The carbon footprint of a scientific community: A survey of the historians of mobility and their normalized yet abundant reliance on air travel

Abstract

This paper presents a survey conducted among the community of transport historians, on the occasion of the annual conference of the main association in this field, T2M. The survey collected quantitative and qualitative data on air travel by these scholars during 2019. The paper discusses the weight of social factors (gender, academic position, age) in the carbon footprint of these researchers due to flying. It shows the strong dependence of this community on flying, perceived as the only system likely to meet the need for physical encounters, particularly for conferences and the life of academic networks. It also shows that these historians see the issue of the airplane as a moral problem for which their institutions are expected to propose solutions. However, the scale of the weight of long-haul flights seems to be underestimated by the scholars' perception, while it raises questions about the ability to find alternative solutions.