Fall 2019

Dear Board Members of the Society for Ethnomusicology,

Addressing the current climate catastrophe requires urgent and collective action, and SEM is not exempt. We the undersigned respectfully request the Board to enact a series of actions to minimize the carbon emissions deriving from SEM professional activities.

We request that the Board consider the actions listed here. Further information for each of the six recommendations is provided below.

       I.         Actively recommend that SEM meeting participants attend remotely via video conferencing technology and implement the technology and training to facilitate this arrangement.

     II.         Actively recommend that SEM members choose transportation options with lower emissions to travel to meetings, such as trains and buses instead of planes; and include detailed information about these modes of transportation on conference websites.

   III.         Build carbon offsets into meeting funding.

   IV.         Include a localized land acknowledgement with conference materials in consultation with local tribal peoples.

     V.         Over the longer term, align SEM professional meetings with the Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference model.

   VI.         Initiate consultations with scientists regarding additional ways to address the climate catastrophe.

 

I. Video Conferencing. Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary driving force behind the climate catastrophe; people living in North America and Europe are the primary people responsible. Globally, average annual carbon emissions are 5.1 tons per person. In comparison, average annual carbon emissions of people living in the United States are 21 tons per person: four times the world average.[1] People living in the US are responsible for nearly half of the worldwide carbon emissions from aircraft use.[2] Studies have shown that the average carbon footprint of a conference paper is .8 tons.[3] Emissions accumulate quickly for scholars presenting multiple talks and presentations each year. The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) recently calculated that a third of its institutional carbon footprint derived from faculty and staff flying to conferences, talks, and meetings.[4] Agricultural economist Sam Desiere and others have called for scholars to lead by example and undertake actions to reduce the carbon footprint of their respective professions.[5] Given the significantly higher carbon emissions of scholars in the US, it is imperative we heed these calls.

We request the board allow attendees of the annual meeting to present remotely using video conferencing technology. We request the Board also to go further, actively recommending that attendees use this method and arranging the technology and training to do so. We the undersigned have attended numerous conferences featuring various uses of video conferencing technology: including reading a paper over Skype or Zoom, or showing a pre-recorded presentation and then participating in the Q&A session via video conferencing. The combination of an effective technology setup and a capable discussion moderator can serve to minimize the climate impact of conference presentations.

Use of video conferencing technology will also increase conference participation, allowing previously un-represented and under-represented populations to attend. Financial access to air travel is a privilege not shared by many scholars outside of tenured populations in North America and Europe. Eliminating air travel serves to eliminate hurdles to financial and physical accessibility. Conferences would therefore attract junior and independent scholars, academics from the Global South, individuals barred from crossing international borders, and countless others. Video conferencing would facilitate an enrichened dialogue as these under-represented populations increasingly participate.

II. Mass Transit. Certain forms of transportation generate more carbon emissions, with air travel generating the most. One round-trip flight between Los Angeles and New York generates one ton of carbon per passenger.[6] Other forms of mass transit generate significantly less carbon, notably trains and buses. The 2019 SEM Bloomington meeting website does not include information on how to access forms of transit that generate fewer emissions. We request the Board in future both include this information and urge attendees to consider their mode of transport, highlighting the comparative emissions deriving from transportation options.

III. Carbon Offsets. Carbon offsets are controversial. An organization is paid to engage in a carbon-reducing activity—such as planting trees or building a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy system—to compensate for the emissions of someone else. While these efforts are not unimportant, they do not alter the fact that not emitting carbon is the surest way to reduce emissions globally.[7] Nevertheless, carbon offsets can be useful. We urge the Board to build carbon offsets into conference funding, for example via an additional registration fee. We also urge the Board to make information on carbon offsets available to conference attendees, including information on reputable nonprofits from which one can purchase carbon offsets, such as the United Nations Climate Neutral Now platform;[8] Verified Carbon Standard and Climate Action Reserve in the US;[9] and the Gold Standard in Europe.[10]

IV. Land Acknowledgement. Research demonstrates direct correlations between the contemporary capitalistic and extractive actors responsible for the climate catastrophe and settler colonial histories.[11] These correlations mean that Indigenous peoples are among the populations worst-affected by both climate change and settler colonialism. Land acknowledgements are statements that recognize the local Indigenous people(s) dispossessed of their lands by settler colonists. Through acknowledgement, these statements begin to center Indigenous peoples, their histories, and realities. Centering Indigenous peoples serves to educate audiences about colonial histories and, through them, climate change histories. As a learned society, SEM has an ethical mandate to create and communicate truthful and factual representations. Incorporating land acknowledgements are a small but important step towards communicating a truthful representation of the history of most of the lands upon which the SEM meets. We ask the Board to consult with tribal peoples local to each conference site to craft appropriate land acknowledgement language and then foreground that language on conference materials with the recommendation that conference attendees use it, too. We ask the Board to use these processes to enter into positive relationships with local tribal peoples. More information can be found in guides compiled by Chumash museum specialist Felicia Garcia, the Native Governance Center, and by the US Department of Arts and Culture.[12]

V. Nearly Carbon Neutral Conferences. To decrease emissions, organizers at UCSB developed the Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference model (NCNC).[13] NCNC's produce less than 1% of the emissions of traditional fly-in events, and facilitate a more equitable conference dialogue. The model features pre-recorded talks, which are then viewed on a central conference website in preparation for an online Question and Answer session over a period of days or weeks. This longer amount of time compensates for differences in time zones, and centralization online facilitates global access from scholars typically unable to attend conferences in North America and Europe. Of note, NCNCs typically generate three times more discussion than traditional fly-in events: meaningful interactions are not only possible via the NCNC, they are in certain respects improved. The cost of NCNCs are also significantly lower than traditional fly-in events; the low cost of nearly carbon-neutral annual meetings would allow SEM to devote funding to other concerns that advance musicological knowledge.

VI. Long-term dialogue. As we urge the Board to take the above actions, it is crucial also to engage in long-term consultations with the scientific community regarding revised best practices to address the climate catastrophe, since research constantly results in new information. While the actions in this petition are important, we will also need to keep abreast of improved methods to decrease emissions.

This petition is also being made to the Board of the American Musicological Society; we request that the SEM Board share this petition with sibling societies through the American Council of Learned Societies.

Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to your response and to your actions.

Sincerely,

Ryan A. Koons, Co-organizer

Elisabeth Le Guin, Co-organizer

 

[1] Union of Concerned Scientists, Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2012), 8.
[2] Center for Biological Diversity, "Airplane Emissions," Transportation and Global Warming https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/transportation_and_global_warming/airplane_emissions/
[3] Diomidis Spinellis and Panos Louridas, "The Carbon footprint of Conference Papers." PloS ONE 8, no. 6 (2013).
[4] Ken Hiltner, "A Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference Model" https://hiltner.english.ucsb.edu/index.php/ncnc-guide/
[5] Sam Desiere, "The Carbon Footprint of Academic Conferences: Evidence from the 14th EAAE Congress in Slovenia." Eurochoices 15, no. 2 (2015).
[6] Union of Concerned Scientists, Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2012), 75.
[7] Union of Concerned Scientists, Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2012), 176-177.
[8] https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/ 
[9] https://verra.org/project/vcs-program/​ https://www.climateactionreserve.org/
[10] https://www.goldstandard.org/
[11] Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, "On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene," ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16, no. 4 (2017). Kent Lightfoot et al, "European Colonisation and the Anthropocene: A View from the Pacific Coast of North America," Anthropocene 4 (2013).
[12] http://landacknowledgements.org/​ https://nativegov.org/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/​ https://usdac.us/nativeland/
[13] Ken Hiltner, "A Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference Model" https://hiltner.english.ucsb.edu/index.php/ncnc-guide/