Add university research to the long list of human activities contributing to global warming.

Philippe has a well-established international reputation for his work on phylogeny and according to his calculations his computers produce 19 tonnes of CO2 per year, the air conditioning in the laboratory produces 10 tonnes of CO2 per year, and transport from one meeting to another produces 15 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Philippe doesn’t believe in the myth that technology is the solution. “In 1973, that type of rhetoric already existed,” he says. “But environmental problems have gone from bad to worse. In Canada, for instance, oil consumption is 1.7 times greater despite better technology.”

It will have taken 200 years of oil exploitation to dry up the reserves that took 200 million years to build. “This fact has been known for 50 years but we’ve done nothing about it. By viewing oil as an unlimited resource we are making a tremendous mistake.”