Les grands entretiens des Franciscaines: Thierry Grillet talks with Olivier Postel-Vinay - "How do men face climate apocalypses?"

Olivier Postel-Vinay is the author of "Sapiens et le climat" (2022), founder of the ideas magazine "Books", former editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine "La recherche", member of the scientific committee of the magazine "L'Histoire". He has long been interested in the issue of climate and had published "La comédie du climat. Comment se fâcher en famille sur le réchauffement climatique" (2015).
From the Paleolithic to the present day, sapiens has regularly faced large-scale climatic catastrophes. The mega-droughts of the Paleolithic thus push the migrations of sapiens. Roman optimum, medieval optimum that sees Greenland green, with farms, retreating glaciers ..., the often significant variations in climate, have a part in the history of men. How can we account for global warming today? What history is it a symptom of? How sapiens, today, can face ?

Thierry Grillet, writer and essayist, Fellow associate at the Ideas and Imagination Foundation of Columbia University, is former director of cultural diffusion at the BnF.