countries and 1.2 tons in Malawi.(8) In general, the affluent individuals who contribute disproportionately to climate change are shielded from many of its worst harms, an arrangement sometimes described as “climate apartheid.”(9)
Thus a round-trip flight from Seattle to Newark creates nearly one half as much carbon pollution as an average person in the world’s 28 poorest countries throughout the year. It creates more carbon pollution than an average person in Malawi throughout the year. A study by The Guardian showed that “taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average person in dozens of countries around the world produces in a whole year.”(10) Every year, each of the major political science association meetings hosts between one thousand and over six thousand participants, most of whom arrive by plane. Each in-person conference thus produces carbon emissions comparable to the annual emissions of a village in the Global South, or more. In comparison, fully online conferences incur an estimated 6% of those emissions.
A decision by the major U.S. political science associations to replace in-person with online conferences every other year recognizes a shared responsibility to move away from collectively unsustainable practices in the face of a crisis that threatens humanity and other species. It is a group undertaking that moves beyond individualized action, and is an invitation to other academic associations to take similar measures.
Why act? Inclusion
Rotation between online and in-person conferences has the further benefit of making the largest U.S. political science associations more inclusive. Many political scientists are prevented from attending in-person meetings because of disability, health conditions, caring obligations, financial constraints, or visa restrictions. Also excluded are scholars who have stopped flying to conferences because they believe that doing so in a climate crisis is wrong. Regular fully online meetings will broaden and diversify participation, allowing more scholars to benefit from and contribute to conference activities. The exclusions built into the current conference model are not acceptable. The proposed plan creates possibilities for connection beyond those currently available.
Why this proposal?
The Fly Less, Connect Better model will reduce our profession’s contributions to climate change at a speed and scale commensurate to the problem, and it will make our conferences significantly more inclusive and accessible. The proposal draws inspiration from the decision of the American Philosophical Association (APA) to hold one of every three divisional meetings online, on a three-year trial basis. The decision was taken in response to a members’ petition initiated by Philosophers for Sustainability to hold one or two of every three conferences online. We gratefully acknowledge that we have borrowed several ideas from the APA members’ petition. Recently, the Middle East Studies Association decided to move its 2024 conference mostly online, for reasons relating to accessibility, climate change, health, and cost.
We advocate coordinated action by the four large associations for the sake of fairness and effectiveness. Because of the growing urgency of the climate crisis and the need to demonstrate a real commitment to inclusion, we advocate fully online meetings every other year. Understanding the significance of the proposed change, we recommend its adoption for a trial period of four years, after which the associations may decide whether or not to continue.
Must we replace in-person with online conferences every other year?
Currently, some associations have discussed keeping an annual in-person conference while scheduling an additional fully virtual meeting at a different time of year. Others offer annual in-person conferences with the option of virtual participation (hybrid conferences). Notwithstanding their merits, these approaches do not fully address our concerns. The first approach risks creating a two-tier system in which the in-person conference would be regarded as the “real” event carrying greater prestige and recognition. Neither approach achieves the needed emissions reductions, since there would be formal and informal pressure for most participants to privilege in-person attendance. Climate and equity values favor alternating between in-person and fully online conferences.
Some academic associations have adopted a hybrid conference format. We would support expanded virtual and hybrid options in the biennial in-person conference, on sustainability and inclusion grounds, but do not think such options avoid the need to replace in-person with online conferences every other year.
What about the financial impact?
Because a strong economic foundation is necessary to maintain the invaluable work of our associations, we take seriously concerns about reduced revenues linked to association memberships and conference registrations. Fortunately, the money saved from travel, hotel lodging, hotel conference fees, catering, and restaurants gives us collective room to maneuver. Our own recommendation would be that the associations should charge the same for online conferences as for in-person conferences. We would call on home academic units, whenever possible, to fully reimburse online conference fees and association memberships, which they can more easily do, given savings from travel, hotel, and restaurants. In addition, a more inclusive conference model can broaden the base of financial support beyond those able to attend in-person conferences.
Aren't virtual conferences inferior?
Not if we work at it. New videoconferencing platforms and professional services, alongside lessons gained from the successes and failures of recent online conferences, open up spaces for creative program design. Though online meetings cannot duplicate all the benefits of in-person meetings, they offer other benefits that in-person meetings cannot provide. Watch parties, interactive platforms, and virtual networking are among the opportunities worth exploring. The move to a more sustainable and inclusive conference model may yield welcome surprises. And at the end of the day, we must ask whether annual informal discussions that can emerge in person justify the cost we are imposing on those more vulnerable.
Won't the planes fly anyway?
Some people may say that collective and personal decisions to reduce flying make no difference for the climate, because airlines will fly planes anyway. We believe this claim is mistaken. At the aggregate level, a drop in air travel causes a drop in flights, as demonstrated by the covid-19 pandemic. At the personal level, individual decisions whether to fly may be the tipping point in an airline’s decision whether to schedule flights. At the same time, a focus on individual impact obscures the point that we are responsible for what we do together, or to put it another way, that we should each do our part not to create large collective harms. By publicly committing to large-scale reductions in flying, political scientists can help shift social norms and expectations and underscore the urgency of policies to address the climate crisis.
Why can't we just offset our flight emissions?
Carbon offsets won’t solve our problem. Concerns have been raised about the reliability and effectiveness of carbon offsets.(11) They are a controversial and at best insufficient strategy to reduce our associations’ emissions. Nor do they address issues of inclusion.
Concluding Thoughts
In its Sixth Assessment Report released in March 2023, the IPCC stated that “deep, rapid, and sustained” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary to avoid a dangerous temperature increase over 1.5ºC.(12) The report calls not only on governments but also on civil society and the private sector to “make inclusive development choices that prioritize risk reduction, equity and justice.”(13) The current conference model in political science does not conform to the deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in carbon pollution needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. As Peter Thorne stated at the press conference for the Sixth Assessment Report, “Action is needed at all levels, from intergovernmental through governments through communities to individuals. We are beyond the point where … climate change can be somebody else’s problem…. We have to act now.”(14)
Some political scientists might view the prospect of the Fly Less, Connect Better plan with sadness, fearing a loss of benefits they associate with a yearly in-person conference model. We acknowledge the trepidation that accompanies major change, but remind our colleagues of the new opportunities created by the proposed model. The main reward is the knowledge that we are not hiding from reality but instead taking on the challenge of doing what is right for our planet and our community. We encourage our colleagues to adopt the model in that spirit.
Endnotes
1. IPCC, Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Summary for Policymakers, March 2023, https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf, Table XX, p. 22. CO2 emissions must be reduced by 48% by 2030 and 99% by 2050. Ibid.
2. Fiona Harvey, “Global greenhouse gas emissions at all-time high, study finds,” The Guardian, June 8, 2023.
3. IPCC, Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Summary for Policymakers, March 2023, https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf, p. 12.
4. Atmosfair includes non-CO2 warming effects in calculating the carbon footprint of air travel. For more information, visit https://www.atmosfair.de/wp-content/uploads/atmosfair-flight-emissions-calculator-englisch.pdf, section 4.5 on p. 16. The Travel Carbon Footprint Calculator produces a similar result of 1.3 tons.
5. “Per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 equivalents,” Our World in Data, 2021 figures.
6. These figures are derived by calculating 43% and 84% reductions of worldwide emissions in 2019, the IPCC baseline year, and dividing the resulting figures by the expected world population in 2030 and 2050 respectively.
7. L. Chancel, T. Piketty, E. Saez, G Zucman, et al., World Inequality Report 2022, World Inequality Lab, wir2022.wid.world, Country Appendix, United States, Table 2.
8. “Per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 equivalents,” Our World in Data, 2021 figures. Disparities in annual per capita CO2 emissions are even more striking: 14.86 tons in the United States, 0.28 tons in the world’s poorest 28 countries and 0.08 tons in Malawi. “Annual CO₂ emissions (per capita),” Our World in Data, 2021 figures.
9. Desmond Tutu, “We Do Not Need Climate Change Apartheid in Adaptation,” in United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2007/2008. Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World (New York: Palgrave, 2007); Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Beba Cibralic, “The Case for Climate Reparations,” Foreign Policy, October 10, 2020.
10. Niko Kommenda, “How your flight emits as much CO2 as many people do in a year,” The Guardian, July 19, 2019.
11. See Ryan Katz-Rosene, “Carbon offsets are no fix for aviation’s climate problem,” Policy Options Politiques, March 9, 2022; Lisa Song and James Temple, “The Climate Solution Actually Adding Millions of Tons of CO2 Into the Atmosphere,” ProPublica and MIT Technology Review, April 29, 2021; and Patrick Greenfield, “Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows,” The Guardian, January 18, 2023.
12. IPCC, Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Summary for Policymakers, March 2023, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/fr/magazines/carbon-offsets-are-no-fix-for-aviations-climate-problem/, p. 12.
13. Ibid, p. 25.
14. IPCC Press Conference on March 2023 Synthesis Report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bulhsb4IZFQ. Thorne’s remarks begin at 56:21.
