"This is a wakeup call for the scientific community and society at large," said APS Chief External Affairs Officer Francis Slakey. "As the UN climate change conference concludes this week, APS continues to do its part to combat climate change."
In 2017, APS became the first US scientific society to broadly assess and then publish an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the Society has worked diligently to understand the sources of emissions from its daily operations and how to reduce them. By calculating the carbon footprint of its scientific meetings, for example, APS is now making emissions-informed decisions about future meeting locations.
In the political realm, the APS Office of Government Affairs recently ran a grassroots campaign that helped overturn the Trump Administration's rollback of regulations on emissions of methane-;the primary component of natural gas with more than 25 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide. APS members are also collaborating on a campaign to counter misinformation on scientific issues such as climate change.
APS now employs a primarily remote workforce, which is expected to reduce emissions from employee commuting.
"These are steps we can take to address what is arguably the most complex, urgent, and consequential scientific and technological challenge of our time," said APS CEO Jonathan Bagger. "The impact of human activities on the climate system is continuing to grow, and actions we take over the next few decades will reverberate for centuries."
The 2021 Statement on Earth's Changing Climate can be found online at: https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/21_4.cfm