Carbon Footprint of the MLA

This may not be like the Nazis fighting the Soviets but it is a tad like trial lawyers going after HMOs, where you hope that both sides lose. At least one academic, University of Minnesota at Twin Cities associate professor Mark Fedelty, has concluded that travel to academic conferences contributes to global warming.

“However, it is true that air travel puts large amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, soot, and even water vapor directly into the atmosphere, all of which makes an inordinate and unsustainable contribution to global warming,” he writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “And academics do fly—a lot.”

If his conclusion discourages that practice, we may not want to tell him about evidence to the contrary. Perhaps he need not read economist Holly Fretwell’s The Sky’s Not Falling!: Why It’s Okay to Chill about Global Warming.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.

Malcolm A. Kline
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia. If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.