News: The special session SS33 is cancelled; however, the lunch part of SS33 remains and will be dedicated to a roundtable under the topic: "The future of the EAS meetings"

Unfortunately we had to cancel our special session 33 'Astronomy for Planet Earth: a path to zero emissions'. This is both for practical and ethical reasons.

The practical reason is that we do not have the financial means to organise an interdisciplinary session with top speakers from all around the world and fly them all to Valencia. Also, many of the non-astronomy speakers whom we would like to invite would not want to fly to Valencia just for joining our session.

The ethical reasons are manifold: we are in the middle of a climate crisis, we are still in an ongoing global pandemic and now there is also a terrible war in Europe, financed by fossil fuels. Under these circumstances we simply cannot agree to force participants to be present in Valencia to discuss a sustainable future for astronomy. In addition, many of our possible participants would not be able to take part in our session as they cannot travel to Valencia for various reasons, such as mobility or financial constraints, caring duties, carbon footprint or health (e.g. Covid) concerns.

We are keeping the lunch session on Friday, however, and will use it for an extended discussion about the future of the EAS annual meeting.

Programme

• Roundtable on The future of the EAS meetings

Invited speakers

• Holly Andrews (Diversity and inclusion, S34)
• Corentin Cadiou (Environmental Sustainability, SS33)
• Anniek Gloudemans (Early Career Astronomers, SS31)
• Lex Kaper (EAS Council)
• Charles Takalana (the Africa-EU collaboration, SS38)
• Michelle Willebrands (Astronomy for development, SS37)
• Annie Hughes (moderator)

Scientific organisers

Annie Hughes (co-chair), Lola Balaguer-Núñez (co-chair), Didier Barret, Leonard Burtscher, Hannah Dalgleish, Abigail Frost, Victoria Grinberg, Andrea Gokus, Agnieszka Janiuk, Robert Massey, Beatriz Mingo, Volker Ossenkopf-Okada, Elena Sacchi, Kshitij Thorat, Paul Woods

Contact

Lola Balaguer-Núñez lbalaguer @ fqa.ub.edu