Towards just geographies of academic mobilities

Just geographies of academic mobilities recognize the complicity of some forms of academic work with fossil fuel extraction and combustion. The necessity for academics to be mobile is entrenched through disciplinary norms and social values, as well as academic structures characterized by precarious work contracts and policies of internationalization, and is often reliant on highly polluting air transport. In the absence of climate-compatible techno-solutions enabling business-as-usual aeromobilities, we – the aeromobile publics – need to rethink our practices. These practices, and their unjust impacts, are incongruent with critical geographical scholarship. In this paper I begin to theorize just geographies of academic mobilities in the climate crisis. I do so by engaging with feminist climate justice, just mobilities and radical mobilities to consider the inequities within and beyond academic mobilities. I signal the ways that academic mobilities relate to broader patterns of education, labor market practices, and economic models, and how these together reinforce the discursive and lived power of the mobile academic work/life. I suggest that a starting point for just geographies of academic mobilities should be redressing asymmetries in geographies of knowledge production and signal 7 initial actions with the potential to initiate more just forms of climate changed academic mobilities

The expected speed and impacts of vehicle automation in passenger and freight transport: a Dissensus Delphi study among UK professionals

Vehicle automation is one of the most researched topics in transport studies but much remains uncertain about the speed of adoption and potential impacts, including if and how it can contribute to greater environmental sustainability. This study adopts a Delphi approach to examine the speed with which 15% of new vehicles will be automated (SAE-3, SAE-4 or SAE-5) and what impacts automation may have on motility, mobility, resource use and externalities in both passenger and freight transport. Although challenges with recruitment mean that all findings must be caveated and seen as exploratory, the analysis demonstrates considerable dissensus regarding the expected speed and impacts of vehicle automation in both passenger and freight transport among the participants. For both aspects, a diversity of views remains once participants were informed about the expectations of other panellists. The range of views is organised around the axes of optimism and certainty about what may happen. Considerable differences between passenger and freight transport can be identified for potential impacts of vehicle automation but not for speed of adoption

Sociotechnical expectations of vehicle automation in the UK trucking sector

Expectations about emerging innovations are an important part of innovation pathways that can help to overcome uncertainties and build hype. Such sociotechnical expectations have been studied extensively by social scientists but the focus is often on collective, widely shared expectations and much less on individuals’ specific expectations. Examining the latter can nonetheless aid understanding of the development of, buy-in into and power dynamics around collective sociotechnical expectations. This paper therefore examines individually articulated expectations about vehicle automation in trucking in the UK. It draws on 61 in-depth interviews with freight transport actors, including truck drivers, freight company management, industry representatives, and government departments. It demonstrates alignment of individual expectations on some aspects of vehicle automation, including the difficulty of expression them in terms of chronological (calendar) time and the belief that automation will be quicker and easier on motorways than on other kinds of road. Multiple differences in expectations are identified, in particular regarding the practical feasibility of truck platooning and the role of truck drivers. In all cases, it is clear that individual expectations are shaped strongly by people’s current and past professional experience and practices and how these have been affected by wider technological and organisational changes in the freight and logistics sector

Aeromasculinities and the fallacy of sustainable aviation

Despite growing recognition of the material impacts of fossil fuel extraction and use, many economic sectors remain highly dependent on these fuels. Amid growing pressure to - at a minimum - appear to be doing something, businesses increasingly communicate the actions they (seek to) take to reduce their environmental impacts. Oftentimes they aim to build a sense of compatible coexistence of the sector with particular modes of sustainability. For air transport, ‘sustainable aviation’ has emerged as a container term for a suite of actions proposed by sectoral actors in seeking to align the sector with social and environmental sustainability. This paper critically interrogates ‘sustainable aviation’ through an analysis of the websites and reports of 14 international and regional airlines. Our analysis reveals the multiple and diverse ways that dominant logics (1) underpin the status quo, (2) depend on ‘the science’, (3) support techno-organisational changes and (4) prioritise sectoral growth. By recognising the gendered nature of environmentalism, we suggest that ‘sustainable aviation’ can be viewed as an active enactment of aeromasculinities – a gendered system of thinking, being and doing which forecloses radical action and change required for a climate-safe and just energy future

Introduction: new directions in energy demand research

Meeting the goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement and limiting global temperature increases to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels demands rapid reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing energy demand has a central role in achieving this goal, but existing policy initiatives have been largely incremental in terms of the technological and behavioural changes they encourage. Against this background, this book develops a sociotechnical approach to the challenge of reducing energy demand and illustrates this with a number of empirical case studies from the United Kingdom. In doing so, it explores the emergence, diffusion and impact of low-energy innovations. This chapter introduces the main themes of the book, including explorations of the processes and mechanisms through which different types of innovations become (or fail to become) established, the identification of the role of different groups, assessments of the resulting impacts on energy demand and other social goals, and the development of recommendations for both encouraging the diffusion of such innovations and maximising their long-term impact

Urban Freight Research (1972-2014)

The transportation sector is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and consequently, anthropogenic climate change. Transitioning to low-carbon policies, technologies and behaviours could provide opportunities for emissions reductions. Yet to date, there is little evidence of a meaningful and systemic low-carbon transport transition. Moreover, while there is some evidence of fossil fuel intensive private transport ‘peaking’, freight movements are growing. The urban freight industry in particular has undergone rapid transformation as social practices alter in the wake of information communication technologies and the Internet. Simultaneously, academic interest in urban freight delivery has grown. This paper represents the first attempt to take stock of this burgeoning literature, to sketch out the landscape, and to illuminate research gaps and priorities going forward. It presents the results of a quantitative systematic review of urban freight literature (n=265, 1972-2014), and a qualitative thematic review of a sub-sample of the literature (n=35) that were determined to have a sustainability focus. The paper reports on descriptive characteristics of the field, including the growth and direction of research, geographic focus and research themes. Findings are discussed in light of the need for radical GHG emissions reductions, and the contribution that urban freight research can make to this end

Imagining post-fossil tourism mobilities with Norwegian tourists

Sustainable mobility has become a catch-all term to describe forms, modes, policies and practices of mobility that are thought to have a lower environmental footprint and/or fewer social exclusions than the contemporary mobility system which is reliant on fossil fuels and private ownership. As a result, its main application has been in urban mobility contexts, often focused on everyday commuting journeys. In this paper we re-visit sustainable mobilities through the lens of tourism sustainabilities, a concept that opens space for multiple, contingent operations of sustainability for tourism mobilities. We draw empirically from qualitative interviews with 26 residents from Oslo (Norway) undertaken in 2020 to answer two questions: (1) How are tourism sustainabilities imagined and enacted by residents of the Oslo region, Norway, and (2) What (re)imaginings of tourism sustainabilities are made possible? Attentive to the sociomaterial nature of tourism sustainabilities and drawing from critical sustainabilities scholarship, we present three enactments of tourism mobilities: Forming sustainabilities; Fragmenting sustainabilities; Fracturing sustainabilities, and three (re)imaginings: Stripped Back; Having a Go; Stuck in the Mud. The social geographies of tourism mobilities are made visible, and these open space for an expansive reading of sustainable mobilities which may enable deeper understandings of the possibilities for alternative forms of mobility in a climate constrained world