Climate/Energy: A Story Without Transition

Lecture by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a historian of science, technology, and the environment, and a researcher at the CNRS. He is the author of several books, including the recent *Sans transition: A New History of Energy*.

“Our hope of containing the climate crisis depends on our ability to achieve carbon neutrality. Coal, gas, and oil will have to be replaced by clean energy sources. The problem is that this reassuring future rests on an imaginary past, on a false material history, marked by a succession of eras. Energy sources exist in symbiosis as much as in competition, and these symbiotic relationships explain why, during the 19th and 20th centuries, primary energy sources tended to be added together rather than substituted for one another. Why, then, has the concept of the energy transition taken hold? How did this future without a past become, starting in the 1970s, the future envisioned by our leaders, the future of consulting firms and international organizations—in short, the future of reasonable people.”

Co-organized by IESF-OM, Polytech Montpellier, and the University of Montpellier, as part of National Engineering Days.

In collaboration with: HiPhiS, IRD, CNRS, La Cavale bookstore.
With anticipated support from the Occitanie Region.

Open to all, free of charge.