ASEH and Sustainability

Last winter I wrote a short piece for the ASEH newsletter that questioned whether we should still be holding annual conferences. My argument is this: the evidence about anthropogenic climate change is irrefutable at this point--only the degree to which humans are responsible for this change and the pace of change remain subjects for debate in the scientific community. We also know that air travel contributes a disproportionate amount of CO2 to the atmospheric greenhouse gas load, orders of magnitude more per passenger mile than automobiles or trains. Regardless of where the ASEH holds its conferences, the vast majority of attendees are obliged to fly to the conference site. Can we really justify this? I do not think we can, especially when there are increasing numbers of viable alternatives to an annual conference. I am working with a number of other scholars in several disciplines exploring the ways virtual conferencing might lead to a huge reduction in the ecological footprint of academia. I think we should explore these alternatives (including the one I proposed in my newsletter article, biennial regional meetings to balance a biennial Society-wide meeting). Although I have not heard from any of the dissenters to this view directly, I understand that a number of members--including former presidents of the Society--believe that the benefits of the annual conference (in terms of building membership, sustaining the sense of scholarly community, etc.) outweigh the ecological costs. This is a dialog worth having, openly and thoughtfully. This discussion board is intended as the venue for such a dialog. I still hold to the position I took in the newsletter. The annual meeting is unsustainable for a number of reasons. Beyond the ecological footprint issue there is the matter of rising airfares that make attending a meeting prohibitively expensive for those of us at institutions that provide very modest travel budgets (I would guess that members from such institutions constitute a majority of the Society's membership). I look forward to hearing from others. Sincerely, Michael Smith