A political history of CO2

Thursday, March 23 – 6 p.m. (Amphi Dumontet – Triolet Campus)
Place Eugène Bataillon – Montpellier

Why are we heading toward a climate abyss?

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian and researcher at the CNRS. He is the author of several books, including: L'Apocalypse joyeuse, une histoire du risque technologique (The Joyful Apocalypse: A History of Technological Risk), Paris, Le Seuil, 2012, and L'Evénement Anthropocène (The Anthropocene Event), Paris, Le Seuil, 2016 (with C. Bonneuil).

While everyone is aware of the rising curve of CO2 emissions over the past two centuries, strangely enough, we have no history of it. What are the major historical processes that should be prioritized in relation to this curve? What are the institutions, powers, imaginaries, and interests that have truly set us on the path to climate disaster? This conference will aim to give CO2 a history and, therefore, a policy.