Paper short abstract:

This presentation grapples with the dilemmas involved in air travel, a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, on the part of academics and explores strategies for confronting these dilemmas.

Paper long abstract:

Airplane flights are one of the fastest, perhaps even the fastest, growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, even though there is much discussion of mitigating emissions in order to stave off a global climate change disaster. While business people, politicians, celebrities, and highly affluent people appear to be the most frequent flyers, the demands of an increasingly corporatized university sector has placed much pressure on academics, including anthropologists, to fly in order to attend conferences and meetings and conduct research. I seek to grapple with the dilemmas involved in the academic use of aircraft, particularly on the part of those academics who accept the gravity of anthropogenic climate change, spurred on by the demands of global capitalism and propose some strategies for mitigating climate change on the part of particularly anthropologists as part of the larger project of creating an socio-ecological revolution that will potentially contribute to a safe climate.