[Coral-List] Stop flying????!

Gregory Boland g_boland at hotmail.com
Fri Mar 13 22:05:32 UTC 2020


A friendly suggestion in comparing "facts" in this interesting debate. When one person, or even every single scientist planning to fly to Bremen or any other meeting requiring a flight decides not to fly to reduce carbon emissions, that does not translate to all the aircraft being grounded. I brought this point up earlier with a few somewhat hostile responses. The example being set by reducing air travel is certainly admirable, at least on a philosophical basis, but one person not flying is not the same as not eating 530 steaks. The jets fly anyway. Even now with a world pandemic, a recent article noted that many flights are even flying empty or near empty to preserve valuable routes and slots at airports. This remarkable situation could not go on long-term, but flights with 1, 2 or 20 empty seats are not going to be cancelled. The value of face-to-face interaction at science conferences has been outlined many times here. Before sacrificing those benefits, it would seem best to weigh actual impacts.

Greg Boland

________________________________
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of Gaétan Morand via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 8:19 AM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Stop flying????!

Hi,

As we all know, if we want to try and mitigate climate change, we need to base our actions on actual information rather than feelings.
I'm hoping I can contribute to this discussion by bringing in a few facts (with sources) on air travel and eating meat.

One serving of beef is responsible for about 3kg of CO2 [1]. Most other meats have a lower carbon footprint.
One return transatlantic flight is responsible for 1 to 1.6 tonne of CO2 [2], which is the same as 330 to 530 beef steaks.

This means that just one yearly transatlantic return flight offsets the emissions savings from being vegan.

Yes, air transport is only responsible for a small part of global emissions, but only because a small percentage of people actually fly, whereas 90% of people globally eat meat [3].
For perspective, if every person in the world took just one return transatlantic flight per year, it would represent a minimum of 7.5 Gigatonne of CO2 (the current global emissions are around 36 Gigatonne per year [4]).

In conclusion, reducing meat consumption is absolutely a priority as it is responsible for about 14.5% (7.1 Gigatonne) of global greenhouse gases emissions [5]. But on an individual scale, flying frequently is much worse than eating meat.

Gaetan Morand

[1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/jul/19/carbon-calculator-how-taking-one-flight-emits-as-much-as-many-people-do-in-a-year
[3] https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-09/an_exploration_into_diets_around_the_world.pdf
[4] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions
[5] http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/


________________________________
From: Alina Szmant via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Stop flying????!

Great if people want to stop flying. But ALL aviation is only 2 % of global fossil fuel emissions while animal agriculture produces 30 % of global emissions,  and animal agriculture account for 60+% of land use which means deforestation and habitat destruction, lots of pollution and animal suffering.  So go vegan and travel to your heart's content.




Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------
From: Sue Wells via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Date: 3/9/20 9:14 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Stop flying????!



Well done, Mark.  Yes, we must reduce our travel significantly - once the
virus peak is over there is likely to be a rush to take holidays and hold
meetings and the skies will be full of planes again.  You rightly question
whether enough effort is being made to enable "virtual" attendance at coral
reef meetings.  I know that people are looking into this, and hope that some
solutions will soon be on offer.



In the meantime, my recent positive experience might be of interest. Over
the course of 4 days in February, from the comfort of my office in
Cambridge, I dialled into two international meetings, one in Washington DC
on MPAs and one in Germany on protected areas more generally.  Both were
fairly small (DC had 65 participants, with 5 dialling in; Germany probably
less than 50 with c. 3 dialling in) and involved plenary sessions with
break-out discussion groups.  There was a joint session when the two
meetings "met" virtually, with others dialling in remotely.  The meeting in
Germany used "global.gotomeeting.com" and the DC meeting used "webex" - both
systems seemed to work fairly well for those dialling in.



Overall, the presentations worked well (as is the case with webinars), and I
could follow the plenary Q&A sessions and for the most part get noticed if I
wanted to ask a question myself.  Ironically the one session when the
presentations did not work was the MPA one on technology, but this turned
out to be "human error" rather than anything technical with the dialling-in
system.



One big advantage was that I could attend both meetings, unlike other
participants.  With the time zone difference, this led to some long days but
it was worth it.  I could provide feedback from one meeting to the other -
particularly useful for the discussions on the CBD post2020 target for
protected areas which evolved as the meetings progressed.



So what did I miss? Break-out groups were of course not possible to join,
and I did miss the social side (catching up with old friends and making new
ones) and networking.  I would not want to do it for every meeting.



But in some ways I achieved as much as I did by participating in person last
year in another meeting on protected areas, held in a mountainous part of
Italy.   In line with my aim not to fly when overland transport is
available, I used trains and buses.  I spent 2 days and 3 nights (c. 60 hrs)
at the meeting location, and over 3.5 days and 2 nights (some 70 hrs)
travelling.  Admittedly, there were some unusual aspects to the trip, which
coincided on my way back with temperatures of 40oC in France and a major
disruption to train services due to an accident But it gave me some real
insight of what travelling will be like once the effects of climate change
fully take hold.  International conservation meetings should definitely no
longer be held in remote locations, however beautiful the surroundings,
unless absolutely essential.



As Mark says, we need to reduce travelling, keep flights to a minimum/those
that are essential and unavoidable, and use the rapidly developing
technology more effectively to keep in touch with each other.



Sue Wells



Sue Wells

95 Burnside

Cambridge CB1 3PA

Mob: 07905 715552

e-mail:  <mailto:suewells1212 at gmail.com> suewells1212 at gmail.com



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