To Universities and Professional Associations
[Link to Background, Frequently Asked Questions and, List of Academic Signatories.]
- We petition universities and institutions of higher education: (a) to include all university-related flying (whether directly paid by the university or by others) in their environmental impact measurement and goal-setting; (b) to support and work to realize marked reductions in flying by faculty, staff, and students commensurate with the cuts suggested by climate science; (c) to establish and publish short- and medium-term benchmarks for reductions; and (d) to use their influence with professional associations to reduce reliance on flying for academic and research conferencing.
- We petition academic professional associations: (a) to measure and report the environmental impact of their conferences; (b) to radically reduce the amount of flying needed for conferencing; (c) to establish and publish short- and medium-term benchmarks for reductions; and (d) to work with university-based members to meet key professional objectives in ways that do not require flying and that are sustainable.
How You Can Help
For members of university faculties, research institutes, and professional associations: Please email us at academicflyingpetition@gmail.com with your name and affiliation (for identification purposes only), so that we may include you in the public List of Academic Signatories. Please also send information to that email address with news of efforts to elicit support and endorsement from universities and professional associations.
Flying Less: Reducing Academia's Carbon Footprint 
Sure, this raises important questions. But also in the mix it’s worth thinking about academics’ daily commuting. It’s never been easier for academics in many disciplines to work effectively at home on at least some days, using modern telecommunnications. If you think of an academic with a 100km round-trip commute – by no means uncommon – then two days a week working at home saves about 10,000 km of emissions per year… Universities should also be pro-active about this.
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I’ll endorse this. It may help keep a lot of climate-alarmist among academics in their ivory towers and away from Washington where they go to get climate-alarm grants, to aid the politicians in mulcting more $$$ from taxpayers.
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Sorry Ned,
No need to travel to DC to get grants. The process is all-electronic, as it has been since the about 1995.
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Great! Then they won’t need to pollute the atmosphere with their Mercedes!
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endorse it anyway ned. its the right thing to do… #climate
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Signed.
Why create institutions to research if on the issues of greatest importance–our Environment–we ignore the results?
I can’t believe academics aren’t the first to act here.
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Hi. Do you have a list of organizations, preferably low-cost, that will do environmental impact studies on conferences beforehand and offer advice on how to lower the impact? That would be helpful to people if they wanted to actually implement the steps in this petition.
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This petition is great, and I intend to sign, but it’s surprisingly easy to miss on this Web site — I only saw after the third or fourth visit. Why not create menu links, and add “Sign the Petition” as one of the main headings? Short of that, you could simply change the link that says, “Original Petition text” to “Sign the Petition”, and move it to the top of Important Links. I think your call to action is more important than your e-mail address. Happy to chat more about this sort of thing — I’ve done a fair amount of Web site layout and UX, and there’s a number of ways your site could be restructured for more clarity.
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