Abstract
Universities worldwide have come to embrace the rhetoric of environmental sustainability and a commitment to climate action while simultaneously seeking to internationalize themselves within the context of the global economy. In seeking to internationalize, universities are highly dependent on air travel, for both their academic staff and students. Yet airplane flights are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and a driver of anthropogenic climate change. This article examines campaigns and individual efforts – with particular attention to examples from Australia and New Zealand and the field of anthropology - to reduce flying among academics, including a greater reliance on teleconferencing, and explores strategies for drastically reducing student air travel. In that the internationalization of higher education has been occurring within the parameters of global capitalism, which functions as the overarching driver of climate change, this article proposes an eco-socialist alternative as a strategy for achieving social justice and environmental sustainability.
Keywords
Introduction
Eco-socialism views the capitalist world systems as the “elephant in the room” when it comes to the overarching driver of climate change and asserts that the ultimate climate change mitigation strategy would be to replace capitalism with an alternative world system. Such an alternative world system would be based upon social justice and parity, deep democratic processes, environmental sustainability, and a safe-guarding of the climate, namely by limiting global warming to just 1.5 °C, certainly no more than 2 °C. Achieving these goal or s is not an easy task in the face of hegemonic neo-liberalism, rising right-wing authoritarianism, and rising militarism and international tensions (Foster & Clark, 2020; Malm & the Zetkin Collective, 2021). As the capitalist world system continues to self-destruct due to its exploitative, oppressive, socially unjust, and environmentally damaging practices (Baer, 2021), eco-socialism offers a vision to mobilize people around the world, albeit in different ways, to prevent ongoing human socioeconomic and environmental destruction, including global catastrophic climate change (See Brownhill et al., 2022). Eco-socialism seeks to come to grips with the established economic growth paradigm around the world to which post-revolutionary societies also subscribe today, China being an example of this phenomenon. Common ownership, which would blend centralism and decentralism and is a core tenet of socialism, has the potential to place constraints on resource depletion and environmental degradation.
Drivers of climate change include the heavy reliance of capitalism on fossil fuels, namely coal, petroleum, and natural gas; steel, aluminum, and cement production; transportation; high-rise office buildings and spacious dwelling units; the production of a seemingly endless array of consumer items; tourism and travel; industrial agriculture and logging; and militarism. In terms of transportation, airplanes are the world's most energy and greenhouse gas emission-intensive vehicles.
In spite of this, in an era of globalization and internationalization, one driver of climate change that has been downplayed by policy makers and the general public has been the number of airplane flights around the world, even in instances where people could travel long distances by train, coach, or even car with four or five passengers (Baer, 2020, pp. 74–86). Air travel of many sorts (commercial, military, and private) has been an important component of modern cultural and social life and a source of tremendous profit-making, for both the aircraft industry and the airlines. Airplanes are an integral part of the capitalist world system in that they transport both human actors and commodities in order to keep the system operating, with direct environmental, climatic, and health consequences. As this analysis highlights, included among the actors being transported by airplanes are academics as well as university students, particularly internationally mobile ones.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, airplane flights were contributing roughly 5–6% of greenhouse gas emissions (Heuwieser, 2017; Scheelhasse et al., 2017). Even though over time the newer planes became more energy and aerodynamically efficient, this was offset by the fact the number of flights was increasing about five percent per annum, a glaring example of the Jevons Paradox or rebound effect in which as technological devices become more energy efficient, their size increases, such as in the cases of cars, refrigerators, and television sets, or utilization increases, as in the case of motor vehicles and airplanes (Baer, 2020, pp. 14–16).
Despite a period of government lockdowns which reduced the number of flights, and despite the persistence of the pandemic, economic pressures – including on the part of airlines and even universities – air travel began to increase in early 2022 and was predicted by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) (2022) to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2024.
Air Travel on the Part of Academics
In certain social circles, air travel has become ubiquitous. The most frequent flyers are business people, politicians, diplomats, celebrities, professional athletes and sports teams, the super-rich and more affluent tourists, often traveling in private (Baer, 2020, pp. 90–97). In essence, “hypermobility’ is a “process driven by a relatively small part of society, increasingly comprising new societal groups with new mobility motives” (Goessling et al., 2009, p. 146). Attendance at professional conferences has become an integral component of academic life, not only for academics but also post-graduate students. This analysis in particular draws upon examples from Australia and New Zealand from where academics must travel long distances to attend international conferences.
Academic air travel often increases with seniority and affiliation with elite universities and funding from granting agencies. Accumulating status and connections is one of the prime reasons for attending conferences. Parker and Weik (2013, p. 168) observe: Setting aside package tourism to sunny beaches, the elite nomads from the traveling classes then include academics from elite institutions of the Global North. They generally have travel budgets and something to say at the conferences and symposia.
While reflexivity is often a valued trait among academics, they often fail to reflect upon the environmental impact of hypermobility on airplanes, even if they accept the findings of climate science in terms of the anthropogenic drivers of climate change (Baer, 2020, pp. 109–110). Flying to a conference may say something about an academic's membership in a hypermobile elite, one which entails environmental destruction as the downside of conspicuous consumption involved pursuing social capital. Based upon extensive ethnographic observations of academic conferences, Nicolson (2017, p. 66) characterizes them as exemplifying commodities that exhibit three primary dimensions: (1) promotion of an “ideology/research tool/novel method, which has an impact on the direction of research;” (2) “being in competition with other conferences;” and (3) “reinforcing, explicitly or otherwise, the tenet of the neoliberal academy.”
The culture of academics is problematic, particularly as it is embedded within the increasingly corporatized structure which places a strong demand on marketing the university as a brand competing with other brands. Giroux (2014, p. 22) maintains that many universities and colleges “have become unapologetic accomplices to corporate values and power.” In a similar vein, Escrigas (2016, p. 10) maintains that universities have come under increasing pressure to contribute to economic growth to justify public funding that they receive, thus in the process “emphasizing competitiveness or collaboration and instrument over holistic knowledge.” Drawing upon their research in Canada as a case study, Johnstone and Lee (2017, p. 1063) argue that the “international education field has become a site to maintain a neo-imperial agenda concealed by a neoliberal rhetoric of progress and economic expediency.”
It is clear that conferences have an impact on the environment. For example, Nevins (2014) calculated the ecological footprint of the 2011 Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference in Seattle. Of an estimated 7,300 attendees, 6,741 attendees flew to and from Seattle, resulting in about 5,351 metric tons of CO2 emissions. The average attendee who flew generated “3.8 times the total annual emissions of the average denizen of Haiti and 2.7 times that of an average Bangladeshi” (Nevins, 2014, p. 303).
On the other side of the globe in the Antipodes, Glover et al. (2017, p. 1) assert that Australian and New Zealand scholars are under pressure as their universities actively promote global connectivity and have made international collaboration, often in terms of attending meetings and conferences, in North America and Europe an “increasingly central requirement for promotion and career success.” Based upon their qualitative textual analysis of strategic and internationalization policies at 14 Australian universities, Glover et al. (2017, p. 5) found that none of them “had a detailed or coherent strategy for reducing air travel” nor did any question the need for air travel.
In a later article, Glover et al. (2019, p. 2) assert that a sense of geographical remoteness both within Australia and with the outside world “has shaped the knowledge economy of Australia in a way that is highly dependent on air travel,” even though it is highly environmentally unsustainable. Based upon an online survey of 301 Australian-based academics, they found that these academics averaged three domestic return flights and 1.72 international return flights over the 2014–2015 year for work-related reasons. A hypermobile cohort of Australian-based academics, who generally held a rank of professor or associate professor, took eight or more return domestic flights during this time period. In terms of primary reasons for academic air travel, 92% of their respondents cited conferences, symposia, or workshops: 56% meetings with other academics; 37% conducting fieldwork or data collection; 25% meetings with industry partners; 14% unspecified reasons (such as perhaps teaching); 13% industry events; and two percent for commuting (Glover et al. 2019, p. 7). In terms of the extent to which their home universities encouraged or discouraged air travel, 16% asserted that their employer strongly encouraged air travel, 32% that it somewhat encouraged it, 39% that it neither encouraged or discouraged it, 11% that it somewhat discouraged it, and only two percent that it strongly discouraged it. In terms of the benefit of air travel to their careers, Glover et al. (2019, p. 13) found that 61% of those surveyed found it strongly beneficial, 28% somewhat beneficial, seven percent neither beneficial nor detrimental, and one percent strongly detrimental. The research of Glover and his colleagues strongly suggests that Australian academics experience considerable institutional pressure from their universities to fly for academic purposes, aside from whether or not they enjoy doing so.
New Zealand academics are even more impacted by the “tyranny of distance” than their Australian counterparts, with New Zealand universities subscribing to the rhetoric of international connectivity while at the same time espousing a commitment to environmental sustainability (Hopkins et al., 2016). In their examination of the three leading New Zealand universities, namely the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, and Otago University in Dunedin, Hopkins et al. found that Victoria University of Wellington is the only one which refers in its sustainability policy to transportation and mobility: This policy encouraged “the use of environmentally responsible transport modes” where possible, but provided no guidance on the frequency of, or necessity for travel. The University of Otago appears to promote internationalisation, and offers little coherence between its strategic directions and individual policies. Three interrelated themes emerged from our analysis, which we titled “hollow words,” “unspoken words” and “facilitating mobilities” (Hopkins et al., 2016, p. 389).
Hollow words refer to a significant disjuncture between sustainability rhetoric and action. Unspoken words refer to the assumption that university travel, including by air, is a vital component of the institution's mission and operations. Finally, facilitating mobilities refer to university policies that promote travel for the purposes of career promotion and international connectivity. Hopkins et al. (2016, p. 393) boldly assert: “If academic institutions wish to fully engage with environmental sustainability imperatives and withstand close scrutiny in terms of ‘global citizenship,’ it is critical they address responsibilities for academic travel and related carbon emissions which contribute to the wicked problem of climate change.”
Air Travel on the Part of University Students
While there is a growing concern about the contribution that academic air travel makes to greenhouse gas emissions, little research exists on the contribution that international and domestic students make in flying to universities away from home (Arsenault et al. 2019; Davies & Dunk 2019). During the 2016–2017 academic year, 1,078,822 international university students studied in the United States alone, with about half of them hailing from China and India, the world's two most populous countries (Institute of International Education, 2017). Furthermore, 325,339 US students studied abroad during the 2015–2016 academic year (Institute of International Education, 2017).
The vast majority of students studying abroad either long-term or short-term make their way between their home countries and their host countries by airplane. Furthermore, university education abroad in its various forms has become conflated with tourism, not only on the part of students but also family members who may visit a student in his or her foreign destination (Bento, 2014). In the case of Australia, catering to international students has evolved into the country's third largest export market, behind only iron ore and coal (Universities Australia 2017). Glover et al. (2017) report: While the sustainability policies of the [Australian] universities that we reviewed did not generally consider emissions from student flights to be part of their carbon footprint, the pursuit of international students clearly encourages them to engage in air travel, both for immigration and for visitation purposes. This is illustrative of how expectations of air travel expand and circulate to other groups, such as students, which are considered to be outside of the university's realm of responsibility (Glover et al., 2017, p. 7).
In reality, while universities around the world have started to tabulate the air travel of their academic and professional staffs, they have made virtually no commitment to address student travel, a clear violation of their increasing assertions of commitment to environmental sustainability and climate change action. Hale (2019, p. 246) asserts: “Despite the successes at becoming more sustainable, one area where universities frequently falter is the realm of educational travel – programs such as semesters spent studying at foreign institutions and field courses, which are sponsored and encouraged in many institutions.” However, this observation can be extended to the recruitment of overseas students on the part of many universities for long-term programs of study. While there is a growing concern about the contribution that academic air travel makes to greenhouse gas emissions, there has been relatively little research on the contribution that international and domestic students make in flying to universities or academic-related events away from home (Arsenault et al., 2019; Davies & Dunk, 2019). As Shields observes: There are no data on the number of trips mobile students make to their home country. The number of trips could range from less than one (i.e., one trip to the home country every other year) to several trips per year (Shields, 2019, p. 597).
International students’ ability to return home and how often depends heavily upon their and their families’ financial resources, a topic that has not be the subject of much research. In a survey of 85 international students situated at the La Trobe University branch at Bendigo and BRiT (Yao & Bai, 2008, p. 255), 68.2% of the respondents reported that they had traveled overseas once or twice and 28.2% opted not to visited home during their studies. Informally a member of the University of Melbourne's Sustainability Executive prior to the COVID-19 pandemic estimated that most overseas students at the University of Melbourne take one to two trips to their home countries per annum. Many of their family members travel from overseas to attend graduations at the end of their course of study.
Campaigns and Individual Efforts to Reduce Flying Among Academics
Fortunately, a small but growing number of academics and research scientists are seeking to grapple in variety of ways with the contribution made by flying to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Anderson (2014), a world-renowned climate scientist based at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Reading University in the UK, no longer flies. He advocates a “fly-less” rather than a strict no-fly stance and argues that flying should be restricted for “truly extraordinary and important reasons” (Anderson & Nevins, 2016, p. 214). Anderson has the distinct advantage of being situated in the UK which is connected by rail with numerous cities in Continental Europe and even far-off cities in Russia and China, Anderson and Nevins (2016, p. 214) view flying as “emblematic of our high-emissions lifestyles and the internationalization agenda of universities – from conferences to students” (Anderson & Nevins, 2016). They do not advocate an individualistic approach to flying less but maintain that individual actions may serve as the catalyst for deeper systemic changes that contribute to climate change mitigation (Anderson & Nevins, 2016, p. 216).
Extensive travel does not need to remain part of a rich career path. Some academics may assert that refusing to get on an airplane to deliver a short presentation at a far-off conference or to present a lecture at a far-off university will not make any difference in the larger scheme of things because the airplane is scheduled to take off anyway. However, if a critical mass of academics and other travelers opted to fly less for conference attendance, business, or pleasure, airlines would inevitably have to reduce the number of flights they offer. A case in point is Ted Trainer, a leading eco-anarchist and a former lecturer who taught for many years at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and lives with his wife on a family homestead where they attempt to follow what he terms a “Simpler Way” – a topic about which he has written extensively (Trainer, 2010). In terms of travel, he has for long attempted to follow a Simpler Way by limiting his land travel and air travel. Alexander and Rutherford (2020) report: Ted rarely travels – has never gone further west by land than Bathurst [New South Wales] (i.e., 200 kms), and has flown on aircraft only five times, and never for leisure. This tends to baffle modern ears, given that travel is now viewed in terms of the positive opportunity it provides for personal and cultural discovery. For Ted, in a world characterised by resource scarcity and global warming, travel by plane or car is morally problematic. Given that there is so much interesting and important work to be done in his locality, however, Ted does not feel that giving up long-distance travel is a hardship or sacrifice. Ted demonstrates that one can live a full and diverse lifestyle within one's bioregion (Alexander & Rutherford, 2020: iv–v).
Since 2015, Wilde (2021), an academic at Tufts University in the United States, has posted the following petition for universities and professional associations to sign.
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.
As of July 23, 2022, 2,927 academics from around the world have signed the petition, unfortunately a paltry number considering the number of academics world-wide.
To give universities their due, given the commitment of many of them to furthering environmental sustainability and climate action, at least some of them around the world have begun to tabulate emissions from university-related air travel on the part of academic and professional staff. For example, the 2018 University of Melbourne annual report states:
“Air travel was the second largest contributor to the University's carbon emissions in 2018, after electricity, at approximately 28,000tCO2e” (University of Melbourne, 2019, p. 60). “The reported air travel emissions per Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff member increased from 2.9 to 3.2 t CO2e/yr/FTE, from 2017 to 2018, which is an increase of 10%. It is likely this increase is mainly as a result of improving air travel data collection’ (University of Melbourne, 2019, p. 59).
It also reported that the University aimed to offset air travel emissions by 50% by 2018 and 100% by 2020, and aimed to reduce air travel emissions per staff member by 5–10% for international travel and 10% for domestic travel by 2020. The University reportedly purchased “1,500 tonnes of National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) accredited offsets purchased from the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation and 13,500 tonnes from South Pole” (University of Melbourne, 2019, p. 59). However, there is much debate as to whether emissions offsetting schemes such as these constitute well-intended mitigation strategies or yet another form of greenwashing, a term that refers to the purportedly common practice on the part of corporations and other organizations to exaggerate their commitments to environmental sustainability (Pearse, 2015, pp. 99–100).
Given the climate crisis – which already is occurring full-force and will inevitably intensify if serious mitigation strategies are not implemented, including in the air travel sector both inside and outside the university – it is imperative that academics and students, both domestic and international, closely reflect upon how they pursue their careers and research. Within my own discipline of anthropology, for example, a range of eco-friendly choices can be considered. A PhD student in anthropology may opt to spend a long-term period overseas, but he or she could seriously consider not making numerous additional short-term trips overseas to the original research site, confining future research to sites much closer to home. Conversely, if one's PhD thesis was conducted close to home, one might have the option to conduct long-term research in a faraway place perhaps later in one's career.
In terms of conferences, instead of attending international conferences in faraway places, academics and students can consider confining their conference attendance to their own countries, or in the case of Europe, to countries that can be easily reached by rail. European academics and students are much better positioned to travel to conferences in their region because of a dense, international rail network, although the costs of rail travel in Europe still often exceed low-cost air travel, a dilemma that could be resolved under eco-socialist parameters. Perhaps in time, North American countries, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico as well as other countries such Australia and New Zealand, could develop a comparable network. Japan has had for some time a high-speed rail network and China more recently has developed a high-speed railway network that preclude the necessity for air travel. While indeed rail travel is not a panacea, given that the development of infrastructure requires much embedded energy, once developed, rail travel is more environmentally friendly than air travel (Prussi & Lonza, 2018).
Within large countries, such as the United States and Australia, there needs to be the strengthening of regional academic conferences that can be reached by land in a relatively short period of time. Social scientists, natural scientists, or other disciplinary practitioners in large urban areas - where a multiplicity of researchers is situated in universities, government agencies, NGOs, and other institutions – could organize local conferences, with the option of teleconferencing for distinguished overseas speakers. Scholars will have to overcome their elitist predilection to avoid such conferences because they are deemed parochial – which does not necessarily have to be the case, particularly if eminent scholars from afar are accessible vis-à-vis teleconferencing. While further research on the impact and outcomes of these types of gatherings is needed, personal anecdotes indicate that such conferences can be very intellectually stimulating and personable and as effective as classic in-person conferences in touching upon the burning issues of the day.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it could be suggested that academics are actually minor players in aeromobility, and that even if they all stopped air-related work travel it would make no long-term difference. But that does not mean an example should not be set, or that the higher education sector should encourage environmentally destructive behavior. Indeed, the seriousness of climate change compels all of us to reconsider many behaviors and parts of our culture that we generally take for granted.
Teleconferencing
While academics often argue that attending conferences provides excellent opportunities to disseminate their research findings, a 20-min presentation or an hour-long keynote address is arguably not the most efficient means for achieving this goal. Ultimately, journal articles, book chapters, and books are much better and longer-lasting mechanisms for disseminating research findings. As Koch (2012, p. 118) observes, new communication technologies have “made knowledge diffusion widely independent of an individual scientist's travel activity.” Even prior to the emergence of numerous e-conferences around the world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least until the end of 2021, e-conferences occurred as early as 2010 in New Zealand (Krurndieck, 2014). Later in 2016, the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara convened an online conference on “Climate Change Views from the Humanities” conference (Environmental Humanities Center, 2016).
In the field of anthropology, a breakthrough in the promotion of environmentally sustainable conferencing occurred in 2018. That year, the Society for Cultural Anthropology's biennial conference on Displacements, in collaboration with the Society for Visual Anthropology, was billed as an “international experiment in carbon-conscious conferencing and radically distributed access” (Society for Cultural Anthropology, 2018): Air travel is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse emissions worldwide, and one of the chief ways that an academic livelihood contributes to carbon pollution. Our format is also meant to enable broader geographic access and participation, most especially in a political climate of intensified restrictions on international travel. We have set the conference registration fee at a flat $10 with expanded access to anthropological knowledge and dialogue in mind. The conference brings together pre-recorded presentations from anthropologists, filmmakers, artists and activities in 46 countries, with participants tuning in from many other places as well (Society for Cultural Anthropology, 2018).
The conference entailed 55 local nodes, including 15 in the Global South, which functioned as “decentralized, affinity-based forms of collaboration and exchange” (Society for Cultural Anthropology, 2018).
It is difficult to say what will be the long-term effect of teleconferencing given that countries around the world have lifted restrictions on air travel. For the moment, what appears to have emerged are live conferences with some of the speakers presenting online. Research needs to be done on how to make video conferencing as satisfactory for networking and relationship-building as face-to-face conferencing. Strengers (2015, p. 602) asserts that “telepresence meetings avoid much of the bodily ‘work’ that is needed to conduct meetings enabled by air travel, including the arduous and unhealthy toll that air travel can take on the body and the impact of the body's physical absence in family life.” Given the dangers that climate change poses for people around the world, particularly in the Global South, it is imperative that academics begin to seriously grapple with the implications of their flying behavior.
Strategies for Reducing International Student Flying
The presence of international students on any campus contributes to the cosmopolitanism of university life. In the best of all worlds from an environmental sustainability perspective, it would be best that they remain in the vicinity of their host university for the duration of their studies. Understandably, some international students will want to return home to visit family members and other significant others, particularly if they experience social isolation in a foreign country. Universities have a serious obligation to make the stay of international students as pleasant as possible by facilitating social opportunities to interact with other students, not only international ones but also domestic students. If universities are to be authentically serious about their self-proclaimed commitment to environmental sustainability, they need to create awareness about the environmental ramifications of flying among both domestic and international students. Some evidence of this can be seen in Europe. For example, Erasmus by Train constitutes a student-led scheme that calls upon universities, as well as regional, national, and EU authorities to support affordable train or bus travel for student travel, as opposed to cheaper air travel, as part and parcel of ‘envisioning a more sustainable and united Europe’ (Erasmus by Train, 2023). In a similar vein, the Green Erasmus program seeks to ‘improve the environmental sustainability of the Erasmus + Programme and raise awareness across the European Higher Education sector about the importance of sustainable internationalization’ and plans to conduct an analysis of the environmental impact of Erasmus + mobilities’ (Green Erasmus, n.d.).
Universities, in addition to accounting for work-related travel on the part of their staff, need to bear some responsibility for the travel of their international students involved in commuting between their host university and their home country. In terms of British universities, Davies and Dunk (2019) argue: Thus, at a minimum, travel between the UK and the overseas country at the start and end of the study period should be included in an HEI's Scope 3 emissions. Whether or not any additional flights that students elect to make are attributable to the HEI is more questionable. It could be argued that these emissions form part of the service-use profile (and therefore attributable), or that the students bear responsibility for any additional flights as non-essential travel. When offering a service of overseas education that is delivered over an extended period, it is reasonable to expect students would travel home during this period. As such, the position adopted here is that additional flights form part of the service-use profile (Davies and Dunk, 2019, p. 235).
Following these guidelines, international education offices at universities around the world are compelled to reexamine their policies of actively recruiting large number of overseas students, particularly in terms of generating revenue to meet shortfalls in government funding for public universities. It is very likely that the most socially just and environmentally sustainable university would be one that seeks to enroll those international students with the greatest socio-economic needs, not those who come from elite and wealthy families. Unfortunately, at the present time, international student mobility is a privilege primarily enjoyed by students from families with discretionary income (Levantino, 2017; Song & McCarthy, 2020, p. 116). In a more equitable world, developing countries would be able to operate high-quality universities in the same way that developed countries do. However, such a proposition could be carried out in a world that transcends capitalist parameters.
Toward an Eco-Socialist Alternative
Identifying various social groups who engage in frequent flying and – knowingly or unknowingly – a form of environmentally unsustainable behavior is a touchy topic even among relatively progressive people, such as academics, students, environmentalists, and climate activists, who at some level are aware their flying results in greenhouse gas emissions and that this is a growing and significant driver of anthropogenic climate change. Flying has become an integral part of doing business, socializing and holidaying in the modern world and a hegemonic component of everyday life, including within higher education and particularly international higher education - one that is all too often ignored, or acknowledged but put into the ‘too hard’ basket. While individuals may opt not to fly or to reduce their flying – an option that some people have pursued – work and career demands have made air travel central to the logic of the capitalist world system and an increasingly corporatized university sector.
As a species, we need to move beyond airplanes as much as possible, but such a shift will have to be part and parcel of creating an alternative world system, one that preserves both human life and biodiversity. The socio-economic, ecological, and climate crises that are the byproducts of global capitalism require that we re-examine much of what we do in terms of work and leisure, what we eat and consume in general, what sort of dwellings we reside in and how we move about the planets. The struggle for environmental sustainability within the corporate university is a small but essential component of the much larger struggle for creating an alternative world system based upon social justice, public ownership, democratic processes, environmental sustainability, and a safe climate.
Envisioning alternatives to air travel is an important component in the struggle to transcend capitalism, which has contributed to ecological crises of various sorts – including anthropogenic climate change and pandemics, such as the ongoing COVID-19 crisis – and replacing it with an eco-socialist world system (Baer, 2018). Space does not allow for discussion of a transition from the existing capitalist world system to an eco-socialist world system, but it is a topic that eco-socialists have discussed elsewhere.
Airplanes, along with private motor vehicles, as facilitators of global capitalism, exemplify “new forms of excessive mobility and consumption, which undermine long-term forces of production through changing climates, eliminating scarce resources, and undermining some conditions of human life and its predictable improvement” (Elliot & Urry, 2010, p. 132). Shifting to a more sustainable transport system including in higher education on the part of both university staff and students, will continue to be a vexing challenge, even within an eco-socialist world system, which at this point in time is not on the immediate horizon. While presently, or for the foreseeable future, the notion that eco-socialism may be adopted in any society, developed or developing, may appear absurd, history tells us that social changes can occur very quickly once social structural and environmental conditions have reached a tipping point (Baer, 2018, pp. 263–266).
There is a growing sense among people from different backgrounds - perhaps particularly academics, environmentalists, and possibly a growing number of university students – that they need to reduce their flying for the sake of climate justice which conflates a commitment to social justice and environmental sustainability. In a capitalist world, time is money, and time is wages. However, in an alternative world system attuned to social and climate justice, with less pressure to be always earning or checking to see if your career is secure, slow travel – particularly by train, coach, or perhaps in the future air ship or a sailing ship – could be the modus operandi. In keeping with the notion of slow travel, Glover et al. (2017, p. 10) call for a shift toward local scholarship or slow scholarship “which would necessitate a significant inversion of priorities centered on issues that are more closely related to a university's physical location.” They argue: Implicit here is a call to arms for academics to travel overseas less and to contemplate and connect at home more, suggesting an embedded critique of the normative role of travel in universities today. However, importantly, this is unlikely to be effective if it is interpreted as an appeal for individual academics to ‘resist’ the internationalization movement – this approach must also be valued and acknowledged institutionally in policy and promotion practices (Glover et al., 2017, p. 10).
Eco-socialism constitutes a growing praxis, one that merges theory and social action, that seeks to function as part and parcel of a growing social movement seeking to promote a socially just, deeply democratic, and environmental sustainable world system, one that would entail a safe climate. Eco-socialists consider themselves in solidarity with climate justice activists who call for “system change, not climate change.” Internationalization of higher education can and should play its role in the achievement of this goal.
