There are books of circumstances, written in a few weeks, even a few months to stick to burning news. And then there are books that are the culmination of several years of work, sometimes the work of a lifetime. Some are also fortunate to be published at a time when they make a major contribution to the debate. This is the case of that of Victor Court, his first work, which for a first attempt is a masterstroke.
The project is ambitious: to propose a world history of humanity through the prism of energy, by telling how, from the Paleolithic era to the present day, the exploitation of energy resources has impacted societies and their environment. A largely underestimated impact, especially when it comes to explaining the rise and collapse of states and empires.
Engineer in environmental sciences and economist, assistant professor at the Energy Economics and Management Center at the French Petroleum Institute, the author distinguishes three periods in the history of humanity, all characterized by an energy system predominant: the time of the collectors, that of hunting, gathering, fueled by fire; the time of the harvesters, that of agriculture, which gives pride of place to wind and water, then the time of the extractors, that of the combustion of fossil fuels.
Knowing that the separation of these three periods logically implies identifying two transitions: the Neolithic revolution, 7,000 years ago, which corresponds to the domestication of different plants and animals, which will lead to sedentarization and the emergence of a central power , the state.
A runaway dynamic that leads to global climatic and ecological disaster
The second major transition is the industrial revolution. Over the past two hundred years, new “fossilized sun” resources have enabled Western countries to obtain hitherto unseen abilities of domination, and then to be overtaken by even more energy-hungry countries, led by China. . Result: since the middle of the 20th century, the mega fossil machines have extracted and transformed more than 30,000 billion tons of matter, or 60 kilos per square meter of the planet (including the seas). With a logic as original as it is implacable, always nourished by hard-hitting examples, Victor Court describes this dynamic of runaway which leads to global climatic and ecological disaster.
Can it still be inflected? The author dismantles, one by one, all the illusions with which good consciences are cradled today. The energy transition? It never happened in history. Never has one energy replaced another; the new ones have always come to reinforce the old ones. The concepts of sustainable development, green growth and circular economy? They haven’t been of much use so far. Are we entering a post-industrial society? On the contrary, modern societies are hyper-industrial.
Neither catastrophist nor blissful technophile, Victor Court offers a middle way between technical progress and sobriety. Not wildly original, certainly, but which is accompanied by some deep reflections on the propensity of man to agitation or on the notion of progress, which should be less synonymous with power than with autonomy. A major book.
world racing, by Victor Court, Editions Ecosociété, 505 p., €27.
4 stars