A word-of-mouth sensation in France, this clever, exhaustive breakdown of our cost to the planet is free of dogma and all the better for it
when it was published in France in 2021, I was sceptical to put it mildly. If I know how attached the French are to their belovedI also know how much they love their brie and beef bourguignon; it seemed a bit unlikely they would take to their hearts a book whose alternative title might be: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Climate Change But Were Too Afraid to Ask.
But there it is. The title was indeed a word-of-mouth sensation, and now it has been translated into English ahead of publication in the UK and the US, where the Pulitzer prize-winning author of, Elizabeth Kolbert, has already asked, only half jokingly, if it might not save the planet. So what’s its secret? In the end, I think, it’s that Jancovici and Blain come at their subject with such a lack of dogmatism.
In 2018, Blain, an award-winning cartoonist, was beginning to feel anxious. For a long time global warming had seemed an abstract concept, but now, sweating in his little hatchback on his way to the Breton coast, he felt he could ignore it no longer.
That toothbrush. The blue gel you squeeze on it contains Sorbitol, which comes from a starch factory to which trainloads of corn are brought every day. The tube in which the gel is kept is plastic, the manufacture of which involves an oil platform, a refinery and an extruder to shape it. Did you look in the mirror as you brushed? Don’t even get me started on mirrors, all that copper and silver and glass… The list goes on.
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