#MoveTheDate
0.8
Days
Replacing 75% of global business travel with video conferencing would move Earth Overshoot Day by 0.8 days.
What is the solution?
Replacing the need for business travel with video conferencing.
This solution improves our resource security in the energy category.
How does it #MoveTheDate?
Between 25 and 30% of air travel is for business purposes. Additionally, business travel requires hotels and local transportation, both of which are resource intensive.
How is it scalable?
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that many businesses can substitute in-person communication with video conferencing. As air-travel resumes, the goal could be to prevent business travel from returning to pre-pandemic levels.
What is the solution?
Replacing the need for business travel with video conferencing.
This solution improves our resource security in the energy category.
How does it #MoveTheDate?
Between 25 and 30% of air travel is for business purposes. Additionally, business travel requires hotels and local transportation, both of which are resource intensive.
How is it scalable?
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that many businesses can substitute in-person communication with video conferencing. As air-travel resumes, the goal could be to prevent business travel from returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Video conferencing is on the rise, contributing to a two- to three-fold increase in internet traffic, compared to years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Video conferencing is shifting the work landscape. Running the internet also requires resources.
However, participating in video conferences is far less resource intensive than traveling on planes to distant places for meetings.
Video conferencing was accelerated not just by choice, but as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns. As a result, airplane passenger numbers dropped by 60 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization.
While some people report that video meetings are more intimate and focused than in-person group meetings, they are not everyone’s cup of tea. Foregoing business travel has an impact on the informal exchanges that in-person meetings make possible.
There’s no benefit in waiting!
Acting now puts you at a strategic advantage in a world increasingly defined by ecological overshoot. Countless solutions exist that #MoveTheDate. They’re creative, economically viable, and ready to deploy at scale. With them, we can make ourselves more resilient and #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day. If we move the date 6 days each year, humanity can be out of overshoot before 2050.