A Political History of CO2

Thursday, March 23 – 6:00 p.m. (Dumontet Lecture Hall – Triolet Campus)
, Place Eugène Bataillon – Montpellier

Why are we heading toward a climate crisis?

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian and researcher at the CNRS. He is the author of several books, including *The Joyful Apocalypse: A History of Technological Risk* (Paris: Le Seuil, 2012) and *The Anthropocene Event* (Paris: Le Seuil, 2016; co-authored with C. Bonneuil)

While everyone is familiar with the rising curve of CO2 emissions over the past two centuries, curiously enough, we have no history of it. What are the major historical processes that we must first and foremost connect to this curve? What are the institutions, powers, imaginaries, and interests that have truly set us on the path to the climate abyss? This lecture aims to give CO2 a history—and thus a politics.