BMJ  2006;333:1256 (16 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39050.686111.DE

Filler

Another inconvenient truth?

¹ Department of Medicine, Otago University, Wellington, New Zealand.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Al Gore flew into New Zealand for half a day this week amid protests that he should have come by bicycle or, at the very least, by train. But it did make me think—which, after all, is the point.

I recently attended the European Respiratory Society's 16th annual congress in Munich, along with 17 239 others. I travelled further than most, and it cost 3700 kg of CO₂ just for me. Thankfully, then, fewer than 5% of attendees at the Munich meeting were from my part of the world. But what of the carbon costs of the meeting? Using the statistics from the society's website, one can determine the country of origin of most attendees. Assuming 170 g of CO₂ per km travelled for plane passengers (140 g/km for those who drove, and only 52 g/km for train passengers), the total carbon footprint for the travel is 3.92x10⁶ . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Are international medical conferences an outdated luxury the planet can’t afford? Yes

Malcolm Green
BMJ 2008 336: 1466. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Reducing the carbon footprint of medical conferences

Ian Roberts and Fiona Godlee
BMJ 2007 334: 324-325. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Green, M. (2008). Are international medical conferences an outdated luxury the planet can't afford? Yes. BMJ 336: 1466-1466 [Full text]  
• Roberts, I., Godlee, F. (2007). Reducing the carbon footprint of medical conferences. BMJ 334: 324-325 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

100,000,000 Inconvenient Truths

Andrew Montgomery
bmj.com, 15 Dec 2006 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more >>