To be, or not to be, there?

By Graeme Wynn*

Environmental historians live in difficult times. As governments declare climate emergencies (rather than acting decisively to alleviate them) and citizens grow increasingly concerned about global climate change, it seems that we are particularly vulnerable to “flight-shaming.” You may cycle and recycle, sort your garbage, drive an EV, turn out the lights on leaving the room, even plant a tree or two, but how can you call yourself an environmental historian and continue to travel across the globe? Such questions were in the air at the recent World Congress of Environmental History. One concerned (Canadian) colleague calculated that getting delegates to Florianopolis, Brazil, had melted three hockey rinks worth of Arctic sea ice. We are not alone in our indulgence or our disquiet. The “Travelling Without Borders” project of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm has begun to investigate what it means to be a “travelling scientist.” Colleagues from my home institution have calculated that annual emissions from business-related air travel are about 1.5 times greater than the 2020 emissions target for the entire UBC campus, with its average daily population of 80,000 students, staff, and faculty.  Clearly things have to change.  And there is no shortage of recommendations about the way  forward [for example, Seth Wynes, SOS – What you can do to reduce climate change (Penguin 2019)].

But change should be thoughtful. Although the Henry David Thoreau of “Walking” was right to proclaim humans “part and parcel” of Nature, he surely erred in adding “rather than … member[s] of society.” We are both, and therein lies our dilemma. Although the use of digital technologies might well reduce the travel-miles-budget of future conferences, there are real reasons to doubt (at least until we are all truly cyborgs) the oft-expressed conviction that virtual meetings should replace actual gatherings of colleagues. Pitfalls lurk in the way of hasty attempts to “do the supposedly right thing technologically.” Despite the sad truth that “late withdrawals” and “no-shows” are shamefully common at international conferences, allowing panelists to switch, on call, from actual to digital presentation is unlikely to be a satisfactory solution.  At the moment, most of us seem to agree that seeding conventional sessions with “skype participants” serves no-one well. Ultimately the question confronting us is whether to be, or not to be, at distant conferences. Well might we ask, with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, [flight shaming]/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing [staying home] end them.”

Fresh from the invigorating stimulus of its Third World Congress in Florianopolis Brazil in July 2019, the newly-elected Board and leadership of ICEHO will continue searching for ways to address this fundamental dilemma.  We all have to be somewhere, and there is no doubt that we need to be judicious in our greenhouse gas generating actions, wherever they take place. Recent work by Wynes and Nicholas [Environmental Research Letters, 12 (2017)] identified four particularly high impact actions that would substantially reduce personal carbon emissions. In developed countries, having one fewer child per family would reduce CO2-equivalent (t CO2e) emissions by about 58 tonnes a year. Living car-free would save almost 2.4 t CO2e per year.  Avoiding one return airplane trip across the Atlantic would cut one’s CO2e contribution by 1.6 t. Adopting a plant-based diet would save about half of this (0.8 t CO2e) per year. These numbers are more complicated than they appear, because they rest (inevitably) on conjectures (eg attributing 0.25 of every grandchild’s emissions to each grandparent) and inferences about possible substitution and rebound effects. They need to be employed thoughtfully; though simple arithmetic might suggest as much, they by no means “entitle” childless individuals to 36 transatlantic trips a year.  Still, and given that individual CO2emissions average more than 16t per year in Australia and the USA, and that global average emissions must fall to almost 2.0 t per capita by 2050 to keep planetary warming below 2oC, decisive action is obviously necessary. 

As environmental historians, we need to consider doing things differently. The “digital conferencing model” recently pioneered by members of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History and Environment) and ASEH (American Society for Environmental History) commends itself for consideration - and refinement. In this case an entire panel was conceived and born digital. It was reviewed by the Program Committee, panelists were advised on effective use of the technology, and they all rehearsed their presentations. In future, societies might conceivably dedicate a room (or two) to such sessions, for a day or the duration of their conference. Because there are costs (both material and incidental) involved, virtual participants should be required to register as such in advance. But this will not solve our dilemma.  Remote sessions may reduce travel emissions (or increase the number of papers accepted for a conference) but they are predicated on the attendance of actual conference-goers. So too are the increasingly common “Twitter Conferences” that disseminate something of the substance of conference presentations in 140-character bites. Live streaming presentations and inviting (potentially global) audiences to submit questions digitally may represent a more decisive break from current practice, but at present at least, this approach requires significant infrastructural support.  In the end, and all things considered, virtual participation will probably remain (at least for the time being) a relatively impoverished substitute for “being there” to join discussions, find serendipitous connections, develop collaborations and friendships, and build a sense of belonging to a community.  

With five years between WCEH conferences, ICEHO has time to think hard about these issues, even as it seeks to address a corollary problem.  The consortium will not flourish simply by convening two meetings a decade. We need to fill the “gaps” between conferences. We hope to rise to this challenge in various ways. In essence we posit a three-pronged communication strategy. We will revamp the ICEHO website, making it more dynamic and adding more robust intellectual content. We will make fuller use of social media to serve our member organizations and the wider environmental history community (follow us on Twitter here). And we will also establish a “Friends of ICEHO” group, to broaden our constituency beyond environmental history organizations and to betterserve colleagues as individuals. Finally, we plan to continue already established efforts to extend and enhance interest in environmental history both in those parts of the world where it is less developed and more generally. All of this will require: a strong commitment from ICEHO leadership (already guaranteed); more robust financial foundations (which we will seek to bolster in various ways); and the enthusiastic support and engagement of environmental historians everywhere.  

 With all members of the ICEHO Board I look forward to working to these ends on behalf of our remarkable – and increasingly relevant – community. 

*Graeme Wynn is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia and current President of the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations (ICEHO)