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  • Modest Proposal #3 - Count miles

    By G. Rendell April 9, 2008 6:17 pm

    Tis Spring, and an old(er) man’s fancy turns to thoughts of ... possible policy changes for the coming academic year.

    Unlike paper, air travel paid for by the University is one of the things Greenback is supposed to include in its GHG inventory under the Presidents Climate Commitment. And we're trying. The difficulty is (as with many engineering problems) that the data simply doesn't exist. At least, not in any directly useful or reliable form.

    As with paper (see proposal #2), procurement of travel has gotten highly decentralized over the years. First, there was a central travel department, which most campus travelers used. Then, there was a recommended off-campus travel agency. Then, pick your own agency. Then, pick your own website. There's no way to even extract all transportation (as opposed to lodging or meals, for example) expenditures from the financial system. We can identify specific travel that occurred, but we know we can't identify ALL travel, at any level.

    Travel is a good thing, within higher education. Travel to conferences means your work is getting notice and respected. Travel for study abroad means, well, that your students are ... studying abroad. But travel comes with big costs in terms of emissions. A single round trip to a study abroad program in western Europe puts about 7 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. A round trip drive of, for example, 500 miles emits about 400 pounds of greenhouse gas. Train and bus travel emit less, but how much of that is University-paid? (Truth be told, we don't know that, either!)

    So, one proposal for a new administrative policy is that we need to track mileage paid for by (or through) the University. (Paid through the U would include, for instance, travel for grant-funded research.) We need to reduce travel emissions, we probably will need to offset some irreducible portion of travel emissions, but first we need to get a count on travel and, by extension, travel emissions. We can't manage it, because we're not measuring it.

    Has your school already done this?

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Comments on Modest Proposal #3 - Count miles

  • Why isn't this done already?
  • Posted by Robert , PhD Student on April 10, 2008 at 5:15am EDT

  • A university should know exactly who is travelling where on their dime. I'm not worried about the carbon emissions, but I am concerned about universities spending money on unnecessary trips that could be better spent on faculty and departments.

  • Universities do know they just don't add it up
  • Posted by Faculty Person on April 11, 2008 at 2:15pm EDT

  • Robert,

    Yes universities know who is flying where on their dime. They just don't have the data in a convenient form to process.

    For example I'm planning on attending a conference halfway across the country (1300 miles). Now my funding request form says where I'm going etc. but does not actually list the mileage and it never gets added up.

  • Posted by Michael McCanles on April 14, 2008 at 5:35pm EDT

  • All "green" types like you should be required by law to suffer a restriction of your own desires and free will to the exact extent that you propose the limitations on the desires and free wills of others. In your case, for every one of your suggestions that is adopted, your own freedom of movement is correspondingly restricted. I suggest a "free will" test for all green proposals: are the people who make the proposals wiling "to pay the price?" No paying the price, no success for the proposal.

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