In 2019, France's most famous climatologist sat down to work with its most famous graphic novelist. The result? Probably the scariest joke ever made.
Part history, part analysis, and part vision of the future, World Without End weaves the story of humanity's voracious appetite for fossil fuel energy, how it made society possible, and its devastating effects on the climate.
It was an instant hit with French readers, selling more than 1 million copies so far, becoming the country's best-selling book in all genres in 2022, and being hailed as “one of the best summaries of climate issues ever written.” ”.
But his controversial solutions have provoked negative reactions from some sectors. Reviews now appear to follow the book into the English-speaking world, where it will be printed in English for the first time next week.
When Christophe Blaine began working on World Without End, he was already France's most famous comics artist and winner of international awards. I was in the enviable position of choosing any creative project.
He decided to invite Jean-Marc Jankovic, one of France's most prominent climate science communicators. “I was scared,” Blaine told The Guardian. “I realized that climate change is a reality. When I'm afraid I have to move; I can't sit still, I have to take action. And the action was to call Jean-Marc and tell him that we will make a book together.
Jankovic, who has already written eight books on climate change and the energy transition, is an opportunity whose online lectures on these topics have been viewed millions of times.
“I was really excited because I knew it would definitely work for an audience that didn't read the books and wasn't in my environment,” she said. “It was a way to reach people who were previously unreachable, because you can add zero to the number of copies of a graphic novel compared to a classic essay.”
Together, Blaine and Jankovic created a revealing deconstruction of the man-made processes that have brought the planet to the brink of climate collapse, filled with incredible observations about the consequences of fossil fuel energy for every human being. On average, 200 enslaved people work for them, or without machines, 1.5 billion people would need to work to produce the same amount of energy.
35% of the world's electricity is still generated from coal – the dirtiest of all fossil fuels – and there are painful facts, including one little recognized.
But the most powerful element of the book lies in its use of a series of evocative images to decode ideas about energy production and consumption and their toll on our planet.
Most importantly, the fossil fuel economy and all the benefits it has brought to human civilization are represented as Iron Man (or Armor Man in the UK version, for copyright reasons), an exoskeleton worn by humanity to increase their powers. Omnipotence.
Jankovic said the image of a superhero came to him naturally. “Because our superpowers come from all the machines in the world, mixing the human form and the idea of machines, I could choose Terminator or Iron Man, and I chose Iron Man. He's a little friendlier.
But Iron Man has a worrying opponent: the specter of, in a truly infinite world, greenhouse gas pollution. “One of the metaphors we can use in the book is the story of Faust,” Jankovic said. “First you enjoy, then you pay. This is what fossil fuels give us.”
What sets Endless World apart from other studies of climate collapse is that it examines the deep connection between energy abundance and the scientific and social progress it has enabled (facilities that cannot be easily abandoned) and the deterioration of our planet's climate.
“In my opinion, that's the new part of the book,” Jankovic said. “It is about putting in a single piece something that includes both the physical flows of our production system and our lifestyle and climate change, a great externality.”
And that is where its most terrifying aspect emerges. A world without end describes a situation in which human civilization is no longer able to take advantage of the catastrophic effects of climate change and the energy resources necessary to cope with them begin to run out.
The book's title itself reflects precisely this paradox, Jankovic said. “It was Christophe's idea, and I thought it really captured the romantic idea of a story of endless growth and abundance, which is what fossil fuels brought us for a time. Of course, the subtext of the title will seem to anyone: the world is not infinite.
That's where the solutions come in, as well as the most controversial claim in the book. Jankovic and Blain underestimate the potential of renewable energies such as wind, solar and hydroelectric power. They say the nuclear power industry is the only way to quickly decarbonize power grids while maintaining societal benefits.
This has drawn criticism even in France, a position that already receives too much electricity from nuclear power. Renewable energy advocates accused the book of being “pro-nuclear” and pointed to Jankovic's connections to the energy industry through the think tank The Shift Project.
Some activists even carried out their actions inside bookstores, posing as representatives of the French publishing house Targat and urging staff to insert an anti-nuclear “error” into the copies.
Jankovic said that if the book were rewritten, there would be less material on nuclear energy, but not because he regretted it: he thought his position was justified by the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Part of the debate has ended in France,” he said. “Anti-nuclear positions are not as common in the media as they were five years ago. We owe it to Putin because it is a common movement in Europe.
“What we want to say about renewable energies is not that they are completely useless or uninteresting. Naturally, they lack the properties of dense, transportable fossil fuels, and of course we can do something with them. But we will not do with them what we believe we can do, which is to sustain industrial civilization solely with renewable energy.
Blain and Jancovici attribute the book's huge sales to its shareable nature, which provides a unique, user-friendly way for those who care about climate change to explain the issues to others. “When the book was published, I expected it to go viral. And it went viral,” Blaine said.
Jankovic added: “What happened was that the book was designed to give, and the strategy was effective.”
The authors' hope is that an endless world will change awareness about energy consumption. “The book was created to understand the problem and understand the orders of magnitude,” Blaine said.
“To understand what it really costs, what it means, what's behind the scenes. When you understand that, it is impossible to think like before… you can see things around you differently. Imagine your future life differently for yourself, or for your children, for your parents, for whoever. You know the world will be different.
Or, as Jankovic put it: “It's kilowatt hours, stupid.”
World Without End opens in the UK on Thursday Through specific books.
