Why do academics travel so much? The first reason is the most obvious: as part of their research in order to get new material to base their publications on. Secondly, there is conference attendance. Thirdly, there is the sheer joy of travelling and experiencing other countries, something that strengthen the incentives of the other two. There is a long tradition of “Bildungsreisen” in the Western Romantic-Enlightenment tradition, a tradition heavily influential in creating the framework of modern academia. Bildungsreisen was the process in which a young man of scholarly inclination went off on a journey to learn things he could not learn by studying the tomes of his father’s library.
This romantic tradition is still with us, influencing us to keep visiting faraway places long after high-quality images and films can show us literally any place on earth. Fourthly, there is prestige. Travelling long distances and often is a sign of accomplishment, and signals that someone is willing to pay for our travels.
Souvenirs from faraway lands…
Since the reasons why academics travel are not so different from the reasons for travelling non-academics, I now turn to the larger discussion on flying for all individuals. There are different estimates on the contribution of flying to the total man-made effect on global warming, from three to nine percent. But this share is expected to rise in the future. Flying is estimated to be an individuals single largest contribution to global warming. Taking this at face value, each flying individual could thus make their single largest contribution to halting global warming by refraining from flying. I think that most frequent flyers know this, and that the main reason that they do not stop flying is that the overall effect for their sacrifice is negligible – the empty flight chair will simply be filled by another passenger, or just be empty with a slightly lower profitability for the airline but with the same emission of gases. The sacrifice for the individual, is thus to no practical use unless many people decide not to fly at the same time.
We might thus refrain from flying – if everyone else does the same. I think that this is the main problem with proposed solutions to environmental problems that focus on the choices of individuals. With economic growth in previously poor countries, the amount of individuals facing the same dilemma grows.
What then can solve the dilemma? The obvious candidate is technology. Advances in information and communication technology have already eliminated the pressing need for actual travel in most cases, but the authenticity prejudice hinted at above still means that people will want to travel. The most attractive solution would be flight technology allowing us to fly as much as we do today and beyond (minus the environmental side effects). This is estimated to be unlikely at least during the decades ahead, but technological development is notoriously difficult to predict. Another possibility is changes in norms. Changes in human behavior based on changes in norms have occurred multiple times in the past (for some reason the most frequently used example is the way people blow their noses – openly ejecting snot through the nostrils gave way to “snot-rags” which gave way to sterilized non-reusable paper Kleenexes). Norms might be shifting concerning travel by flight, making it a gradually less savory way of travel until shunned unless strictly necessary. In many communities this might already be the case.
Yet another solution is for individuals to voluntarily agree to a restriction of their freedom of flying. Garrett Hardin’s 1968 article The Tragedy of the Commons argued, echoing the common obsession of the time, that infringement of personal freedom was the only way to solve the ticking population bomb. But long before that Thomas Hobbes in 1651 hypothesized that society was ultimately based on a social contract involving a sacrifice in freedom in order to obtain security – a contract resulting in the creation of the sovereign, or Leviathan named after the terror-inspiring but ultimately magnificent beast described in the Bible.
The Leviathan model 1651
(Source: Cover of Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Press 1985)
According to Hobbes, life before Leviathan was “nasty, brutish and short”. Life in a post-global warming world might well be nasty, brutish and short too. So perhaps we need a new social contract, a global Leviathan to constrain our freedom?
I do not claim to have all the answers to the questions raised in this blog. All I can say is that I welcome the opportunity to live in a time in which large solutions to large problems will have to be discussed.
Browsing the webpages of Swedish electronic waste recycling companies, I happen to come across the climate wheel, an online infotainment tool that allows the user to balance human conservation with human generation of CO2 emission. Strongly resembling a fortune wheel, the climate wheel is divided in twelve wedges. Eight of them (colored in blue) show symbols of bottles, CRT screens, cell phones, newspapers, cables and batteries, and four of them (colored in orange) show different means of transportation, in this case, a bike, a car, a train and an airplane. Filling out the quantity of the user preference in kilos or entities, the climate wheel estimates the environmental effects of recycling bottles, CRT screens, cell phones, newspapers, cables and batteries. The user can then estimate the environmental effects of recycling in light of the environmental effects of different means of transportation.
With recent flights still fresh in my mind, I click on, and compare the different wedges in the wheel, and get to know that if I recycle:
10 CRT screens
33 cell phones
29 meters of cable
374 aluminum cans or
33 kg of newspaper
I have saved 56 kg CO2, something that allows me to:
bike endlessly
drive my car for 280 km
take the train for 70100 km or
fly for 140 km.
While the above assessment is my own, I cannot help thinking about the underlying implications of this comparative approach, and the generous room for manoeuver that is allocated to humans through this. As if it would be solely up to us to save or savage the climate. Balancing human conservation with human generation of CO2 emission, the user is left with a picture of the climate as flexible, forgiving and compliant. The comparative approach also makes it difficult to conclude that 56 kg CO2 has been conserved (for what purposes?). The wedges featuring the bike, the car, the train and the airplane imply the answer: conserving 56 kg CO2 allows for generating an equivalent (appropriate?) amount CO2. However, the climate wheel does not question current consumption patterns, nor does it take into account the resource-intense production processes of, say, cell phones.
Hence, while the climate wheel meritoriously indicates the effects of current means of transportation, it assumes that it is still in my hands. As if this is a zero-sum game where my latest flight is rendered harmless or at least legitimized if I recycle an appropriate number of CRT screens, cell phones or aluminum cans, X meters of cable or X kg of newspapers.
It is not about numbers anymore. Don’t know if it ever was.
Last May I attended the biennial Environmental History PhD Workshop at the Australian National University, Canberra – my very first trip to Australia. This is a brief account of that trip (loosely) inspired by Sir George Wheler’s (1650-1723) A Journey into Greece (1682) with snippets from my travel journal.
Waiting for the interminable hours to pass between my flight from Stockholm and the connection to Melbourne, the following advertisement had a certain appeal:
Digitiphoto: Entertainment Imaging Souvenir Photos
“Around the world in just 5 minutes”
Travel around the globe in a matter of minutes using the latest
Green Screen technology
An absurd thought, granted, but still: other technologies such as skype and video conferences are opening up possibilities for replacing travel to conferences and meetings and lowering our carbon footprint. This has certainly been a topic of debate and concern at our division (of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH). However, perhaps it is not only a question of how much we travel, but our attitude to travelling. What do we gain by it, and how do we account for it? If knowledge is situated, how does travelling shape our knowing?
I see this blog as participating in the long tradition of travel writing, such as the prolific correspondence, diaries and the (immensely popular) published travel accounts that played an important part in holding together the Republic of Letters, botanical networks and colonial science. Travelling has always been a central scientific activity, often involving great expense, cramped and uncomfortable conditions and sometimes great risk. Needless to say, most people did not go off on great adventures. Those who stayed at home could explore new lands vicariously through travel accounts and correspondence, and the plants and objects that travelled with them. Although the possibility and conditions of travel are far removed from those facing a 17th century counterpart, we travel more than ever and certainly continue to write prolifically. Travel writing is now mostly a popular genre, but this blog reaffirms the place of travel writing as a scientific endeavour.
Dedication
Lavish dedications were to be expected in travel accounts, particularly if the journey relied on the generosity of a patron. My grant applications came up dry, so my trip was funded by the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Australian National University. I cannot emulate Wheler’s superlatives in his dedication ‘To the King’, but I am grateful.
The Preface
In Wheler’s preface, his apology for his travel account emphasises how fragile both the traveller and his memories are.
‘… having byGods [sic] assistance, had a prosperous Voyage, into those parts of the World, and made a considerable Collection of useful Observations, and other Curiosities, began to think, that both my time and labour spent thereon, would soon be inevitably lost, should I not take care to put them into some convenient method for their preservation. … I concluded that it would misbecome me, to bury such Blessings in Oblivion, without erecting the least Monument of Gratitude in remembrance of them.’
So why travel, and why write about it?Travel writing is an attempt to preserve the collection of transient thoughts, impressions, and experiences that come about from the chance encounters, serendipitous overlaps, and unique juxtapositions that travelling enables. It is an attempt to freeze a moment in time. Travel writing is also an acknowledgement of the value of the journey made (will such trips still be possible for the next generation?), in my case a justification for the expense and, with dismal irony, for the hefty carbon footprint I left attending an environmental history workshop. My notebook also became a collecting space more literally, as a feather, flowers and gum leaves found their way into its pages.
Chapter 1: The Journey
Whether over land or sea, whether tediously uneventful or terrifying, the journey is itself full of impressions and insights from which knowledge can be gleaned. In my case, countless hours in airplanes and Dubai Airport game ample time to fill pages reflecting over the airport as a space – utopia, heterotopia and microcosm; a regulated yet diverse space, full of regulated bodies with unregulated body clocks – along with personal and existential musings about life between worlds, how people make place and take it with them (and vice versa).
Dubai airport, 24th May, 5AM: A songbird declares morning – how lovely and out of place in this great cage! I wonder how it got in. Pale light outside the great window wedges confirms that it is, indeed, a new day, just as the 30 degree and humidity of last night getting off the place made me feel fully how far I have travelled.
…
Watched Tracks (about a girl who crossed Australia on a camel) on the plane:
‘Some nomads are at home everywhere, others are at home nowhere, and I was one of those.’ Robyn Davidson.
Many hours later, somewhere over Australian territory. It hasn’t been as bad as I feared. Travelling is a strange thing. So much resistance before setting off, like the strain of the rope tugging a camel – once on its feet, no problem, but the transition can take some work. This wasn’t intended as a personal diary, but I cannot reflect over travelling, over utopia and belonging without falling into my own life, my own puzzles. My interst in utopia, in the coexistence of multiple perceptions and perspectives that cannot be conflated into a single frame… the perennial question of integrity that follows me and sometimes plagues me. How can I be this and this and this? How can I orient myself in a world both fragmented and whole?
Chapter 2: The familiar and the strange
My first impressions:
Canberra.
Blue skies. Faint white whiffs.
A beautiful balmy day.
A strange mix of autumn and summer (I saw
Irises!) Some skeletal trees, some on fire
And others lush still.
Birds I don’t recognise.
Plants I recognise but which are different
Somehow – waxier, more elongated, etc.
It was not only my body that was out of synch, but the seasons themselves: I was used to irises in May, but they seemed at odds with the surrounding landscape which declared autumn in unmistakable colours. Camellia bushes overflowed with blossom – a flower I associate with February in European palm houses.
Like Wheler, I have a particular interest in plants. He describes exploring plant ‘curiosities’ while his companions go hunting, and his text is interspersed with lists of plants encountered along the way. Unknown plants are often described with the help of comparisons with the more familiar: ‘Lychnis, with Flowers, speckled, like the Strawberry-pricks.’ (p.45) I experienced a similar mixed sense of the familiar and the strange: black-and-white crows called magpies, funny-looking ducks, birdsong that sounded like a screaming baby. The ‘mountain ash,’ I was surprised to discover, is in fact a eucalyptus – a tree which is both so quintessentially Australian, and a reminder of my childhood home in northern Pakistan, another former British colony.
Chapter 3: The Workshop
Another striking aspect of Wheler’s account is the importance of the people he encountered along the way. My trip to Australia is thanks to the invitation of Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin, and from beginning to end I was overwhelmed by the hospitality, generosity and kindness of everyone I met. The workshop centred on performing (we could interpret this freely) our research in a respectful and creative environment, and most of what I learned about Australia, and Australian Environmental History in particular, was mediated through these new friendships.
We were labouring up the Black Mountain, sweating and swatting at mosquitoes, when Tom stopped us, put a hand on the trunk of a nearby tree with the familiarity of friendship, and introduced us to the ‘scribbly gum’. He explained that the regular black scribbles along the trunks were made not by a human hand but by a particular species of beetle. (I was fascinated. How do they know when to turn, to create such regular zig-zag patterns?) There was something surreal about that evening, as we continued through a dream-like landscape of grey and mint along the red-ochre path. It was as though we were entering an artificial landscape arranged to mimic the Aboriginal paintings I had only seen in pictures. White pebbles dotting the red path. Black scribbles on the trunk. I thought about the patterns and pathways that European scientists sought and seek, to navigate this world in which we live. Another set of squiggles on another grey trunk. On it, a traveller before me had etched ‘Nepal’ into the bark. What is the difference, I wondered, between the squiggly beetle marking the bark, and the Aboriginal painting of the beetle’s squiggles? What is the difference of either to branches of an evolutionary tree?
Who is qualified to read a landscape? How long does one or one’s ancestors have to have to have lived there for the privilege of correct interpretation, and by extension, correct use? As a newcomer, I was fascinated to encounter such variety in the relationship between people and place in the Australian context. We were reminded of this in the repeated respects paid to the elders past and present, yet they were elders of a lineage we could only ever hope to observe – unnamed, and for me, unimaginable. I think of Alexandra Roginski’s work with the repatriation of Aboriginal remains to their country, the strength of a tie to land that holds even a century after death, yet which depends on the uncertain witnesses of time and space. I think of Arnaud Barras’ body snaking through the seminar room, as the words and limbs of a Swiss visiting student gave life to an indigenous narration of the Australian landscape. I think of Karen Twigg writing about the challenges of drought in her home, the Malle land, and Sabine Sauter in Germany writing about the dustbowl. I think of Marilyn Omerovic’s research into the ways in which more recent immigrants relate to the land: the idea that between indigenous stories of displacement and lost landscapes carried in the memory of many immigrants there is a common placelessness, the homelessness of land-orphans and violent uprootings.
I am curious about these places which are closed to us in time and space, which perhaps no longer exist, and which we can only revisit when the present is suspended and, dreaming, we are free to wander, return, and repopulate the past with today’s thoughts and today’s loves.
Chapter 4: Botanical Gardens
In the preface, Wheler pre-empts criticism for the content of his book: ‘For I know some will say, why does he treat us with insipid descriptions of Weeds, and make us hobble after him over broken stones, decayed buildings, and old rubbish?’ There are indeed plenty of monuments and ruins, with great attention to changing landscapes and numerous maps.
Botanic gardens are interesting places to ‘read’ landscape, particularly the Australian landscape, a vast continent with a unique flora. I briefly visited four botanic gardens, in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Cranbourne (also in Melbourne), which from my first impressions appeared to have rather different ways of representing the nation’s flora. As befitting the Australian National Botanic Gardens in the capital, the Canberra gardens, which date back to the 1940s, present a microcosm of Australia. The ’red centre’ represents the central desert, and the rainforest gully is humidified to house more tropical plants from the east coast and Tasmania. The visitor can, in a sense, experience Australia’s different climates in miniature.
The Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain in central Sydney is the oldest scientific institution in Australia, closely associated with the arrival of Europeans on the continent. One garden celebrates Daniel Solander, a more illustrious Swede who collected plants ‘just 10 kilometres from here’ almost 250 years ago.
The other contender for not just the scientific but the historical heart of Australian Botany is the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, home to the National Herbarium of Victoria which was founded in 1853 by the Director and prominent botanist Ferdinand von Mueller. It is an urban oasis, a park with ponds in emerald lawns. I was impressed by the National Herbarium building, which had an exhibition along the outer walls introducing the history, practice and science of herbaria to passer-byes such as myself.
The youngest botanic garden I visited was the Botanic Gardens at Cranbourne (1970) south of Melbourne. Dedicated to Australian species, it takes a rather more abstract approach to representing the Australian landscape than the naturalistic microcosm in Canberra or the 19th century park-like gardens in Sydney and Melbourne. It is smaller, but focused on highlighting the riches and challenges that distinguish Australian flora. Water is a central feature, both in the landscape and the information panels, in recognition of the difference in water resources between Europe and Australia. While the oldest gardens reminded me of Europe, Cranbourne and to some extent Canberra’s Red Centre seem to be exploration in a distinctly Australian botanic garden design, in which the Aboriginal as well as the scientific and naturalistic is inscribed in the landscape. Cranbourne also displayed the most extraordinary eye-candy, in a range of beautiful flowering gums and other treats!
Conclusion:
Wheler begins and ends his travel account with an expression of gratitude to his God and King that he was born an Englishman, his travels having confirmed his belief that England was indeed superior to all other countries. In this sense, his travels seem to have enforced his world view rather than expanded it. However, there is much that I admire in his account, such as his attention to ‘Weeds’, his willingness to suffer discomfort and danger in order to satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and his dedication to accurately describing what he encountered. In the centuries that follow, travelling would be central to the learning and practice of botany, whether in the next field or a far-off continent.
During the workshop, Alison Pouliot presented a basket full of glorious mushrooms she had picked on the University Campus, along with another basket containing derogatory words relating to mushrooms which she had collected in newspaper archives. Alison had moved through the grounds (sometimes on her hands and knees) with a knowledge, attention and receptivity to finding these extraordinary fungi, whose existence the rest of us who stuck to the paths had been completely unaware of. Whether reading books (or blogs!) of text or the book of nature, the 21st travelling scientist would do well to remember the botanist: dare to leave the path, and then collect and share what we discover there.
I love travelling. I love seeing new places, meeting new people, exploring the variety of cultural expressions (and impressions), telling me that this is not my hometown. Often this process starts already by the window of the train or aeroplane. The geological and urban morphology, the architecture, the flora and fauna – every sign of difference makes me delighted. Stepping out of the train, or from the airport, taking that first breath of air and letting the humidity, temperature and aromas fill my palate and lungs is an almost sacred ritual. A first taste of something – potentially – different. But I also love the travelling per se. While spanning space, travelling creates a pocket in time. A sanctuary.
Before I became part of academia, the times I had travelled outside the Nordic countries could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Then I got enrolled as a PhD student, and after seven years in academia, I’ve been to India (twice), China, the U.S. (twice), Canada and more places in Europe than I can remember. In Europe, I’ve often chosen to go by train: to Zürich, Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, London and Lancaster. One reason for this is that my ever-growing CO2 footprint haunts me. Of course, I know that train-travels cannot offset the CO2 emissions released by my long-distance travel by air, but at least it keeps my footprint down. Though at times, I seem to be quite on my own worrying about my CO2 footprint. When I vent my discomfort regarding flight practices to friends and family, I am always, without exceptions, met by conciliatory replies. In some way, my CO2 footprint seems to be excused by the fact that I work with sustainable development, and that my travels are part of this work. Unfortunately, nature is not as forgiving. Nature does not give a f*ck about reasons behind the ever increasing CO2 emissions. It just reacts.
But there is another reason for why I go by train as often as I can: I actually prefer it. When going by train you typically start and end your journey in the very centre of a city. No need to spend time (and money) going to an airport in the outskirts of the outskirts. You (usually) don’t have to allocate time (and patience) to go through security controls. On a train, it is easier to stand up and walk around, and, quite often, there is a nice bistro to visit. No one tells you to shut your electronic equipment down, and the chance of having access to a power outlet is far greater than on an aeroplane. You get to see more landscapes and places, because you will be passing right through them, rather than thousands of meters up in the air. But perhaps most important of all, the time pocket experience is never as strong as on a train. One reason for this is because the travelling time is usually both longer and less fragmented, but is probably also due to a perceived speed of travelling.
So why do I travel by air at all? Well, I think that Yolande Strengers sums it up quite neatly in her blog post Fly or Die: air travel and the internationalisation of academic careers: “what is at stake is not flying itself, but what it enables: the interacting, collaborating, promoting and collegial ‘work’ that I am able to do when meeting face-to-face with others.” – and how this is rewarded through institutionalized ideas of how to assess excellence when awarding funding or positions. Making an academic career without flying is close to impossible.
But I also believe that one important part of the puzzle is the fact that most people in academia also enjoy ‘having’ to go to exotic destinations, vibrant cities or picturesque European villages to do their job (or work on their careers). If this would not be the case, then why on Earth are so many conferences arranged on Bali? And why else would the location of conferences be so highlighted in promotional materials?
The drivers for academia to continue flying are many, strong and institutionalized. The barriers, on the other hand, typically come down to private concerns over climate change. Just because I work with sustainable development, my moral obligation to cut down on flying does not decrease, but increases. Sustainable development is a matter of learning to prioritize, and that is why you never will see me at Bali.
In a previous post, Libby Robin wrote about aseasonality and the seasonal exceptionalism of Australia and elsewhere. The paradox of turning leaves and blossom jostling on the one branch are a striking reminder that our seasons are awry.
As few of us in the western world are dependent on acute seasonal observations of fruiting, flowering, migrations and so forth for survival, we’re less attuned to the nuances of seasonal change. Could it be that we’re too busy aseasonally tweeting to notice…?
I follow fungi across the globe. My movements between hemispheres coincide with autumn in both. This is when most fungi invest their energy into reproducing – into the formation of the familiar mushrooms and other fruitbodies that burst through the earth in a riot of amazing forms and colours. It means I get a double dose of fungi. But what, or when is autumn? And how have my trans-global movements contributed to the confused fungal fruiting and the instability of our concepts of seasons?
Fungal Futures Image: Alison Pouliot
Libby and other astute observers notice the changed timing of events within the plant and animal kingdoms – the so-called producers and consumers. Less often considered are the recyclers or decomposers – including fungi – and how they too may be affected by climate change.
While the majority of fungi fruit in autumn, some adopt a different strategy, appearing in spring. Morels are among the more familiar spring-fruiters.
However, last spring, popping up among the morels, were mushrooms I’d only previously encountered in autumn. Had the wet and mild winter influenced their aseasonal fruiting or was it a sign of something more worrying? Could their spring presence indicate climate change impacts on a larger scale? Just what is going on down under Downunder?
The past decades have seen a surge of studies documenting phenological responses of flora and fauna to climate change. But few include fungi. Most of this research has been in the middle and higher latitudes. One of the few long-term fungal research projects in the UK revealed fungal fruiting periods are extended in association with increased rainfall and temperature, with many species now fruiting twice a year. While mycophagists may welcome this news, the effects of mycelial activity and greater rates of decay in ecosystems in altering the timing of ecosystem processes is little known. How might climate change affect symbiotic associations between fungi and plants (mycorrhizas) and longer term ecosystem dynamics? Other European studies showed correlations between climatic conditions in one year and the occurrence of fungal fruiting in the following, suggesting that mycelia are influenced by climatic conditions over longer time periods before fruiting. What is also known is that mycorrhizal fungi have a major influence on the global carbon cycle.
Travelling scientists and others partial to coffee may not be too happy to hear about the fungus known as Hemileia vastatrix or coffee rust, which is enjoying climate change-induced weather extremes and consequently devastating central Americas coffee plantations. It has also managed to spread to higher altitudes thanks to warmer weather. Fungi colonise an enormous array of substrates including those manufactured by humans. Some even have a particular taste for airline fuel. The future, especially for travelling scientists, may be more fungal than we think….
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