Vernon B. Mountcastle (1918–2015)

R310 Current Biology 25, R301–R327, April 20, 2015 ©2015 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved wrote. “Furthermore, alumni from 15 different colleges, including green energy entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett and journalist George Monbiot, have promised to hand back their Oxford University degrees if the University does not commit to divestment from fossil fuels.” The UK newspaper The Guardian has recently launched a major campaign to lift climate change to the top of the agenda under the slogan “Keep it in the ground”. In a video message published by the paper, Naomi Klein has argued that the current plunge in oil prices provides opportunities to change course. “Low oil prices means that we can introduce a fair and meaningful carbon tax, something that is much harder to do when petrol is expensive. And if we don’t do it, well, low oil prices will just encourage more dirty consumption,” Klein said. “Now is the perfect time to unite behind demands to keep it in the ground,” she concluded. “Let’s turn this shock into the shift we need.” As part of the campaign, the paper has called for the world’s two largest independent research funding organisations, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to divest from fossil fuel interests. Prominent scientists including Anne Glover, a former chief scientifi c adviser to the European Commission, and Robert May, the former chief scientist of the UK government, have backed the appeal. The Guardian reported in March that more than 200 organisations have now signed up to the global divestment movement. The expectations are especially high for science organisations, as the argument for acting on climate change is based entirely on scientifi c results and has to be defended against a strong opposition from people with anti-science belief systems, such as Republicans in the USA. Much of the problem has ended up being a debate about whether or not the general population should trust scientists or not. In this situation, it would really help if scientists and their organisations were also seen to act according to their beliefs. In this spirit, Corinne Le Quére and colleagues from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, have investigated the travel habits of scientists and asked if the traditionally high number of fl ights taken by active researchers could be reduced without damaging the progress of science. In a preliminary working paper published in March (http://tyndall. ac.uk/sites/default/fi les/twp161.pdf), the researchers acknowledge the advantages of face-to-face meetings at international conferences, but argue that electronic alternatives can provide other equally important benefi ts, such as widening access. They fi nd that there are “no clear obstacles to justify an exemption for the research community from the emission reduction targets applied elsewhere.” The authors conclude “that the research community needs a roadmap to reduce its emissions following government targets, which ironically are based on fi ndings of the research community.”