As Markus already said, because the meeting is hybrid - people participate online or in person - printouts don't work for poster sessions as usual. Sustainability is one of the main pillars of this IAU meeting, which is why a lot of effort was spent on the virtual access to the meeting.
My host institution (WashU in Saint Louis) wrote a short article about our paper on the greenhouse gas emissions due to meeting-related travel for the entire field of #astronomysource.wustl.edu/2024/04/astr...
Carbon emissions associated with air travel to professional conferences make up a sizable fraction of the emissions produced by researchers in academia. Andrea Gokus, a McDonnell Center postdoctoral f...
For more details, check out the paper, published under open access in PNAS Nexus (doi.org/10.1093/pnas...). We hope that our article encourages more conversation about the meeting culture in academia and are very interested in constructive discussion 💚
Abstract. Travel to academic conferences—where international flights are the norm—is responsible for a sizeable fraction of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissi
To assess the emissions for all meetings, we used the Travel Carbon footprint calculator programmed by Didier Barret (travel-footprint-calculator.irap.omp.eu), which can also be used to find an emission-minimized meeting location.
One important aspect, however: In order to create more sustainable and more inclusive meetings, it is necessary that our community works together to reach this goal and that we don’t let perfectionism be the enemy of progress!
Because networking is one key element at meetings, opportunities and space must be created for people to network naturally – passively listening to talks online is not the same as engaging in lively discussions.
What do we conclude from this? Making meetings more sustainable can make them also more inclusive, because if we make meetings at least hybrid, or even fully virtual, many barriers fall away. However, virtual attendees must not be treated as second class participants!
But more importantly, who does not get to travel much, or at all? → Scientists at less wealthy institutes or in less wealthy countries; those having to deal with lengthy/complicated visa processes; those with care-taking responsibilities; and those with disabilities.
Most astronomy meetings are ≤ 100 attendees in size, but depending on the meeting venue, average emissions can be very high if most people have to fly medium to long distance. For large meetings, average emissions scatter around the average value of 1t CO2e per person.
