During my trip to Banff, I started reading the new book by George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning. The thesis of the book is that we're on track for runaway global warming, but there's an outside chance we can prevent environmental meltdown if we take immediate action to reduce the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere. Canadians would need to need to cut their emissions by well over ninety percent. As impossible as this seems, he claims it can be achieved without throwing away modern civilization.

I haven't gotten to the chapter on air travel yet, but I heard him discuss it in a radio interview. Apparently, the shocking revelation of that chapter is that a single transcontinental plane flight releases an amount of carbon equivalent to a year's worth of driving. As someone who makes an effort to drive as little as possible, I find this equivalence horrifying. Worse yet, I just flew round-trip to Calgary, and took two west coast trips and two Europe trips last year. His solution to this problem is simple but unsatisfying: don't fly. Or rather, fly rarely and stay at your destination longer.

Of course, travel is assumed to be part of the life of an academic. But if his predictions are correct, academics are going to have to adjust their habits along with everyone else. Perhaps we should start now. Get into the habit of publishing in journals rather than conferences. Attend only regional conferences, with a large international event once every five years or so. Collaborate remotely rather than in person. I expect that none of these changes would affect my ability to do my job in the least, though they would represent a conspicuous shift in how I approach collaboration and dissemination.

These considerations are being put to the test as I plan a trip to Charlotte, NC at the start of March. If I really care about this stuff, I should be trying to apply it, right? I've been scoping out different forms of transportation:

Air travel

The flight takes about 2 hours. Add to that the time to get to the airport, the time spent waiting there, and the time to get to my destination once I arrive, and we're talking about 6-7 hours of travel. Add up the cost of the local airport shuttle, the flight, and the car rental in Charlotte, and the total is about $800. Plus, flying sucks.

Car travel

A rental car and about six tanks of gas would come to, say, $450. The trip would require about 12-14 hours of driving each way. If I couldn't find anyone to share the driving, I'd probably need a hotel room in each direction. Total cost is still less than flying. Total pollution is presumably far less, which was the point of this exercise.

Rail travel

In North America? Yeah, that's a good one. The price is similar to car travel, but there's no way to get there in less than 24 hours.

Cycling

Well, I can dream. Someone at the Banff workshop was telling about a bike trip she took last year from Vancouver to San Francisco. *sigh*

I'm interested in knowing what people think about driving versus flying. Cost isn't really the issue (it's Your Tax Dollars, after all). But assuming I want to act morally, what approach should I take? Shortly after I post this entry, it will get picked up by the syndicated version on LJ. At that point I'll update the entry with a link where readers can post comments.

[update: 31 January at 13:19]: If you want to comment, you can use this page.

I spent last week at a workshop in Banff. As far as work-related travel goes, Banff might as well be the Nexus from the seventh Star Trek movie. You remember: I'm Malcolm McDowell, and I would do anything -- even blow up a sun -- to return to that magical place.

In reality, my experience during this trip was mixed. I spent the first half of the week frantically trying to meet a paper deadline, when I wasn't participating in the workshop. After a sleepless night on Tuesday I managed to submit the paper mid-day on Wednesday, but slept through that afternoon's meetings. I was back on track Thursday morning, but missed more of the workshop so that I could meet with staff on site to plan for a conference I'll be running there in 2009. And in the end, I wasn't able to contribute as much as I would have liked to the topic of the workshop. The group took the brainstorming in a direction where my skills and knowledge couldn't help much.

I didn't get down into the town itself (which, frankly, I don't regret), but I did manage a couple of short excursions. On Tuesday, five of us drove around the side of Tunnel Mountain to a couple of lookout points. We didn't see the big game we were promised, but we did get a good look at the Hoodoos, stone pillars that I gather are the rocky mountain equivalent of the more local Flowerpots. Thursday afternoon we fit in a short hike up Tunnel Mountain. Then, in the evening, a group of us visited the hot springs and, er, took the waters.

The Banff Centre really is a great place. Sure, they host conferences. But they also run extensive residency programs in art, music, theatre, dance, production, and so on. An artist would spend a few weeks there, where they would work on a local project while pursuing their own interests using the Centre's facilities. When I was there for a conference in 2005, there were music recitals almost every day of the week. The upshot is that I may be able to negotiate a six-week stay where I collaborate with a group of artists there. Longer term, I may even be able to spend a sabbatical there. Man, that really would be like Kirk living the eternal good life, riding horses and chopping wood in the mountains. It's no wonder that the original invitation for the event felt it necessary to say "We expect you to return to your job at the end of this workshop".

I suppose I should follow up briefly on my previous post. The departmental staff were unable to find an empty classroom into which I could move my lectures. However, one staffperson suggested that I may be able to switch with one of the three other classes offered by my department in the same time slot and building. Sure enough, one of the other professors was willing to switch with me. I later discovered that he actually moved his lectures into a much smaller room in a different building, a room that's usually reserved for grad courses. I'm glad he had the flexibility to do that; the room I'm now in is actually better than the one I normally use for the course I'm teaching.

So, yes, I wimped out. I'll go for cabaret-style lectures some other term, however much I may wonder how this term might have played out. I'm glad the staff helped me fix my problem, but their reaction still irks me a bit. Everyone I asked seemed to think that it was routine to hold lectures in that room, even though there was no precedent for it. I can't tell whether their reaction was breezy ass-coverage or a genuine inability to understand what I was making a fuss about.

By the way, I've taught three lectures so far, and they've gone just fine. I guess the transition out of sabbatical was fairly smooth after all. Looks like I've got a pretty good group of students, too.