Thread by @ewanbirney

After a great workshop in Paris (and hopefully, testing being ok, I will be returning next week) I've been thinking about my travel in the new normal, thinking about green (lowering carbon)

This has been informed by conversations with colleagues such as @embl's green officer, @BrenRouseHD, faculty colleagues such as @Alexbateman1, @PaulFlicek and Deltev Arendt (many thanks); these are currently my thoughts on this (insight from colleagues; missteps from me!)

First off pre-pandmic science travel was useful but often mad; flying for single meetings (sometimes in windowless rooms) with fast turn arounds. Not only was it carbon expensive but it was also bad for family life and just plain health.

Contrasted to that physical meeting and un-agenda'd conversations (side chats over coffee, open-ended discussions during dinner) are hard to impossible to recreate virtually, in particular for people who don't know each other well.

Virtual meetings do work well for agenda'd items, for exchange of ideas. @embl was avid user of video conferencing for some things pre-pandemic (eg, student TACs) but we've taken this to a whole new level and it is an important tool for intra and inter institutional communication

So - Goals for travel: travel for the right reasons; good. Travel for stupid reasons; bad. When travel make sure you do the things you can't do online (means: unagenda conversations are good, trust building). Minimise carbon released during travel, get a good work-life balance.

What does this map to for me? Here is my starting point.

1. note travel and review each 6 months to a year how well this plan is working. Ideally make an explicit note of the number of trips, time away from home and carbon released due to travel.

2. Plan and consolidate travel better, going to see multiple people / institutes in a single trip, chaining together visits (fewer, longer trips). This means thinking about a rough list of places to visit over a year and thinking about how one coordinates this.

3. The travel should always aim to do the things you can't do virtually; book coffee meetings, dinners, be varied.

4. Wherever possible take trains. For all journeys <4 hours (for me; UK, Belgium, much of France + Netherlands) go by train. For >4 to <7hour train, seriously consider this, either using night trains (even longer, but your are sleeping), or breaks, or just the complex trip.

4a A little side note. Frustratingly there are not direct Frankfurt to London to trains (my most common travel is London where I live to Heidelberg, near Mannheim/Frankfurt). Wherever possible I will do the "night in Paris by Gare D'Est" approach, or the full day's travel >>

... I will continue to pray for direct trains London <=> Frankfurt and/or some smooth change overs (eg, Lille <=> Mannheim obviously would be brilliant for me. A bit of a niche route; there is a Lille <=> Strasbourg train but it is often not at the right time).

5. I will use trains where possible on internal movements to lengthen my journey and will aim to "zoom back" to work to make chained trips work for work. Where sensible I will dovetail seeing family friends with my family in with these trips.

6. I do expect to fly but for there to be less flights due to this plan, and the (eventually, once the pandemic is new normal everywhere) intercontinental flights I expect to be 3 or 4 institions in one trip (I already did this Japan and West Coast; I will now do this East Coast)

7. Use responsible offsetting on carbon released (advice from @BrenRouseHD), but don't pretend this is a solution to the carbon released problem by travel. Have this mindset be part of @embl's green plan.