Jet-Setting Academics Branded Hypocrites For Lecturing the Rest of us About Climate Change
by Toby Young 18 September 2024 5:09 PM
University researchers have been branded “hypocrites” for condemning air travel as bad for the planet but then flying to conferences anyway. The Times has more.
A study found that about a third of the academics at a leading U.K. university had flown to at least one meeting in the previous year, despite a large majority expressing concerns about aviation emissions.
“There is a level of hypocrisy: academics know that flying is bad for the environment,” said Professor Jonas De Vos of UCL, the lead author of the study. “But still, we often fly to international conferences, often to [make the argument] that society should be more sustainable.”
Aviation is estimated to account for about 4% of global warming and almost all climate scientists agree that reductions in air travel would be needed to meet the 1.5ºC Paris target. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a shift to holding conferences and other events online.
However, in a study published in the journal Global Environmental Change, De Vos and his colleagues describe how flying remains “deeply embedded in how the global academic system functions”.
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/09/18/jet-setting-academics-branded-hypocrites-for-lecturing-the-rest-of-us-about-climate-change/
