Related papers: Climate Change Task Force Report for the American …
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, requiring rapid action across society. As artificial intelligence tools (AI) are rapidly deployed, it is therefore crucial to understand how they will impact climate action.…
The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society took place in Lyon, France, in 2019, but in 2020 it was held online only due the COVID-19 pandemic. The carbon footprint of the virtual meeting was roughly 3,000 times smaller than the…
Climate change, which is now considered one of the biggest threats to humanity, is also the reason behind various other environmental concerns. Continued negligence might lead us to an irreparably damaged environment. After the partial…
The climate emergency increasingly threatens our communities, ecosystems, food production, health, and economy. It disproportionately impacts lower income communities, communities of color, and the elderly. Assessments since the 2018 IPCC…
Research infrastructures have been identified as an important source of greenhouse gas emissions of astronomical research. Based on a comprehensive inventory of 1,211 ground-based observatories and space missions, we assessed the evolution…
Conference attendance is fundamental for a successful career in astronomy. However, many factors limit such attendance in ways that can disproportionately affect women and minorities more. In this white paper, we present the results of a…
Meetings such as ADASS demonstrate that there is an enthusiasm for communication within the astronomical software community. However, the amount of information and experience that can flow around in the course of one, relatively short,…
In response to the need for the Astro2020 Decadal Survey to explicitly engage early career astronomers, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the Early Career Astronomer and Astrophysicist Focus Session (ECFS)…
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is one of several organizations that have presented goals for future CO2 emissions from commercial aviation with the intent of alleviating the associated environmental impacts. These goals…
The US professional astronomy and astrophysics fields are not representative of the diversity of people in the nation. For example, 2017 AIP reports show that in 2014, women made up only about 20 percent of the faculty in astronomy and…
Human activities degrade the Earth environment at an unprecedented scale and pace, threatening Earth-system stability, resilience and life-support functions. We can of course deny the facts, get angry about them, or try to bargain. Or we…
We live in a world that is experiencing an unprecedented boom of AI applications that increasingly penetrate and enhance all sectors of private and public life, from education, media, medicine, and mobility to the industrial and…
The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) is calling on federal science funding agencies, in their role as the largest sources of funding for astronomy in the United States, to take actions that will advance career…
Travel to academic conferences -- where international flights are the norm -- is responsible for a sizeable fraction of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with academic work. In order to provide a benchmark for comparison with…
Eight years after the ADS first appeared the last decadal survey wrote: "NASA's initiative for the Astrophysics Data System has vastly increased the accessibility of the scientific literature for astronomers. NASA deserves credit for this…
Human activity continues to have an enormous negative impact on the ability of the planet to sustain human and other forms of life. Six out of the nine planetary boundaries have been crossed, a seventh is close to threshold. Prominent…
The pursuit of particle physics requires a stable and prosperous society. Today, our society is increasingly threatened by global climate change. Human-influenced climate change has already impacted weather patterns, and global warming will…
About one fifth of Ph.D's across all STEM disciplines secure a tenure track position in academia. It is also the case that science and engineering have evolved significantly and so has the nature of the labor market and the increasingly…
In this document we summarize the results of a survey of undergraduate degree-granting programs conducted by the 2024-2025 American Astronomical Society Education Committee's Subcommittee on UndeRgraduate and Graduate Education (SURGE).…
We estimate the carbon footprint of astronomical research infrastructures, including space telescopes and probes and ground-based observatories. Our analysis suggests annual greenhouse gas emissions of $1.2\pm0.2$ MtCO$_2$e yr$^{-1}$ due to…