Her career is taking off, even as she limits flying to events

Angelica Lim, a computing science professor, limits her flights.

Angelica Lim used to fly more than a dozen times a year, jetting to various tech conferences to speak about her work creating interactive robots.

That was before she calculated her carbon footprint in 2017 and found her airplane travel was pushing her well beyond her personal emissions goal.

“I was burning my entire carbon budget in one or two round-trips,” says Lim, an assistant professor in computing science at Simon Fraser University.

Like many people worried about the climate crisis, Lim aims for a sustainable carbon footprint — about two or three tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.

“When I was flying, I was 10 times over the limit. That really opened my eyes. Now I stop and think first before saying yes to flying.”

As a respected roboticist, Lim gets asked to dozens of talks each year. Now, she will often give a virtual presentation, network with professionals remotely or pass on the invitation to other experts in her field who live closer to the event.

Last year, Lim avoided travelling to Europe and Asia for academic opportunities, although she did fly to Chicago, Denver and California, a trio of trips that were important for her work.

Since 2017, Lim says her flying choices have saved between 10 and 20 tonnes of emissions. And, she adds, being picky about flying so far hasn’t hurt her career, a claim that seems to be backed up by a small 2019 Canadian study that found, among other things, no relationship between air travel emissions and measures of academic productivity. Lim is among a growing number of academics, many of whom study earth science and climate issues, who publicly state their intentional choice to avoid air travel to limit their carbon footprints.

“We all want to do something for the climate,” says Lim, adding she and her husband now holiday close to their Vancouver home, rather than flying to exotic locations. “When I sorted all the actions I could make to have the biggest impact, it was clear that one flight blew out of the water anything I was doing at home.”