Petition is addressed to:
Committee members of ESCOM and ICMPC
The biggest 2027 conference in music perception and cognition will be a combination of the triennial ESCOM conference and the biennial ICMPC. It will attract hundreds of colleagues from all over the world.
The ESCOM committee recently considered the option of a single-location conference with additional remote presentations. We reject this proposal. While remote presentations are a helpful step, they do not address the core structural issue.
It is no longer OK to invite or encourage hundreds of colleagues to fly across the world to a conference, each emitting in a few days the amount that an average human emits in a year. Nor is it ok to exclude colleagues from the Global South or students who cannot afford roughly 2000 Euros for registration, flight, and accommodation. Young researchers should not be expected to rely on high-carbon travel to advance their careers. Colleagues from the Global South should not be treated as second-class participants.
To our knowledge, the two most promising solutions are fully virtual and multi-hub conferences (cf. internal ESCOM and ICMPC guidelines). We call on the ESCOM and ICMPC committees to implement one of these options.
Abbreviations:
ESCOM = European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music
ICMPC = International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition
Reason
The negative effects of global warming (e.g., droughts, floods, fires, heat waves, extreme weather) are gradually worsening, exacerbating disease, hunger, migration, and conflict. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor is widening; the Global South is suffering more than the North. The most affected regions are gradually becoming uninhabitable. Political and corporate responses are inadequate.
Academics in all disciplines have a special responsibility, given our ability to evaluate academic work across disciplines. Apart from contributing academic content, we must urgently reduce our own emissions. Aviation represents more than half of the global warming impact of a typical university, if the radiative forcing index for aviation (roughly 2.7) is considered and all business and private flights of staff and students are included. Single-location conferences may contradict the climate policies or equity goals of our academic societies, universities, or countries.
Our principled position on this issue goes beyond the next conference, drawing academic attention to issues of human responsibility and survival.
When signing, please:
- include your affiliation under address,
- briefly explain why you are signing (qualitative data!), and
- at the end, check your name appears under “signers”.
We need signatures that are verifiably from the music perception and cognition community, so ensure your signature is public. Note that changes to your entries are possible even after signing.
