Climate change

¹ EU Green Deal ² Ben Ari, personal communications

[left Image] IPCC WG 3 - Summary for policy makers [right image] (i) Labos 1point5 (Berné & Ben-Ari) and (ii) GES 1point5 (Mariette et al)

[background] by RCraig09 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80170965

at least +2°C

1.5°C Paris agreement

-55% by 2030¹

Society scale

Academia

Main sources of emission (France):
travels, commute, heating (+others)

During Covid:
\(-75\%\) travel, \(-50\%\) commute ²

There is urgency…

What is our agency?

International meetings

Emissions per attendee

EAS 2019 (Lyon): \(\sim 1,500\ \mathrm{kg.CO_{2,eq}}\)

EAS 2020 (Leiden, online): \(\sim0.33\ \mathrm{kg.CO_{2,eq}}\)

Total emissions EAS 2022 (estimated)¹:
\(+40\%\) since Lyon

 

“…transitioning from in-person to virtual conferencing can substantially reduce the carbon footprint by 94% and energy use by 90%”²

Plots: Courtesy of Burtscher L.

¹Burtscher, L., “The carbon footprint of large astronomy meetings”, Nature Astronomy, vol. 4, pp. 823–825, 2020.

²Tao, Y., Steckel, et al. Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy. Nat Commun (2021)

“Warming strips” by RCraig09 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80170965

(possible) Agency

  • one meeting every two years?
  • hybrid meetings?
  • multi-site conference?

Talk point: how do we make EAS sustainable?

EAS Sustainability Roundtable

By Corentin Cadiou

EAS Sustainability Roundtable

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