[Coral-List] ICRS2020 and remote meetings

frahome at yahoo.com frahome at yahoo.com
Sun Sep 15 21:48:02 UTC 2019


 It's amazing to see scientists being affected by the same sort of denial as politicians when it comes to take personal actions.No, flights won't continue as scheduled if reef scientists and all other people concerned about the future of our reefs/planet/society will decide to reduce their flying. It's basic offer/demand concept. This applies to all other impacting activities and aspects of our lifestyle. And yes being sustainable and walking the talk might also mean missing to dive in Indonesia if that doesn't fit in our per capita emission budget (0.6t/y according to a previous post on this thread). There are many other amazing things in life with lower footprints, including trying to live a sustainable lifestyle and motivating others to do so. When we ask for "system change" what are we asking for? Some measure that will allow us to continue our business as usual while emissions and impacts are magically reduced?Asking to have a "system change" without taking personal actions is like stating that we are not willing to do what needs to be done to be sustainable until someone makes it compulsory for us (in this case system change should tax so much air travel that we won't be able to afford it). I am sure that as well-educated, concerned scientists we could do better than the average Joe.Wouldn't be better to ask system change from the position where we already embrace that change and ask to make it compulsory for those that have not embraced it yet?It seems we say we want to save the reefs but then we say we are not willing to bring our footprint down to what would make it possible.
Francesca

    On Sunday, September 15, 2019, 04:35:39 PM GMT+2, Gregory Boland via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:  
 
 Great point Peter.  Just back on list with personal email after a year in retirement. As an over-the-hill "sometimes" coral reef scientist, we struggled constantly relating the value of networking and face-to-face science conference meetings to management my entire 20-year career at MMS/BOEM.  Many requests for travel were granted, but not nearly enough to keep scientists in touch with the cutting-edge and fully inspire future research needs.  I have not noticed a mention of the elephant in the room: are folks talking about a carbon reduction of one less passenger on an Airbus 330 or whatever flying RT to the conference being measurable? Would 100 less passengers make a difference? Will all flights continue as scheduled regardless of how many coral reef scientists decide to watch presentations on a computer?  Great heart-felt philosophy, but.. just saying... (take care of your feet, the world needs them).

Greg Boland
retired Biological Oceanographer

________________________________
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of Peter Sale via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 7:50 PM
To: Grottoli, Andrea <grottoli.1 at osu.edu>; coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: [Coral-List] ICRS2020 and remote meetings

Well spoken Andrea, and congratulations to the organizing committee to have thought carefully about how to green the ICRS meetings.  Science could shoot itself in the foot if it were to address climate change by reducing opportunities for face-to-face interaction at conferences.  Coral reef scientists should all be trying to walk the walk on climate change, but there are many ways of doing this - avoiding our one global quadrennial meeting seems an unwise solution to the problem.  That said, as an over-the-hill reef scientist I am not planning to travel to Bremen - I wish those who do, the best possible meeting, and the invigoration of research ideas such a meeting can provoke.  Those of us who attended the second ICRS on board the Marco Polo never forgot that experience, and I can think of a number of subsequent ICRS meetings that were equally worth travelling to.

Peter Sale
University of Windsor
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