As researchers, we often tend to measure our success by metrics like journal impact, funding, H-index, or citations. But here’s the question we don’t often ask: What is the environmental cost of all this progress?

It so turns out that the very process of doing science—whether its conducting experiments, flying to conferences, or training AI models—can leave behind surprisingly large carbon footprint. And with climate change becoming an even more urgent issue globally, it’s time we take a serious look at how sustainable our research practices really are.