San Francisco eye care meeting associated with higher greenhouse gas emissions
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- In-person meetings are associated with high greenhouse gas emissions, primarily due to air travel.
- Mitigation strategies to minimize transportation-related emissions should be considered.
A study evaluated the carbon footprint associated with in-person and virtual meetings of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and suggested strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future.
“Medical conferences are a substantial source of greenhouse gas emissions in the health care sector and are an appealing target for reductions,” the authors wrote.
Image: Adobe Stock
The carbon footprint of the in-person annual meeting held in 2019 in San Francisco was estimated based on attendees’ transportation, attendees’ accommodation and venue-based emission. The total carbon footprint of the meeting was estimated at 39,910 metric tons of CO2 (1.73 metric tons of CO2 per capita), with transportation accounting for 97.7% of emissions. Of the 23,125 attendees, 20,778 were assumed to use air travel, accounting for 99.8% of transportation-related emissions.
“The carbon intensiveness of the meeting may be due to the large proportion of international attendees and a location that necessitates long flights for many participants,” the authors wrote.
In contrast, the carbon footprint of the 2020 virtual meeting was 38.6 metric tons of CO2 (0.003 metric tons of CO2 per capita), mostly associated with computer emissions (86.3%), followed by network-related emissions and server-related emissions. There were 11,914 attendees at the virtual meeting; if the number of attendees of the virtual meeting had been the same number as the in-person meeting, the footprint would have been 74.9 metric tons of CO2.
Among the locations in which the AAO meeting has been held, San Francisco turned out to be the least ideal in terms of carbon emissions related to transportation. Simulations showed that the best location would be Chicago, achieving a maximal reduction in aggregate travel distance. Other simulations showed that holding the meeting in two or three regional locations would allow a 34% to 38% reduction of transportation-related emissions.
Ophthalmic conferences are key in advancing vision science and eye health, but their impact on climate change might contribute to the global increase in ocular pathologies and ocular trauma related to natural disasters and geopolitical conflicts, the authors said. This study highlights the need for carbon footprint mitigation strategies.
“The findings from this study suggest that increasing the proportion of virtual participants, holding the meeting in locations chosen to minimize transportation-related emissions, or offering multiple regional meeting locations might reduce the carbon footprint of future meetings,” the authors wrote.
Editor's note: The headline for this article was updated on September 7, 2023, to better reflect the findings of the study.
Perspective
Back to Top
Because climate change is so perilous to global public health, it is appropriate that physicians lead by example in our collective responsibility to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. It is also informative to quantify how even our scientific meetings have a significant carbon footprint.
ESCRS, under Oliver Findl’s presidency, has been a leader in making conferences more sustainable. But rather than reducing meeting attendance, by far the greatest environmental impact we can all have is to reduce our large-scale surgical waste. Sponsored by ESCRS, ASCRS and AAO, EyeSustain.org has important information and resources about how to do this, including a simple, 7-point pledge that every ophthalmology department and surgical facility should take.
Collapse
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts