{"id":1974,"date":"2017-04-30T23:36:34","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T03:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2017-04-30T23:36:34","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T03:36:34","slug":"thoughts-on-traveling-doing-the-math-on-my-carbon-footprint-and-work-life-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2017\/04\/30\/thoughts-on-traveling-doing-the-math-on-my-carbon-footprint-and-work-life-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Traveling: Doing the Math on My Carbon Footprint and Work-Life Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1975\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1975\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1975\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?resize=640%2C640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?w=1280 1280w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2017\/04\/IMG_5535.jpg?w=1920 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1975\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is not (just) a gratuitous New Jersey beach photo. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/sites\/production\/files\/2016-09\/documents\/climate-change-nj.pdf\">According to the EPA<\/a>, rising sea levels are an especially pressing issue for the Jersey shore because the land is also sinking.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The most consistent advice I have received on being successful in math:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do good work.<\/li>\n<li>Stay connected with the mathematical community.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ok. How do we do these things?\u00a0 Early career mathematicians are especially encouraged to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Collaborate.<\/li>\n<li>Go to conferences.<\/li>\n<li>Participate in workshops<\/li>\n<li>Give a lot of talks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Message received. Yay, collaborations! I say yes to talks and go to as many conferences as I can. I make the most of any funding I get from my department\/college, stretch my grant funding, and sometimes pay for things myself, all to do as much math connecting as possible.\u00a0 I\u2019m doing this right, right?<\/p>\n<p>Well, yes and no.\u00a0 I like meeting collaborators, going to conferences, and giving talks.\u00a0 I like visiting different places.\u00a0 I like seeing my math friends.\u00a0 Aside from what I like, I also believe this activity has been beneficial and even essential to my mathematical career.\u00a0 Some stages of the collaborative process are vastly easier when people are in the same room, and many of my projects and collaborations have begun at workshops and conferences.\u00a0 People have asked questions and made suggestions at my talks that have led to new projects or improved existing ones. Many more people know about my work. It\u2019s great.\u00a0 Except in the ways that it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n<p>On the ethical side, all this traveling means that my carbon footprint is out of control. \u00a0 Saturday&#8217;s\u00a0climate march (along with the sweltering 88 degree day in April) got me wondering exactly how much CO<sub>2<\/sub> I am responsible for each year.\u00a0 Using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.org\/greenliving\/carboncalculator\/\">the Nature Conservancy\u2019s calculator<\/a>, I entered my travel and commuting information for the last year, and calculated that my travel resulted in 10 tons of carbon being released into the atmosphere.\u00a0 Oof.\u00a0 This is almost all due to air travel: I don\u2019t even have a car right now, but I am well above the national average for annual carbon from transportation (6 tons).\u00a0 That average is already way too high, and here I am, way above it.\u00a0 This makes me feel pretty bad\u2014I wholly accept that climate change is happening, that it is human-caused, and that it is already leading to major problems, but still I use way more than my share of fossil fuels.\u00a0 I\u2019m not at all living up to my environmentalist ideals.<\/p>\n<p>And there are other costs to my travel.\u00a0 On the personal side, some seasons (like this spring) I am rarely home, which leaves me feeling unmoored.\u00a0 Often I will leave on Friday and come back late on Monday, teach and take care of business at work frantically from Tuesday to Thursday, then do it all again.\u00a0 I don\u2019t get much exercise, because I\u2019m sitting on a plane or in a train for so many hours and I don\u2019t have a good routine.\u00a0 I never make time to do my laundry until it reaches about-to-collapse-in-a-laundry-landslide level.\u00a0 There is no such thing as cooking.\u00a0 There is no such thing as hanging out in a coffee house where people know me, because I\u2019m not home enough to have a routine in my neighborhood. \u00a0I mean, I haven\u2019t even played my accordion in months (to my neighbors\u2019 relief, I\u2019m sure).<\/p>\n<p>Both the ethical and the personal downsides of this travel really bum me out.\u00a0 How can I balance this with the professional benefits of travel?\u00a0 I came up with some ideas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Solve my two-body problem.\u00a0 This is not only a personal nightmare but an environmental nightmare as well.<\/li>\n<li>Think about what is important, and say no sometimes. I don\u2019t receive so many invitations that I would often have to turn down offers to speak, but I also need to say no to myself: put some limits on how many things I organize, like collaborator visits, special sessions at conferences, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Prioritize a sane home life.\u00a0 For me, it seems important that I have every other weekend or so at home, without any collaborator visiting.\u00a0 Because groceries and laundry and yoga class.<\/li>\n<li>Organize travel as efficiently as possible. \u00a0I should try harder to do without coming home between trips, because that trip home to repack would result in an extra ton of carbon. I can just pack an extra shirt.<\/li>\n<li>Buy carbon offsets.\u00a0 I honestly have never done this, because I always thought it was better to just change my lifestyle; however, even if I change my lifestyle moderately, I\u2019m still going to be traveling pretty frequently.\u00a0 So, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nrdc.org\/stories\/should-you-buy-carbon-offsets\">some research<\/a>, I\u2019m taking the plunge.<\/li>\n<li>Figure out the lowest carbon method of transportation for a given trip.\u00a0 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/sites\/production\/files\/2015-12\/documents\/emission-factors_nov_2015.pdf\">EPA has some really useful data<\/a> (table 8 especially!) on real carbon costs.\u00a0 Some things I learned<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">*<\/a>:\n<ul>\n<li>Short distance flights are bad: flights of under 300 miles release much more CO2 per passenger-mile than longer flights.<\/li>\n<li>For short distances, it\u2019s still better to fly than to drive alone, but 2 people in the car make it more efficient to drive.<\/li>\n<li>At medium distances, flights are not that much worse than train travel, and if at least 3 people are in the car, it\u2019s probably more carbon efficient to drive than to take the train.<\/li>\n<li>Taking the bus is the best motorized option\u00a0by far.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Organize and participate in local math activities.\u00a0 I love the regional MAA and AMS meetings, as well as independently organized regional conferences within a given field.\u00a0 This also has the effect of fostering collaboration within a region, which (theoretically) keeps down the carbon cost of getting together later.<\/li>\n<li>Accept that this is part of my job, and try to keep it in perspective.\u00a0 This last one seems important, because I believe that math is really a force for good in the world, and that it brings <a href=\"https:\/\/mathyawp.wordpress.com\/2017\/01\/08\/mathematics-for-human-flourishing\/\">human flourishing<\/a> (thank you, Francis Su).\u00a0 Math really needs human connection, and traveling, visiting, talking, and listening are often important to help make those connections. Plus, I don\u2019t want to hold myself or others to impossible standards or make people feel guilty about keeping pace with the realities of the very competitive academic job market. I have to do what I can to be better about this, but I\u2019m doing something worthwhile and that is worth some (carefully considered) carbon. \u00a0As well as\u00a0occasional\u00a0laundry issues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Your thoughts on carbon emissions and math life? \u00a0How do you deal with all these issues? \u00a0Let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">*<\/a> Of course, these are all assuming that each person is responsible for a proportional amount of the total CO2 produced by the form of transportation.\u00a0 I have decided that I can\u2019t let myself off the hook by saying that the plane\/train\/whatever would still be going even if I wasn\u2019t on it.\u00a0 However, I agree that some of these forms of transit would be more carbon efficient if more people used them or better infrastructure existed.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most consistent advice I have received on being successful in math: Do good work. Stay connected with the mathematical community. Ok. How do we do these things?\u00a0 Early career mathematicians are especially encouraged to: Collaborate. Go to conferences. Participate &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2017\/04\/30\/thoughts-on-traveling-doing-the-math-on-my-carbon-footprint-and-work-life-balance\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" data-url=https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2017\/04\/30\/thoughts-on-traveling-doing-the-math-on-my-carbon-footprint-and-work-life-balance\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,221,70],"tags":[222,206],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","category-traveling","category-work-life-balance","tag-carbon-footprint","tag-conference-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3c1jI-vQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1977,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/1977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}