<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/climate-researcher-who-refused-to-fly-back-from-research-trip-is-sacked>
"A climate researcher who refused to comply with his employer’s demand to fly
at short notice back to Germany from Bougainville, off the coast of Papua New
Guinea, says he has been fired from his job.
Gianluca Grimalda is still waiting in Bougainville for a cargo ship, set to
depart on Saturday, to begin his return journey to Europe, after six months
investigating the impacts of climate breakdown and globalisation on the
island’s inhabitants.
Grimalda, who has avoided flying for more than a decade, said he had promised
the people he met during his field work – some of whom had been displaced by
rising waters – he would minimise his carbon emissions on his return journey.
But he faced a dilemma two weeks ago when his bosses at the Kiel Institute for
Worldwide Economy (IfW) gave him a deadline to return to his desk that meant he
had to travel by air, or face losing his job. He refused and on Wednesday, he
said they informed him his contract had been terminated.
“IfW seems to ignore that we have entered the Anthropocene era and that the
most important Earth ecosystems are close to collapse, if not already
collapsed,” Grimalda said.
“In this era, wasting 4.5 tonnes of CO2 (the difference between the flight
emissions and the slow-travel emissions) to comply with the absurd request to
be physically present in Kiel at such short notice is morally unacceptable and
epitomises the ultimate privilege of the global elites.
“It is the sign that IfW is still living in an era that will be wiped out by
the incoming climate collapses.”
Writing in the
Guardian’s opinion section on Thursday, Grimalda said the
carbon that would be emitted by his one-way flight to Europe from Solomon
Islands archipelago is more than the average person living there uses in an
entire year."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
