I remember when the AAA shifted from the old printed program to the new default paperless version.  It was part of a noble effort to “green” the meetings, and of course we all welcomed it.  But I couldn’t help but think it was all a bit quaint given that the annual meeting itself is so obviously an enormous carbon bomb.  The programs are barely a drop in the bucket.

Each year some 6,000 anthropologists descend on a North American city for five days.  The vast majority fly to get there, covering distances that average (I estimate) about 3,000 miles round trip, emitting 900 kgs of CO2 per person in the process.  For perspective, 900 kgs of CO2 more than twice what the average citizen of Bangladesh emits in a whole year.

In an age of dangerous climate change, is this morally justifiable?

Our ethics code suggests not.  It states: “Anthropological researchers must do everything in their power to ensure that their research does not harm the safety of the people with whom they work.”

We know that the effects of climate change are most acute in the global South – where most anthropologists work – and particularly among the poorest communities.  Climate change claims some 400,000 lives in the South each year, and inflicts damages up to $600 billion annually.  And this is just the beginning.  If we continue on our present trajectory and exceed 2C of warming, the South is likely to see mass famine and human displacement on a scale unlike anything we can imagine.

In order to avoid this catastrophic future, rich nations need to cut their emissions by around 10% per year, starting in 2015.  At the level of organizations like the AAA, by far the easiest way to do this is to cut out unnecessary flights.  And given our professional code of ethics, this is really less an option than an obligation.   It’s time to rethink the annual meeting.

There are lots of ways we could do this:

1. We could start by holding the meeting every other year, or even every third or fifth year. I can imagine that this would make them even more exciting and useful than they already are. More bang for our carbon buck, so to speak.
2. We could devolve the meeting to regional centers that can be reached by train or carpool. Washington DC for the East Coasters, San Francisco for the West Coasters, Chicago for the Midwesterners, etc. They would be smaller, more intimate, more engaging meetings.  Decentralizing knowledge production would make our knowledge more diverse, and hopefully more egalitarian.
3. We could shift the meeting online. Webinar technology has made extraordinary advances in recent years. Presenters could post their presentations as videos, accompanied by text and slides, and open them to comment and dialogue.  This would make it easier for us to engage with all the presentations we want without scurrying half-mad between meeting rooms.

Or we could do some permutation of the above.

Will this somehow cripple our discipline intellectually?  I don’t think so.  I’ve attended my fair share of AAA meetings, and I can’t say that they’ve been so vital to my research that I couldn’t manage without them in their present form.  I think most would agree.  Plus, even if the meeting was essential to our intellectual project, our ethics code is clear that the obligation to do no harm “can supersede the goal of seeking new knowledge.”

But what about the job center?  The pre-interviews to select for campus visits?  Good riddance, I say.  It’s just not necessary, and it generates immense amounts of needless angst.  The UK seems to manage just fine without it.  In fact, they manage without the whole campus-visit game altogether: they interview all finalists in a single day, and use video-link for those who can’t make it easily by train.

The important thing to remember about climate change is that the carbon budget is a zero-sum thing.  Every unnecessary ton of CO2 that we in rich nations emit is a ton that people in poor nations cannot emit in order to meet their basic needs.  This introduces a stark moral calculus.  By insisting on our carbon-intensive annual meeting, we’re effectively saying that our surplus pleasure (if it can be called that) is ultimately worth more than the survival of the very people we claim to care so much about.   This is not a morally tenable stance.

During the 20^th century we established ourselves as the moral discipline – the discipline with a political conscience and a truly global perspective.  We leveraged the insights of our work to fight against racism and colonialism in its many forms.  If we want to maintain this stance into the 21^st century, we have no choice but to take climate justice seriously.  After all, what’s at stake here is nothing short of carbon colonialism, shot through with violent disparities of race, class, and geography.

The US government will not help us toward this end – certainly not under Trump.  As cities around the country are now pointing out, we cannot wait for Congress to impose the necessary emissions reductions to keep us within our 2C budget, for by then it will be too late.  We have to take matters into our own hands, and quickly.

We as anthropologists – we as the AAA – have the opportunity to lead on this front, just as we led on anti-racism and anti-colonialism in the past.  We can set an example that other disciplines and professional associations will follow.  Climate scientists are already taking this step.  We should be right behind them.

The ethical imperative is clear: it’s time to end the annual meetings in their present form and come up with a safe, just, and sustainable alternative.  Paperless programs simply aren’t going to cut it – not in the face of climate emergency.  I have no doubt that this shift would attract landslide support among anthropologists eager to help usher in a better world.  Let’s make it happen, starting in 2018.  We have little time to lose.

Dr. Jason Hickel is an anthropologist at Goldsmiths, University of London.  He works on global inequality, political ecology, and alternative economics.  He is the author of a number of books, most recently The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin 2017).  In addition to his academic work, he writes a column for The Guardian and contributes regularly to other online outlets.  Jason sits on the UK Labour Party task force on international development, works as Policy Director for /The Rules collective, and holds a Fellowship at the Royal Society of Arts.  He tweets @jasonhickel

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