I love my job, but the endless travel drives me crazy. Charlotte, San Francisco, New York and Washington are just a few of the cites I've flown to this summer. More often than not, the trips have included mind numbing airport delays caused by thunderstorms, power outages, presidential visits and who knows what else. And I am not alone in my travel testiness. Flight delays have reached record highs this year and they are expected to only worsen as more passengers fly in the coming years.
Sometimes I feel like my office is Terminal B at LaGuardia; on others I feel like a hostage imprisoned on Runway C.
My point is that there's got to be a better way to get our work done -- not just for the sake of our collective sanity, but for the preservation of our stable climate: air travel is among the fastest growing sources of global warming pollution. It currently accounts for 2-3 percent of total greenhouse emissions in the US and this number is likely to increase rapidly, as the number of flights in the US is expected to double or triple in the next 20 years.
I have to admit that my organization, CERES, is part of the problem. I just reviewed our sustainability report, and air-related travel by our staff doubled last year to more than 475,000 miles. Just this week, three of us flew back and forth to New York for a 90 minute meeting with a company and a key investor. The meeting was important, but it also ate up 20 hours of precious staff time. The flights themselves accounted for 238 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.
To be fair, some of our travel can be attributed to holding our annual conference in Oakland instead of hometown Boston. And some of it speaks to the increased recognition of our mission: we're growing as an organization and my staff is getting lots of speaking invitations. Still, 475,000 air miles a year is unacceptable and we've got to do better.
We could buy carbon credits, of course, but why not cut to the chase and replace unnecessary flying with conference calls or, better yet, videoconferences -- which would allow us to meet face to face without being fact to face? Last month, several of our investor allies flew from California to attend an all-day planning meeting in New York. Couldn't that meeting have been accomplished by using the most basic videoconferencing technology?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that videoconferencing can save companies and NGOs lots of money by reducing travel costs and boosting employee efficiency. Microsoft says it is already saving $50 million a year by deploying its "Office Live Meeting" conference service. State Street Corp. has invested $4 million in video and audio conferencing equipment in the last year alone.
I'd like to take advantage of all this for CERES. But being a bit of a Luddite, I'm looking for a bit of help here. What resources are out there to help non-profits take advantage of the time, financial and emissions savings that videoconferencing would enable us to achieve?
Mindy S. Lubber is president of Ceres, a leading network of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.
