On Carbon Offsets: Treat the World Like an Apneic Baby – Give it a Breath!

Galaxy Li MD, Richard Hubbard MD, and Justin L. Lockman MD, MSEd

A steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) has led to climate change, and world leaders have set carbon neutrality goals to prevent severe and catastrophic global consequences.¹ To be clear, we are not going to delve into the politics surrounding climate change in 2023. For those of you who would like to know what you can do to help, we offer this PAAD as a brief overview of the role of carbon offsets. 

Original article

Gattrell WT, Barraux A, Comley S, Whaley M, Lander N. The Carbon Costs of In-Person Versus Virtual Medical Conferences for the Pharmaceutical Industry: Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic. Pharmaceut Med. 2022 Apr;36(2):131-142. PMID: 35218551

First, medical conferences are paramount to advancing the world of pediatric anesthesiology (and all medical specialties), and we believe that the collaborative education that occurs during Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA) meetings helps children get better care.  Moreover, we have learned during the past few years of COVID-19 the value of seeing each other in person for professional networking and prevention of burnout.  We hope you’ll agree that we can’t see a future world without live in-person SPA meetings in it!

Yet, we have to acknowledge that in-person meetings are associated with a substantial carbon footprint, largely due to travel-related emissions.^2,3  A 2003 letter published in Nature, “Virtual solution to carbon costs of conferences,” proposed to design virtual meetings ‘more like real ones, without the flights.’ But necessity breeds invention, and these ideas were largely ignored until nearly two decades later when the coronavirus pandemic prompted more awareness when CO₂ emissions temporarily declined during government-led lockdowns.³  

We did the best we could under the circumstances! In 2021, the SPA, Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine (SPPM), and Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society (CCAS) held virtual conferences in place of traditional in-person meetings, breaking historical attendance records with only a fraction of the carbon footprint.  In November 2022, a separate virtual conference, SPPM Global, launched, featuring international speakers – including a keynote address on sustainability in anesthesia and attendees from over 25 countries.  And as conferences opened up again and we all began excitedly seeing each other, some of us also realized for the first time that our meetings have serious environmental impacts. 

Last year, SPA, SPPM, and CCAS added options to purchase carbon offsets when registering for meetings.

But what exactly are carbon offsets, and what is their role in this context? Carbon offsets are investments in carbon-reducing activities (such as renewable energy investments and methane digester projects) that are intended to balance out carbon-emitting activities such as our medical conferences.  The overall goal is that the activity therefore becomes “carbon-neutral.”  In a karmic sense, the negative deed of polluting is being "offset” by the positive deed of supporting environmental projects.  There is a whole marketplace for these programs, with organizations set up to channel funds to worthwhile programs.

This system can be attractive for medical conferences, as many of the most environmentally-damaging aspects of these meetings (such as air and ground travel) do not have clear alternatives.  While we applaud the efforts of Greta Thunberg, who famously walked and sailed across the ocean to avoid using airplanes at all, we suspect most of you don’t have that kind of time! 

Some conferences have asked participants to pay an offset charge as a mandatory part of their overall conference fee, or by using an “opt-out” or “opt-in” charging system.^4,5  Funds derived from these fees are then donated to environmental health projects, bringing the conferences closer to carbon-neutrality.

Without any formal marketing/publicizing of the change, the 2022 SPA carbon offset program resulted initially in 11% of in-person registrants opting-in – to offset the carbon produced from a round trip flight to Tampa.  For the 2023 annual conference in Austin, TX, 7.4% of in-person SPA conference attendees elected to purchase carbon offsets.  While we are disappointed by this decline in participation, we are also thrilled that so many participated after such a “soft opening” without any advertising.  We hope you’ll strongly consider paying a bit extra to offset air-travel carbon generation the next time you plan for an in-person conference!

To be fair, although logically sound and relatively simple to implement, carbon offsets for conferences are not without controversy.  Some have claimed that while environmental programs funded by carbon offsets are a good thing, it is nearly impossible to prove that such projects have an impact that actually matches the harm incurred.^5.  The only certainty is that the carbon-emitting activity has happened – and the damage done.  There may also be skepticism on the part of conference participants as to whether their contributions are going to legitimate, well-vetted projects (SPA partnered with TerraPass after investigating different organizations).  Finally, a reasonable argument can be made as to why participants are incurring these costs when the actual polluters are the corporations providing the services, such as airlines, car rental companies, and hotels. We don’t disagree, but we won’t let that stop us from doing what we can!  Flying one person for up to 2000 miles (1000 pounds of carbon offset) costs only $8, and you can do it by checking the box on your registration for this and all future meetings. 

            For those unable to travel for any number of reasons, virtual options will remain in place for SPA meetings for the foreseeable future and we encourage you to use them.  But please consider paying for carbon offsets when you do attend in-person meetings, including SPA, SPPM, CCAS, and others.  TerraPass is also an option to cover carbon offsets for personal travel, commuting, etc. And for those of you interested in contributing to Greening our Meetings via carbon offsets and other interventions, please consider joining our SPA Sustainability Interest Group, led by Dr. Diane Gordon.

References

1.     Climate Change - United Nations Sustainable Development

2.     Leddin D, Galts C, McRobert E, Igoe J, Singh H, Sinclair P. The Carbon Cost of Travel to a Medical Conference: Modelling the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology. J Can Assoc Gastroenterol. 2021 Jul 29;5(2):52-58. doi: 10.1093/jcag/gwab021. PMID: 35368317; PMCID: PMC8972243.

3.     Gattrell WT, Barraux A, Comley S, Whaley M, Lander N. The Carbon Costs of In-Person Versus Virtual Medical Conferences for the Pharmaceutical Industry: Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic. Pharmaceut Med. 2022 Apr;36(2):131-142. doi: 10.1007/s40290-022-00421-3. Epub 2022 Feb 26. PMID: 35218551; PMCID: PMC8881751.

4.     Reay DS. Virtual solution to carbon cost of conferences. Nature. 2003 Jul 17;424(6946):251. doi: 10.1038/424251a. PMID: 12867953.Zotova O, Petrin-Desrosiers C, Gopfert A, Van Hove, M. Carbon-neutral medical conferences should be the norm. Lancet Planetary Health, 2020; 4(2): E48-50.

5.     Anderson K. The inconvenient truth of carbon offsets. 2012; 7: 484.