Sustainability and Inclusion come with a Price Attached, but it is a Price worth Paying
This is a guest post by Miroslav Imbrišević (Allen Hall/London & The Open University)
Doing the right thing isn’t easy; if it were, the world would be a heavenly place. We usually have to overcome our self-interest or our inclination to take the path of least resistance. It requires thinking of others and/or the common good. Surprisingly, the American Philosophical Association (APA) fails in this respect.
In 2021 the group Philosophers for Sustainability launched a campaign, asking the APA, to switch from three in-person conferences per year to two in-person meetings and one virtual meeting. The aim was to reduce the environmental harm of flying to the meetings (more than 1000 people typically attend each conference). In 2022 the three APA divisions ‘agreed to conduct a three-year experiment with a rotating schedule of two in-person divisional meetings and one virtual divisional meeting per year’.
Robert Pasnau, president of the Central Division of the APA, explained: ‘The motivations for going online are in part environmental (…), and in part to provide better access for people who find it difficult or impossible to attend meetings in person.’
But to the astonishment of everyone, the APA pulled the ‘kill switch’. After holding only one virtual conference (the 2025 Central meeting) the APA decided to pull the plug on the experiment, although the second scheduled online meeting in April 2026 will still go ahead. I understand that one of the programme chairs for the 2025 meeting had to withdraw for health reasons, and this had a negative effect on the organisation and planning of the conference. So, the first virtual meeting wouldn’t have been representative for a regular, successful online conference.
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