HuffPost Notices Academic Climate Hypocrisy

There are elite everywhere: academia, Hollywood, government.

But the elite all have one thing in common: the rules do not apply to them, only to the peons surrounding them.

It’s hard for anyone to take their hypocrisy seriously. Even the HuffPo has their number.

The Climate Change Hypocrisy Of Jet-Setting Academics

By Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash
03/31/2018 09:00 am ET

Recently, we witnessed a fascinating conversation among a few of our professorial colleagues about their frequent flyer status on a prominent airline. Two of them had achieved “Diamond” status ― the very top of the priority boarding pecking order. They spoke the most and were the loudest. The others, with either Platinum or Gold frequent flyer medallions, also noted how “busy” they were with “all this travel.”

The group casually mentioned the various benefits ― such as seating upgrades and access to airport lounges ― that come with their statuses, but the bragging was not really about those perks. It was about importance and recognition. After all, only the most successful academics fly around the world, attending conferences, participating in workshops and giving lectures. Congratulations all around!

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But while these universities are working to help their communities take on climate change, academics are accumulating big carbon footprints with their jet-setting professional styles. As The New York Times noted, “Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel.”

This is a notable disconnect between what universities preach and what their culture incentivizes and their star professors do. Academics are probably among the people most aware of the threats posed by climate change. But might their own carbon-profligate lifestyles undermine their moral authority to demand that coal miners, Teamsters working on oil pipelines and mining-dependent Native American tribes sacrifice their own economic well-being to fight climate change?

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