Climate/energy: a story without transition

Lecture by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, historian of science, technology, and the environment, researcher at the CNRS. He is the author of several books, including the recent Sans transition. Une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie (Without 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 comforting future is based on an imaginary past, on a false material history, punctuated by a succession of eras. Energy sources enter into symbiosis as much as they compete with each other, and these symbiotic relationships explain why, during the 19th and 20th centuries, primary energy sources tended to be added to rather than replaced. Why, then, has the notion of energy transition become so prevalent? How did this future without a past become, from the 1970s onwards, the future of our governments, 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.

With the participation of: HiPhiS, IRD, CNRS, La Cavale bookstore.
With the expected support of the Occitanie Region.

Open to all, free of charge.