Webinar with Jürgen Knödlseder (CNRS, Toulouse, France)

The Environmental Sustainability of Space Sciences

Human activities have become a dominant force of terrestrial transformations, inducing a clearly observable change of the climate, ubiquitous pollutions of air, soil and water, and an unprecedented decrease of the living. Faced with this situation, the assessment of the environmental footprint of human activities becomes a key instrument to inform sustainability action plans and roadmaps. In this webinar the speaker summarises the current knowledge on the environmental footprint of Space Sciences, explaining its origins and impacts. A particular focus will be placed on the carbon footprint of astronomical research, for which detailed estimates are becoming available. Forecasts for the evolution of the field will be discussed and confronted with the imperative to drastically reduce green house gas emissions over the coming decades. The speaker demonstrates that profound changes are required for making Space Sciences environmentally sustainable.