When I realized research activity is not neutral — it has an environmental cost that Earth inhabitants (human and non-human) have to pay — I gradually reduced the number of trips. With colleagues we also started to raise the topic, and we tried to estimate the carbon footprint of our lab — it is quite impressive! We think every research institution should publish its carbon footprint due to travel, but also to computing and the use of other infrastructures, to heating and cooling the buildings etc…
We have to ask ourselves, what is the use of all the knowledge we are accumulating if we are not able to save life on Earth? If there is nobody left on Earth to have any interest in our great discoveries in a few decades, what is the meaning of it all?
I work in astrophysics on the study of distant galaxies.