Gianluca Grimalda, a climate researcher has reportedly lost his job after he refused to comply with his employer’s demand to fly at short notice back to Germany from Bougainville, off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
Available reports show that Grimalda is still waiting in Bougainville for a cargo ship, set to depart on Saturday, to begin his return journey to Europe, after six months investigating the impacts of climate breakdown and globalisation on the island’s inhabitants.
Grimalda, who has reportedly avoided flying for more than a decade, said that he had promised the people he met during his field work – some of whom had been displaced by rising waters – that he would minimise his carbon emissions on his return journey.
But he faced what has been described as a dilemma two weeks ago when his bosses at the Kiel Institute for Worldwide Economy (IfW) gave him a deadline to return to his desk that meant he had to travel by air, or face losing his job. He refused and on Wednesday, he said they informed him his contract had been terminated.
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“IfW seems to ignore that we have entered the Anthropocene era and that the most important Earth ecosystems are close to collapse, if not already collapsed,” Grimalda said. “In this era, wasting 4.5 tonnes of CO2 (the difference between the flight emissions and the slow-travel emissions) to comply with the absurd request to be physically present in Kiel at such short notice is morally unacceptable and epitomises the ultimate privilege of the global elites,”.
Speaking further, he said “It is the sign that IfW is still living in an era that will be wiped out by the incoming climate collapses.”
Expressing his opinion in the Guardian on Thursday, Grimalda said that the carbon that would be emitted by his one-way flight to Europe from Solomon Islands archipelago is more than the average person living there uses in an entire year.
The expert said that he intended to appeal against the IfW’s decision to sack him, and said he had asked for the help of his trade union. But, he added: “In this case, the initial impression is that IfW actions are justified legally.”
A spokesperson for IfW said that it stood by its policy of not discussing or commenting on staff issues in public.
“In general, the institute encourages and supports its staff to travel climate-friendly,” the spokesperson said. “We are committed to do without air travel in Germany and in other EU countries as far as we can. When flights are unavoidable, we pay to Atmosfair to offset flight emissions through climate protection projects,”.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
