Lien entre crise sociale, énergie et plan de décarbonation robuste

I want to read these demonstrations as an additional sign of the running out of steam of the world we are in. Who

would want to keep believing in a world of growing abundance allowing everyone to go to university and then to an

office, when that won't be the case? Should we actually give money to students to continue maintaining a

system that allows students to pursue studies that, fundamentally, are not the right ones? The debate is more

complicated than that. I think we need to ask ourselves the question today: what do we really need in a world that

will decarbonize by force anyway, because oil is finite? Today, it seems to me that this reflection is not

taking place. That is to say, we are projecting the educational system into a world that will remain globally what

it is, which is obviously not what will happen. So, decarbonizing is something we absolutely must do if we want to

avoid being tossed around by crises. Now, decarbonizing doesn't mean that the society of abundance is preserved.

It just means that we steer the decline in a much more controlled way than if we suffer it, and much more equitably

than if we suffer it. If we do nothing in particular, well, we get slapped in the face. When we get slapped in the

face, we react either well or badly. So , we got slapped in the face in 2022 with Ukraine. We are getting slapped in

the face right now with the price of oil, and all of that was unfortunately predictable. Welcome everyone to Limite

, the leading media outlet. We talk about planetary limits, resource limits , and human limits. And today, we are

back for a new episode with something of a god of awareness-raising, as we like to call him on Limite. Jean-Marc

is here. How are you doing? Well, that I am still alive. >> That's the classic answer he always

gives us. It's good that from one episode to the next, he always stays alive. Today, if I decided to interview

you, it’s to talk about the PRF, the robust plan for the French economy that you just released with The Shift

Project, where you analyze the importance of decarbonization, what impact it will have on the French

people, and the work that will need to be done. But before we get into those details, I would like us to return to

current events. Uh, in France, in Europe, and even in the world, notably in Brazil, there are a lot of movements

. Uh, we can talk about October 17th, and what is going to continue there. As we speak, it is October 22nd, and there

will likely be further mobilizations. And I wanted to ask you, do you see a link between all these mobilizations,

the various demands that may arise, and especially the fact that the yellow vests are included, and your expertise

on energy and climate? Well, without being a great historian, uh, when we look back a bit into the past, we

realize that movements of the people, I mean people who are unhappy, let's say, are often associated with shortages. Uh

, so sometimes these shortages have nothing to do with material conditions. Uh, for example, May 68 in France, I

don't know, we were in the middle of the "Trente Glorieuses." Purchasing power kept rising, consumption was

exploding, and so on. So I don't know if that movement had much to do with a shortage. Uh, but there are still many

movements that have to do with shortages. The French Revolution, for example, was preceded by a significant

famine and poor harvests, which themselves had a link to the Little Ice Age.

>> OK. Uh, since we were right in the middle of it. Uh, the Arab Spring that took place in 2011 in the Maghreb had a

link to energy and climate issues that is fairly easy to establish. And personally, I consider that there is a

link between the rise of everything that is a feeling of fed-up-ness in Europe, which is sometimes called

populism, sometimes called anti-establishment sentiment, sometimes called—well, in short, all the people

who are unhappy. Personally, I associate it with Europe's energy decline, which makes material means

more limited, therefore making the possibilities to satisfy demands more limited, and which directly hits the

democratic promise that everyone has the same chance at the start and therefore, everyone at the end must

have their share, in a certain way. And from the moment that material conditions no longer allow it, there

are a certain number of people who are unhappy. So I link it, for example, to Brexit. OK.

>> Brexit, for me, is the consequence of a Europe that expanded to the east in a context where European energy supply

could no longer ensure growth for all. And at that moment, there was a rebalancing, because if the size of the

cake does not increase, for some to have more, others will have less. Uh, so either the Polish workers went to

Great Britain, or the English factories went to Poland. Well, I’m, I’m caricaturing; I have nothing against

the Poles, by the way. Uh, but it’s to make myself understood. Uh, and at that point, the English weren't happy

and figured things would be better with Brexit. Do you see in what way things aren't better with Brexit? Because the

underlying determinant, which is the energy contraction, is still at work and thus continues to produce its

effects. Uh, and we can imagine, or at least look a bit more closely at the hypothesis, uh, that both the Yellow

Vests movement and the high school and student movement happening right now are partly a consequence of the energy

contraction. >> Uh, so we can see the links in several ways. Uh, the first one, concerning the

students, is that, as we already discuss in*Le Monde sans fin*. Uh >> your comic book, then?

>> My comic book with Christophe Blain, uh , Mitterrand had said in '81 that everyone would have the right to go to

university. So the implication behind that isn't that you go to university to be a plumber, uh, or a laborer on a

construction site; it's that you go to university to be sitting on a chair like me, uh, working in an office and

working with your head. And that means a world in which there are many, many service-sector jobs. And many

service-sector jobs are the mark of a highly energy-intensive society. Uh, that's something we see all over the

world. Highly service-oriented societies are highly energy-intensive societies. Americans, who consume twice

as much energy per person as we do, have 80%of their workforce working in services. So there you go. And

conversely, in African countries where there isn't much energy per person, we don't see an army of office workers, uh

, in those countries. Is it energy that allows us to have office jobs and thus not have to do manual labor, or is it

... >> Yes, because energy, in fact energy is machines at work. And so, once the

machines grow our food, uh, transport our food, make our clothes, build our houses, etc., and we only need a few

people to run the machines, well, everyone else can be occupied with managing, in service-sector jobs, the

profusion of objects that have been created by the machines. >> And that’s what we do in the service

sector. We manage, in fact we manage flows that are going in every direction . We manage the complexity of the world

in a certain way. And so we observe this everywhere; that is to say, everywhere I have looked, the more the

energy supply per person increases, the more the fraction of jobs in the tertiary sector increases. It is true

in every country in the world without exception. So, from the moment the energy supply decreases, this promise

of having more and more jobs in the service sector that goes along with everyone going to university is under

attack. Obviously, political power doesn't understand why because they have no physical reading of the world.

>> And a large part of the students have no physical reading of the world either , because that is not what they are

taught, neither in school, nor anywhere else. They are taught economics, they are taught law, they are taught history

, but they are not taught the physical functioning of the economy. And well, all these people find themselves a bit

helpless. How come it isn't working? And if it doesn't work even though politicians promised it, it is the

politician's fault. So we take to the streets and call for their heads. In this story, politicians are indeed

responsible for having promised things they clearly did not understand. Unfortunately, the problem will not be

solved tomorrow morning because the solution to the problem is structural, not cyclical. That is to say, more

money for universities. In fact, that means nothing. It means more resources for universities. So in practice, more

cement, more steel. Because to renovate buildings, we don't need money. We need cement. Actually, money is just a claim

on steel, cement, plastics, trucks, and so on, which are necessary for the buildings to physically change.

>> Well, it's not just the buildings, there are also the professors and the employment.

>> So, it is the same thing. It means that it requires surpluses to be able to pay all those people. So, production that

follows behind. In short, generally speaking, tertiary sector jobs do not produce anything directly. To have a

lot of employees in the service sector, you need a lot of surplus generated by a lot of machines in the primary and

secondary sectors. And if we don't have all those machines, well, we have fewer jobs in the service sector. Back in the

old days, in that excellent book by Jared Diamond called "Guns, Germs, and Steel," he pointed out that the ancient

societies that dominated the world were those where agricultural productivity was so high that they could afford—

like Europe in the Middle Ages before the Renaissance—to support a structure above the agricultural world.

>> One that took care of craftsmanship, science, military matters, military innovation, and so on. And that is what

caused these societies to dominate others, because, in fact, at the foundation, there was a very

significant material production. So today, for me, I want to read these protests as an additional sign of the

exhaustion of the world we are in. A world that would like to continue believing in growing abundance,

allowing for increasing surpluses, allowing everyone to be sent to university and then to an office, even

though that won't be the case and the future of employment is increasingly in repair, agriculture, building

renovation—productive tasks where we will use our hands a bit more. Now, that doesn't stop us from sending

people to university, but it needs to be the university of plumbing, the university of battery technology, the

university of manufacturing pots and pans. There it is, but we must not get the promise wrong. And right now, we

are getting the promises wrong. So, there you have it, and the high school students—well, the high school

students—when I was a kid, I protested too, and I didn't even know why I was protesting, for that matter.

Now, I’m not saying that high school students today don't know why they are protesting, but it is the expression of

an anxiety at this stage. If high school students had a very clear idea of where they are going and of the

bright future that awaits them, I'm not sure they would be protesting in such numbers. So for me, it is the

expression of stress and anxiety. I don't think that when I was in high school, I had a very clear reading of

how society functions. Even at my age, that is not always the case. So 50 years ago, it is not certain that it

was the case. Everything that high school students demand is not necessarily legitimate because they are

young and, once again, they do not have a complete understanding of the world. However, what is legitimate is the

expression of anxiety, uh, the expression of, of insecurity, uh, because legitimately here, for that

matter, uh, they have the feeling that we don't really know where we're going and they especially have the feeling,

which I share, that the leaders of this country don't really know where they're going either.

>> But it's not just >> and that the pretenders to the throne don't know much better. Yes, but in the

mobilizations, there aren't just high school students, by >> No, I was talking about the Yellow

Vests. The Yellow Vests, so the Yellow Vests regarding purchasing power, likewise, purchasing power is a

consequence of abundant energy because it must be remembered that income is nothing more than redistributed

production. >> Uh, money is nothing more than a claim on what exists. If I just have money

and nothing exists, well, I just have money. There is that old proverb attributed to Native Americans saying

that the day we have caught the last fish and cut down the last tree, we will realize that you can't eat money.

Uh, well, it's exactly that. Money is not physical reality. Money is a conventional claim on physical reality,

but it is not physical reality. >> So, uh, the real purchasing power, in fact, is the time it takes—well, the

true price of objects is the time you have to work to pay for something. Because your work time, that is

physical. Hours are physical. I mean, in physics, there is time. It is one of the units we use in physics. We all

understand that. So, the hours of work time, we understand that, uh, to pay for an—to pay for an object. And it

turns out that, uh, the expressed in this way, there is already a growing fraction of the population for whom

purchasing power has been slowly eroding for the last 10 or 15 years. Uh , so, people who have a bit more

trouble making ends meet, who have a bit more trouble paying for food, a bit more trouble paying for housing, a bit

more trouble—the cost of housing relative to income has doubled in 30 years. Extra.

>> It's, it's huge. >> It's huge. So, so there is—and we talk very little about that, well, much

less than about the price of gas, even though gas hurts households much less overall than housing does, right. So,

the So, this erosion of purchasing power is quite simply the erosion of redistributable production. And the

erosion of this redistributable production—I’m smiling but it’s not funny—comes from the fact that we

have this energy decline in Europe. So less energy, fewer machines at work, since energy is the food for machines.

Uh, fewer machines at work, less production; less production, fewer incomes. Now, there is the trade

balance, the trade deficit, which allows us to compensate for part of that. But overall, what I’ve just

explained is at work just about everywhere. And then it will manifest itself in various forms. Uh, so it

manifested in Italy, it manifested in Spain, it manifested in Great Britain, it manifested in France; it is even

manifesting in the Northern countries, and the determinant is the same every time. And globalization adds another

layer because globalization allows a privileged fraction of the population, which I am a part of, to draw its

income not just from the French economy but from the globalized economy, which is surfing on a global energy supply

that is still growing. Uh, and so the incomes of these people increase while the real standard of living of the few

tens of percent of the population at the bottom of the bracket becomes increasingly difficult. And that puts

the system under tension in an obvious way, and from time to time, systems under tension crack. Uh, so there you

go, without being a prophet, without reading into a crystal ball, without saying, "Ah yes, this protest is

exactly the consequence of the energy decline." I’d like to say, it’s unfortunately no surprise to see that

people go to protest because their assets are degrading or because there are purchasing power issues in a world

in energy decline. Uh, it is, unfortunately, something that is not entirely a surprise. And the solution

to this problem requires, in my opinion —it’s not sufficient, but it is at least necessary—a political class

that understands the physics underlying the economy and understands where our real room for maneuver is and our fake

room for maneuver. Well, one of the good ways to educate them, a priori, is with the PREF, the Robust Plan for the

French Economy, where you explain the importance of decarbonization, which is ultimately not just a whim of

environmentalists who want to emit less CO2, but is finally about >> so emitting less CO2 isn't some hippie

whim, it's an important goal, but I understand the irony of the phrase, yes I understand the irony of the phrase.

>> It's that some people who aren't necessarily convinced by the importance of ecological issues say to themselves:

"Well, decarbonizing, yeah, that's just to emit less CO2." But actually, ultimately, there are physical

realities, as you explained, behind it; and so there is a major issue of, ultimately, energy sovereignty and

therefore reorganizing how we function to be able to keep, well, the economy, France, running and meet our needs, if

I understand correctly. >> Well, those two, those two, those two drivers don't manifest in the same way.

There's one, I'd say, that is more selfish and immediate than the other. >> Mm-hmm. Uh, decarbonizing the economy

for climate reasons is a collective goal since, uh, as greenhouse gases have very long residence times in the

atmosphere and the atmosphere is stirred, uh, by large-scale winds, jet streams, trade winds, etc., the place

where greenhouse gases are emitted doesn't matter. And so, reducing emissions for climate reasons means

doing your part in a global concert where everyone has to do it. Hence the argument periodically put forward,

which is what's the point, we French only account for 1%of emissions. So the mean Chinese and the mean Americans and

the very mean Trump thing. Well, that's an argument that makes sense. Indeed, if we are the only ones acting, it

doesn't make any sense. Except that man being a mimetic animal, or human beings more precisely being mimetic animals,

the, the probability that if we start acting, no one else will do anything, is actually zero. Meaning that, uh,

when there are people doing things in one corner, there are plenty of others who imitate them. That's called a trend

. Uh, sometimes it's called the fascination for a technology. Anyway, there you go. So imitation is in our

genes. That's how we raise our children . Uh, we don't tell them, uh, what we tell them is much less important than

what we show them. Uh, and so the and so with imitation being at work, I am not, I am among the people who are not

at all convinced by the argument. It's useless to act on our own. Well, uh, but that is, that is, therefore, the

climate perspective. And the climate approach is intended to prevent what happened this summer, what is happening

as we film this video in the south of France, where we went from an exceptional drought to exceptional

deluges in one month. So, welcome to the 21st century. Uh, before moving on before long to the exceptional

hailstones we had. There you go, and back to exceptional droughts again. Exactly. Well, if we want—and we

haven't even talked yet in the general public about the absolutely catastrophic consequences for

agriculture that we had this summer. >> Uh, but we're looking at drops of 30, 40, 50%in production for lots of things

in France, you know. Let's wait and see what that leads to. Uh, we haven't yet talked about the bill that hasn't

arrived yet, from the shrinking and swelling of clay soils, meaning the ground that swells when it rains and

shrinks when it's dry because there's a lot of clay in it and that's what clay does. Uh, and uh, which will represent

a bill that will run into billions of euros, uh, in damages. Uh, we have— well, in short, we haven't even talked

about the forests, where some of the trees won't recover after the summer we just lived through. Uh, there you go,

it's only in the media that all of this has disappeared. Apparently, heatwaves are no longer a topic. Uh, but in real

life, uh, it remains one. So, that must be avoided. Everyone must do their part , uh, and everyone is doing a small

part of their share. Even in Trump's America, they continue to invest massively in certain decarbonizing

technologies. Uh, China, which based its development on coal, is also today the leading investor in nuclear, wind

power, renewables, electrification, uh, solar—pardon—and the electrification of transport, uh, and

hydroelectricity. That's what I meant by renewable. Uh, so in fact, the world is mixed today, you know, and well, and

I—I'm not at all convinced by the argument, "it's not going to do any good for us." But there is another

argument, uh, much more, much more selfish. Let's say it's more relevant to current events.

>> It's called the Strait of Hormuz. So, uh, what is happening right now in Hormuz? What's happening is that a

strait through which 20%of the world's oil and 25%of global exports passed has been blocked by the Iranians. Though,

there are some ships that are sneaking through anyway. There are the Saudis who have built a pipeline that can be

used. Well, anyway, there are all sorts of ways, but it remains a fact that today the world produces roughly 10%

less oil than it did before the shock. And the world remains massively dependent on oil. Now, some oil is what

I'd like to call "comfort oil." We can do without it more or less easily. For example, for a good portion of the

people listening to us, even if they'll jump out of their chairs hearing this, >> hold onto your seats.

>> For some people—not all, mind you, but some—gasoline is a comfort expense. If there’s no gas, well, we

get up earlier, we bike to work, we carpool with the neighbor; that way, we cut bills in half, we push ourselves,

we walk to the station, to the bus stop that takes us to the station, and so on . In short, there are ways to get

around it. Uh, that is >> once again, for some people, >> for many people. I would rather say

there is a minority fraction of the population that is truly stuck, >> but there is a majority fraction of the

population. There are 40 million private vehicles in this country for 70 million inhabitants. There aren't 40

million people who absolutely need their car every single day. That’s not true. So if there’s no gas, we

manage. It doesn’t stop the economy from running. If we don't have diesel, then that's much more problematic.

Because no diesel means no trucks. So cities starve and have nothing left, no more supplies. No transport between

companies. So the economy grinds to a halt. No cranes, no construction machinery, no logging equipment, no

tractors, no combine harvesters. Well, diesel is the fuel of the economy. Gasoline is comfort. Diesel is

essential. And so with 10%less oil, we should normally have 10%less diesel. And that should show up somewhere in

the economic figures. For the moment, it still hasn't been seen. There is, well, there's a riddle at the moment.

China has apparently been doing massive destocking. Anyway, there’s a mystery , but at some point I think something

is going to happen. So, decarbonization is essential to hedge against this type of event, and these types of events

will intensify in the half-century we have started to live through at The Shift Project. We conducted an analysis

showing that by 2050, global oil production should roughly be cut in half. Actually, it’s not global

production that we took. We took the top 16 global producers, excluding Brazil and Canada, but in fact, the

analysis likely applies to the world as a whole. Europe imports 97%of its oil and 90%of its gas, incidentally. Which

means that with exporter production being halved, our imports will be divided by anywhere between 2 and 20.

Uh, if we don't change current technologies—trucks still on diesel, cars still on gasoline, etc.—that

means with 2 to 20 times less oil coming in, we have 2 to 20 times less transport, uh, industry for the part

that uses it, raw materials for synthetic fibers, plastics, bitumen, oils, waxes, etc., medicines. Anyway,

so we can clearly see that we won’t find this funny. >> We will survive—well, humanity will

survive—but some people won't find it funny, and democracy certainly won't survive it. So, decarbonizing is also

something essential to avoid these risks. And I want to clarify that no model exists. So there, when I talk

about democracy, there is no climate or energy model in which the risk of losing democracy is modeled, you know?

>> Hm. >> It doesn't exist. And we tend to focus a bit too much only on modeled risks.

Right? So the modeled risks, those of temperature increases or those of drops in I-don't-know-what, uh, we look at

those, but there are plenty of risks we don't know how to model, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. So,

decarbonizing is something we absolutely must do if we want to avoid being tossed around by crises. Now,

that doesn't mean that decarbonizing means the society of abundance is preserved. It just means that we steer

the decline in a much more controlled way >> than if we were to just suffer through

it. >> That if we face it much more equitably than if we just endure it, and by

keeping much more room for maneuver than if we just endure it, because from the moment we decide where we are going

to do things in a somewhat ambitious way, it leaves us room to have a little more time in other sectors where we

intend to go slower. Uh, if we don't do anything in particular, well, we get slapped. Uh, the moment we get slapped,

we react either well or badly. Uh, so we got slapped in 2022 with Ukraine and the price of gas that exploded, it cost

the public finances 70 billion. Uh, we are getting slapped right now with the price of oil, and all of that was

unfortunately predictable. Uh, I mean, a certain number of Cassandras were shouting in the wilderness saying, "You

might want to look at this." We told them, "Why are you bothering us?" 40 years ago, we were already being told

there would be no more oil. Look, we're swimming in it. What's the point? Yes, except no. Uh, so, the...So there is,

there is, there is a reason, I'd like to say reasonably short-term, to decarbonize, which is very selfish

because, from the moment we make a part of transport in France indifferent to the existence of fuels and the price of

fuels, the thermal comfort of buildings indifferent to the price of fuels, the price of gas, the existence of fuels,

etc., in fact, we preserve the country, we preserve mobility, we preserve thermal comfort, we preserve a part of

the products we manufacture. Uh, the chair right there, it's a petroleum derivative. Uh, part of the clothes I'm

wearing, they're petroleum derivatives. Uh, so anyway, we manage to preserve, if we decarbonize, we manage to

preserve a certain number of things by choosing what we do. And so the notion of decarbonization is not something new

. At The Shift Project, you have already released a project called the Transformation Plan for the French

Economy, which came out in 2022. So this one would be kind of like level 2. What impact did the first part have on

the political world, businesses, and the general public, and what are the ambitions for the second one? So, my

father, who was a teacher, used to tell me, "Teaching is a long, repetitive process." So, there are indeed some

common points between the PTEF version 1 and the PTEF version 2. But that's normal, as long as, like we do at The

Shift Project, we maintain this physical reading of the economy, we have no reason to change our tune and

say things that are fundamentally different. What we did was refine our analyses in the sectors we had already

covered. We supplemented them with analyses we hadn't yet done. For example, a major area we had covered

very poorly in version 1 was agriculture. Whereas now, we have work that is much more solid on the issue

that we were able to raise. We hadn't started working on defense yet. Uh, now we have. You might ask why an

environmental association is dealing with defense? Well, because an association that deals with energy and

climate asks the question: how do we ensure the external security of a country? I mean ours, in a world where

access to hydrocarbons is increasingly complicated, because our fighter jets run on fossil fuel, because the navy

runs on fossil fuel, because land vehicles run on fossil fuel, and because oil is absolutely essential in

the manufacturing of all our machinery, whatever it may be. So it is legitimate to ask the question: how do we ensure

the external security of a country in a world with fewer hydrocarbons, especially with weapons programs that

last 40 or 50 years. >> Uh, there you go. So, we refined our vision on employment. We had already

talked about it last time, but now we've added a chapter on copper, for example. We hadn't had the chance to

talk about it, or >> we hadn't done that last time. Anyway, there are areas we hadn't covered yet

that we have now covered. The second thing we were able to do is that we developed our modeling system to be

able to incorporate failures in the execution of part of the plan. That's why we called this plan the "robust"

plan. It's because we say it must be able to withstand setbacks, because the only thing we are absolutely certain of

for the future is that we will have unpleasant surprises. We've already had a bunch of them over the last 5 years.

The probability that the next 25 years will be a smooth ride is strictly zero. So we're going to take we're going to

take some hits, we're going to take some blows, unpleasant things will happen, and the plan must stay afloat,

we must be able to keep moving forward even when unpleasant things happen. I'll use the example of a boat. If we

know there's every chance a sail will tear, a rope will snap, a line will break, etcetera, well, we need to have

enough to keep moving forward despite these unforeseen events. And well, it's exactly the same with this plan. It

must allow us to move forward even when we have unpleasant surprises. So that leads, for example, to overestimating

objectives so that if we don't reach the target, we can still continue to get things done. It leads to

incorporating redundancy. Yeah, that's it, that's the idea. Now, redundancy means less performance, that's very

clear. But it means more robustness. So , the...So the idea, the idea of this book, is this: to present things that

are better supported, more worked out, better rounded off, by giving ourselves a bit of slack, a bit of room to

maneuver, just in case there are areas where things don't go as planned. And are there any ambitions for

transmission, shall we say political? Because that was also the basic question, you released the PTE1, do you

have any perspective on the impact it might have had? Not necessarily. Yes, a few concepts have gotten through. You

have to realize that the Shift Project doesn't primarily target politicians, it primarily targets civil society.

>> Because the reading we have of the political world is that it responds to pressures from civil society. Um.

>> So, can this report lead to creating pressure from civil society? Well, a little. Civil society is a bit vast.

The first bit of perspective we can have is that I think we managed to get the notion of planning across in many

places, >> including in the economic world. Today, the economic world, a good portion of

the people we talk to, adhere to the idea that we need overall planning and an overall vision, and that just saying

"I'll let the market organize itself and everything will be fine" isn't enough. Uh, it’s not as simple as

that, and maybe people have also been a bit wary because of what's happening with the electrical system, where

we’ve forced the market into everything, and it doesn't seem to be extremely effective, uh, to have, to

head in the right direction. Uh, the second the second thing is that there are some sectors. Now, that’s not

just the PTEF, it was also the work we did, because the two are hard to separate, in which we brought this

energy-climate concern to the forefront . >> Yes, you held consultations with

various stakeholders and so on. >> Yes. And then, simply the fact that we publish reports and so on. So, there is

the digital sector. Uh, we helped to bring that to light; the first report we did on digital technology at the

Shift Project is the one that, to date, has earned us the most press citations. Uh, it was cited even in Indian and

American newspapers. Oh yes, it, it, it went around the planet, that one, or just about.

>> Uh, we, we have an article in the Hindu Times. >> Stylish. Uh, so, so there are, there

are sectors where we helped to bring this concern to the forefront. Health is also a sector where we helped to

bring this concern to the forefront. Uh , so there you go, so there are sectors where—well, I don’t know if it’s

1%, 30%, 50%, 90%—and ultimately, it’s a contest that isn't very interesting, but I think we played a

role. There, we, we contributed, uh, there you go, and finally I think we contributed to playing a role in the

idea of, uh, sobriety. Now, we weren't, we aren't the first, obviously, to talk about, to talk about sobriety.

>> Uh, but I believe we played a, we still played a role in the fact that, uh, many people are saying: "We aren't

going to get through this without changing our behavior and without becoming more sober," meaning without

accepting that there are a certain number of things we are giving up, uh, without it necessarily being a tragedy.

Uh, we’re going to do something else. We might even find it better. But I believe we also, we also played a role

in that. Then again, playing a role doesn't mean that we completely transformed the country.

>> Well, as someone a bit older, I consider that cultural revolutions are difficult to achieve in less than a

generation. >> Well, in the PREF, you structure 20 projects around five major themes and

we are going to try to break some of them down. The first two I would like to look at with you are electrification

and the decarbonization of energy. The idea is to move away from hydrocarbons. Your answer to that, or the planning

you propose, is to combine nuclear and renewables. Why this choice to do both at the same time?

>> Well, today's society is largely built on fossil fuels. If we look at all the energy that allows the French to live

as they do today, including that which powered factories abroad, trucks abroad , ships outside French borders, and so

on. In all the energy that allows us to live as we live today, 70%of it is fossil-based. Uh This energy must be

replaced by non-fossil energies. So, what do we have in non-fossil energies? We have nuclear and renewables. Neither

one taken in isolation can do the job, unless we extremely fiercely compress the consumption we have today. So we

could say we only do nuclear or we only do renewables. Just, if we do that, it means we will have even fewer clothes,

housing, transport vehicles, food, shoes, and what have you, than if we decide to do both. Because I insist,

food, energy is the food for machines; machines are production, and our income is nothing other than distributed

production. Our consumption is distributed production. No production, no consumption. So that's why, I want

to say that's what we, and obviously there is always a subjective side to what we think is socially acceptable.

It's like when we say, I'll take an example that has nothing to do with electrification, but when we say we

must reduce air traffic by a third, well, we could just as well say we must divide it by 10. Hm.

>> Well, at some point, there is an assessment like that of what has a small chance of being socially

acceptable and what has none at all. There you go, it's very subjective, right? That's it. These are just

hypotheses. All we can do is be transparent about our assumptions by saying these are the assumptions we

worked with. Then, if there are people who think we can do better or worse, we discuss it. Uh, there you go. So, to

get rid of fossil fuels, I was saying there are renewables and nuclear. Those are the two alternatives. And when you

look at the potential of each of these nuclear and renewable energies—and renewables aren't all the same between

hydroelectricity, wind, solar, biomass —we aren't talking about the same thing. Uh, so we did tons of

calculations in every direction to look at the potential price one by one. Uh, knowing that there are always limits,

no energy is perfect. Oil isn't perfect because it's limited and it emits CO2. Otherwise, it has enormous advantages

and that's why we use it everywhere. Uh , very versatile, very energy-dense, very easy to transport. I'm not

>> if we didn't have resource problems and if we didn't have climate problems, there would be no reason to do without

it. Uh well, or not many reasons to do without it. So, the energies, we have looked, once again, at all the

alternatives, uh, to give some orders of magnitude. Uh, all the energy that allows France today to live as it does

is 2,000 billion kilowatt-hours, uh, of final energy, meaning the energy that goes into machines, that is consumed by

machines. French nuclear power today is 350 TWh. It might go up to 400, so 2,000 TWh, 2,000 billion kilowatt-hours

, is all the energy that allows France to live as it does today. Nuclear power , come on, let's say 400. Well, if we

don't develop renewables and we don't develop new nuclear, we go from 2,000 to 400. We must therefore divide by 5

the fleet of machines at work, and therefore divide by 5 the material flows that surround us. Well, is that

socially acceptable? I don't know. Uh uh, and therefore divide by 5 the real purchasing power, basically. Well, uh,

if we if we add to it, uh, renewables, uh, well, we already have much more room for maneuver, and then there will

be technical difficulties that we can't ignore because integrating non-dispatchable renewable energies

into the grid is a challenge. Uh, today , I hear from time to time that we've come close to a blackout three times a

year. we're starting to see drops in nuclear load factors which strain the plants and so on because there are too

many sources, so we have intermittency on the grid, and these sources don't provide the frequency regulation that

is essential for the power grid we have . So we must—well, that doesn't mean we can't do anything, and in particular

, we can develop plenty of things that help compensate for some of these drawbacks, but we have to do it. There

you go. So we need—to get rid of fossil fuels, we must work on the energy system upstream, that is to say,

produce more carbon-free electricity and produce less fossil fuel. And the machines downstream, because a

combustion engine car isn't capable of consuming electricity; it can only consume fuel. And if we want a machine

that consumes electricity to get us around, well, we have to change the machine. There we go. So

electrification means changing the machine downstream, replacing trucks with electric trucks, replacing cars

with small electric cars or electric bikes, or, well, replacing industrial furnaces with electric ones. That's it,

that's electrification downstream, and that electricity upstream. And so we need a program; we need to push hard on

nuclear power. That's what we're saying . So we must extend current reactors as much as possible and build new reactors

as quickly as possible. But that's not enough. And we also need to increase renewable capacity, with the drawback

for renewables being that they are production methods that take up a lot of space because they exploit diffuse

energy sources, right, wind and sun. And so, there are land-use conflicts at some point, people who find there are

too many near their homes, grid connection problems because you have to connect many different sources, and

issues with maintenance in a marine environment when installed at sea. Anyway, in short, it creates new

problems that we need to know how to handle. >> Regarding the types of problems posed

by nuclear power. You've heard a lot about the risks, something that you don't seem to understand. I will refer

you to an interview in the description. >> It's not that I don't understand; it's that I think there is a huge asymmetry

between the actual risks and the perception of those risks. >> This gap in perception, but I haven't

heard you talk much about the impact of droughts on nuclear power production. It notably has an impact on many plants

at the European level, and it’s something you point out in the PRF: the construction cost. How did we go from

Flamanville, which was supposed to cost 3.3 billion and ended up costing 23.7 billion, with a 12-year delay? Could

you perhaps try to elaborate on these two points and explain why, despite these two potential drawbacks, you

decided in the PRF to highlight nuclear power as a carbon-free energy source that must be massively developed by

renovating and building? >> All right. Well, several things. Uh, regarding the water part,

>> uh >> uh, nuclear power, if designed for it, can operate with very little water. For

that, you need cooling towers, air-coolers, which allow for much greater thermodynamic efficiency. The

largest nuclear power plant in the United States, which is the plant in the city of Phoenix, Arizona, operates

without a river. It simply evaporates the city's wastewater, and that is enough to cool it.

>> OK. So, the plants that were forced to produce less this summer are plants in what we call an open circuit, meaning

they take water from the river, use it to cool, and discharge the water slightly warmed up. They don't have

these air-coolers, these evaporation towers, and so they must have a minimum flow rate because they are limited by

the discharge temperature after the water has been used to cool the plant. And there are standards in place for

ecosystem reasons, not for reasons of water availability, which limit the discharge temperature. So if the

temperature at the time of intake is already higher than the discharge temperature, which happened several

times this summer, well, we can't draw water at all. And if the intake temperature is so close to the

discharge temperature that we can't cool the plant at full power, then we are forced to lower the power. But it's

for reasons of discharge temperature, not for reasons of water availability. >> OK?

>> Later, in a world where water is no longer sufficiently available, we can build cooling towers. And at that point

, instead of taking water and discharging it a little warmer, we take water, use the heat, and cool the plant

by evaporating a small portion of the water. And this small portion is much lower than the water we take when we

are in an open circuit, where we warm it slightly and discharge it afterward. And even if, even that isn't enough,

well, at that point we do indeed shut down the plant, uh, and we still need the flow rate of an open tap to cool

the core once the plant is shut down. But, well, that's not a problem. Uh. As for all the coastal plants, by design,

they don't have this problem. They might have a jellyfish problem now, uh, but they don't have this problem of

water availability or, well, especially water temperature. Also, there’s a European plant that had another funny

issue, a plant in Hungary, because the Danube, the level of the Danube was so low that the plant's water intakes were

above, were too high. Well. >> That’s an adaptation issue, meaning that if the water intake had been lower

, the plant could have continued to operate. So these plants might need some work, uh, to adapt them to future

conditions, uh, to be able to guarantee their operation within wider, well, broader operating ranges. It remains to

be seen if it's worth it, because right now, if it doesn't run for a few days a year, well, maybe the work isn't worth

the cost. >> So, there you go, it needs to be looked into, I haven't done it, so it needs to

be examined, but technically there are things that are possible. There, that’s what I wanted to say.

Regarding the cost, well, the cost, uh, of Flamanville, it comes from several, several reasons. The first is that,

since it had been some time since France built a reactor and, in the meantime, it has also considerably

complicated safety rules because of what happened elsewhere in the world and due to the demand and the French

philosophy that at all times plants must be in compliance with the state of the art. So there are two different

safety philosophies in the world. There is the American one. At all times, a plant must be compliant with its

initial design. To that, to its, okay. So basically, you’re saying the plant's specifications at the time it's

built are that it must be able to withstand this, this, and that, and throughout the life of the plant, you

won't change those specifications. In France, the specifications change throughout the life of the plant. So at

one point you don't have to withstand a meteorite impact, and then later you do . At one point, you don't have to

withstand a plane crash, and then later you do. At one point, you don't have to withstand a tsunami, and then later you

do. At one point you don't have to withstand who knows what, and so this inevitably leads to an inflation of

costs since you have to be able to withstand more things, and we could argue at length about whether the

dangers we need to guard against are justified or not. There you go, it's a long debate. It's a very technical

debate, and therefore very difficult to explain properly to the general public because the debate is highly technical.

>> The second thing is that when your project starts to drag on, you incur interim financial costs that also cause

the project's cost to skyrocket. So you have both of those at play in Flamanville. And in the new nuclear

power plants getting ready to be built, the cost of money represents a very significant part of the overall cost of

the project. If we were dealing with, if we had access to free money, that is to say money at 0%interest, the

construction would cost much less. To give you an order of magnitude, because I’ve done the calculation, on a power

plant that costs 10 billion to build, depending on whether you have money at 2%or money at 10%. Depending on whether

they lend you the money at 2%or 10% between shareholders and bankers, well, in the end, you will or won't have 90

billion euros in additional financial costs on a plant that costs 10 billion to build over the lifetime of the plant

, you know. So in fact, expensive nuclear power is also nuclear power financed by private money. It’s

inevitably...well, now public money in France is starting to get expensive too , which is what's happening, but

private money almost mandatorily results in expensive nuclear power. Now , let's not fool ourselves: in the

world of tomorrow, things will cost more anyway, because what allowed us to have inexpensive things was abundant

and easy-to-use energy like oil, gas, and coal. It’s not because we are evildoers that we started using fossil

fuels, it’s because they are objectively easier and cheaper to use than the rest. That's it. Now, people

often say, "Yes, but today renewables cost less than fossil fuels." Except that we are comparing two things that

aren't comparable, because wind and solar aren't dispatchable. So you get power only when nature decides. Oil is

dispatchable. And so, if you look at it fully, you have to factor back into renewables the cost of being able to

have electricity exactly when we want it, not just when there's sun and wind. And when you add all those costs in,

the comparison is already a bit different. Also, sometimes when this kind of comparison is given, it

includes the cost of fossils with taxes , which isn't a technical cost, it's just a convention. And finally, the

last thing we shouldn't forget is that a modern wind turbine and a modern solar panel cannot be built today

without fossil fuels. Meaning, if we didn't have the supply chain—or rather, the highly efficient globalized

industry we have today—it's obvious we wouldn't produce wind turbines and solar panels at the same price.

>> Is it the same thing for nuclear power, then? >> Absolutely. That is completely valid

for nuclear power as well. So, it's valid for all low-carbon means, and it's valid for building trains and it's

valid for building ships. I mean, today . >> Well, precisely, if I may jump in on

that—so that's for the decarbonization of energy, but then there's all the electrification.

>> Which depends, then, on a globalized hydrocarbon economy and, in particular, on many materials, especially copper.

How do we ensure we have enough to carry out all the projects that need doing, since you say in your report

that all these projects must be done at the same time? Well, the smaller the objects are, the easier it is. In an

electric car—I'd say of a mass and power comparable to a current combustion engine car, 1.5 tons. You

have 80 kg of copper in an electric car . H >> No. But if we made cars twice as small

with batteries twice as small, well, we wouldn't need 80 kg; we would need 40 kg. And in an electric-assist bicycle,

I don't know the exact amount of copper , but it's much less than 40 kg. So that means the amount of copper we

actually need is highly dependent on what we are going to electrify >> and on how we envision consuming in the

future. Uh, furthermore, copper is partially substitutable in electrical networks by aluminum. Uh, so aluminum

makes for slightly larger cables and so on, but well, there are some uses where it's more complicated than others to

substitute copper with aluminum. But uh , it still remains that uh, we could effectively have a copper problem from

the moment we don't accept restricting its uses and where we try to embark on a race where I want exactly what I had

with fossil fuels, just electrified. What we think is that this just won't work. Uh, and you should know that uh,

globally, the International Energy Agency has issued several alerts uh, in recent years regarding the future

availability of copper. It considers that global production should reach its peak by 2030, and then, for at least

the 20 years that follow, begin to decline because it takes about 20 years between the moment we locate a copper

deposit and the moment we start mine production, because building a mine is monstrous. You have to build an

electrical grid, access roads, buildings on-site, and industrial processing facilities. Uh, well, it's

...uh, you need water supply systems, you need...well, it's a whole production. Uh, and so you don't do

that in six months. Uh, and often you need a dedicated railway line. Well, anyway, we clearly understand that all

these investments take an extremely long time to put in place. Uh, and so from the moment we know what the mine

projects are today, we know for the next 20 years the quantity >> uh, the quantity that will come out. Uh

, and then, additionally, over time, the copper content in deposits will become scarcer. Uh, today the copper

content in the deposits we exploit, on a global average, is 4 kg per ton. 4 kg of copper per ton of ore. Uh, when we

started copper mining uh, in the first mines, like Rio Tinto in Spain for example, uh, we sometimes mined ores

that were between 15 and 20%, that is to say between 150 and 200 kg of copper per ton. And now, we're at 4. So, well,

it's dropping quite a bit. And uh, in fact, a mine is nothing more than an accumulation somewhere, more or less

significant. And the lower the accumulation, the more energy we need to extract the copper from the rock. So

we also have a subject which is: we need metal for energy, and we need energy for metal. So, to get back to

the Prf, uh, what we're saying is that we must be careful about this and not launch equipment plans that assume a

copper availability we aren't sure we have. And so, the smaller we make objects in electrification, the more

likely the plan is to be realized. >> So decarbonization, at least part of the answer, involves restricting, in

quotes, certain uses or downsizing them to a size that would be socially acceptable, or changing habits, but

sometimes for the better. >> Mm-hmm. Uh, I'll take an example, which for the moment isn't yet a very

large-scale example, but I like using it, which is cycling. There are many people who have taken up cycling. Uh, I

don't know if it's for climate reasons, but actually even if you offered them a car tomorrow, they wouldn't go back.

They wouldn't go back. Why? Because they find it less stressful to get around that way, you have no parking

problems, it's inexpensive, it gives you a bit of exercise, you're above ground, well, you aren't stuck in

traffic jams. In short, they tell themselves there are plenty of advantages to doing this kind of thing.

I'm in better health, I feel better. The >> co-benefits,

>> exactly. And so actually, they aren't even co-benefits, they are the primary benefit. Often,

>> uh, it's the climate that is a co-benefit and, and so there you go. The people who have done this, do they

feel like they lost out? No. Are they unhappier? In general, no. Uh, not at all. Uh, and it's an example of

sobriety, or, as I say again, to make an electric-assist bike, you still need much less copper than to make a car. Uh

, the electric scooter can be a good middle ground for people who really don't want to pedal. Uh, no, but there

you go, so you have plenty, plenty, plenty of possibilities. >> Uh, and this electrification, I insist,

the more we manage to get people to accept that it's something interesting, the more we accept the idea that

sobriety can also go hand-in-hand with having side benefits in certain scenarios. Not all, but there are

scenarios in which it's a real sacrifice. Uh, but there are there are scenarios in which there are there are

benefits that are quite nice, and better understood from the copper perspective. So decarbonization partly

involves moving away from hydrocarbons, but there are other sources of activity that emit greenhouse gases which are

outside of this combustion. Can you tell us about them and what have you defined for these uses in the PRF?

>> Yes, well, for greenhouse gas emissions , we often think primarily of CO2. Uh, there are other greenhouse gases,

methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, which essentially come from processes that are not combustion, with a small

exception for methane because forest fires produce some methane. Uh, there you go. But well, uh, the big source of

methane in the world is agriculture. Uh , there is a there is another source that is not negligible but that we

don't have in France, which is fugitive emissions from hydrocarbons. When we exploit an oil or gas field, a small

part of the gas contained in the field tends to leak. Sometimes, we even let it leak. It's just that when we are at

a field that is far from everything, we won't set up a liquefaction train to liquefy the gas and ship it by boat,

nor build a gas pipeline because we are just too far from everything. And so when in the oil and gas we extract from

the ground, there are still places where we let the gas go into the atmosphere. The gas is methane, so a

greenhouse gas. Uh, there is also the ventilation of coal mines, which is a significant source of methane. Because,

actually, there is methane that was there at the time of the coal's formation, which is trapped in the coal

seam, and when we mine the coal seam, well, the methane contained in the coal seam escapes into the air. So there are

fugitive emissions like that. Now in France, we don't have any coal mines, we don't have any oil. All emissions

that are non-combustion are agricultural emissions, about 20%, and some process emissions from chemistry

and cement plants, but well, that's not much in the big picture. Uh, at the global level, uh, we must also add

deforestation. So, agricultural emissions plus deforestation at the global level account for about a third

of emissions. Uh, that's 27-28%of emissions. So, it is far from negligible. Uh, and there are also

other non-combustion emissions linked to refrigerant leaks, uh, and methane emissions from landfills. Uh, which are

also—well, in France we also have this, uh, methane emissions from landfills add a few percent.

>> Uh, well, it's a few percent of national emissions. So, once we have, we have, we have looked at all that,

the question is what do we do? So, in the PREF, once again, since it's essentially emissions of agricultural

origin, the main room for maneuver we have is to limit fertilizer spreading, because that's what leads to nitrous

oxide emissions. And for that, to get nitrogen into the soil other than by spreading fertilizer, what we propose

is to increase the cultivation of legumes, because legumes are plants that fix nitrogen from the air and

manage to put it into the soil. Uh, that's a second room for maneuver: if we grow fewer plants, we need less

fertilizer, and a large part of the plants we grow in France is to feed animals. So there is a second room for

maneuver, which is eating fewer animals . There you go. We don't advocate at all for a vegetarian or vegan diet, uh,

in the, in the PRF. However, we do advocate for a reduction in livestock. There you go. But you should know that

currently, uh, for cattle in France for example, the current rate of decline— which owes nothing to the

recommendations of the PRF, you know, which is simply due to the fact that many breeders cannot find a successor,

uh, et cetera—is between 2.5 and 3% per year. That is to say, we have a drop in the livestock in France of

between 2.5 and 3%per year; in the work we did on agriculture, so in the PRF, we limited ourselves to recommending 1%

per year. >> So, in the end, it's already above that . So, we are already above that. And,

uh, by favoring grass-fed livestock— even if grass was complicated this summer, as we saw—uh, by favoring

grass-fed livestock rather than livestock fed with cereals grown specifically for that purpose, such as

silage corn or wheat. >> Uh, there you go. So, basically, the first aspect of agriculture is limiting

the spreading of fertilizers. And if we limit the cattle herd, we also limit methane emissions from ruminants

because ruminants emit methane due to fermentation in their rumen. Uh, and these methane emissions also contribute

significantly to agricultural emissions . There is one last point that we don't cover in the PRF, which is imported

deforestation, because the PRF focuses on the French perimeter. That remains one of its limitations. We don't look

at imported emissions in a general way. Uh, but there is also, in the agricultural emissions in France for

our consumption, imported deforestation . For example, when we consume coffee or cocoa, we can import deforestation

because these crops were grown in places where there has been recent deforestation. Uh, when we eat

Brazilian beef, we can import deforestation because some of the pastures were taken from the forest. Or

they are fed with soy that was itself grown by encroaching on the forest. Even when we eat French beef or French

poultry, we might have soy that required, well, that comes from Brazil and required deforestation, or rather,

caused deforestation. There you have it , this imported deforestation, we don't look at it in the PRF, but it is also a

reality. One last part I would like to look at with you is that, therefore, there is moving away from hydrocarbons,

changing the operating mode of certain activities a bit, especially agricultural ones, for everything

concerning greenhouse gases outside of combustion. And you also talk about carbon sinks. So for carbon sinks, we

obviously think of forests, how we manage to preserve them, or even develop them with climate change, which

is disrupting all balances. >> So, there are two carbon sinks. There is, on one hand, the forest and, on the

other hand, changes in agricultural practices. Uh, because with no-till farming techniques, for example, or

agroforestry, which involves putting back hedges and trees, we are going to increase the amount of carbon in the

soil and a bit above the soil. Uh, when we plant trees, or when we, you know, when we don't till, for example, it

compacts the soil less. As a result, there are more earthworms. As a result, well, there are more, and earthworms

are carbon, since all biomass is carbon . Uh, and so we will be able to increase the amount of carbon in the

soil. When we use permanent plant cover , we also increase the amount of carbon in the soil. So part of the sink, and

all the carbon that ends up in the soil , is carbon that was previously in the atmosphere. So part of the carbon sinks

comes from changes in agricultural practices, and another part of the carbon sinks comes from forest

management because carbon can either be put into sustainable wood products. For example, these things here, they should

normally last for decades, right? So the carbon was in the air, it went into the tree, and it ended up in here. Hm.

>> Hm. >> And there, it stays. And the tree we cut down to make this will be replaced

by another tree which will itself pump carbon back out, and so on. Now, that works well as long as the climate

doesn't get too involved in the mix. Uh , when the climate starts to get involved, well, it can prevent trees

from growing, kill them, and so on. And at that point, the sink is no longer a sink, it turns into a source.

>> Uh, because there is no longer enough photosynthesis and, furthermore, all the dead biomass, the trees, and so on,

well, that generates CO2 emissions because of fires, because of microbial decomposition: when microbes gobble up

the tree, well, they respire and emit CO2. Uh, so the preservation of the carbon sink, well, we haven't yet done

in-depth studies on forests at the Shift Project. It is one of the limitations of our approach regarding

carbon sinks. It's something that I would love to do, but at the Shift Project, we have more ideas than money

to fund them. So that, we haven't done that yet. Uh, but, uh, we need to look into the question of how we regenerate

and adapt the French forest to a climate that has already begun to change. Uh, as of now, there is already

, uh, the volume of standing deadwood in French forests. Unless I'm mistaken, it has doubled in 10 years. There are

now large areas of spruce that are starting to be eaten up by bark beetles , which take advantage of the fact that

the trees are weakened by water and heat stress. So, there have always been bark beetles, but the thing is, they're

taking advantage of it now, and it ends up killing the trees. Uh, and we—a tree needs a few decades between the

moment it sprouts and the moment it's mature. So we're talking about the long term here. Uh, and so we need to be

sure when we plant trees that they will withstand, uh, future climate conditions.

>> Uh, and that's a real problem when the climate is changing rapidly, uh, which is the case currently. So, there is a

real challenge for the forest, and not much money is being put into the forest . You should know that the annual

budget of the ONF in France—uh, a quarter of the forests in France are state-owned forests, therefore managed

by the ONF. Knowing that the forest surface area in France is 30%. Well, that means that 7%of French territory,

7%, is managed by an entity that has less than a billion euros in budget, which isn't much,

>> which isn't much for 7%of the territory . Uh, so, and I once calculated, now I don't know where his fortune stands

currently, but a few years ago that with only half of his fortune, Bernard Arnault could buy the entirety of the

French forest, therefore 30%of the territory. So that's to say that the forest is worth nothing today. Uh, well

, it's not worth much. And that is one of the limitations to us dealing with it seriously, uh, for adaptation.

Because, since we have this "homo economicus" reasoning, uh, that sticks to our heels, uh, well, something

that's not worth much, we don't want to spend a lot of money to take care of it .

>> And to be able to put all that in place , you would address the question of education. We talked about it at the

beginning of the interview, the question of jobs. How do we go about creating jobs, or promoting the jobs

that allow us to implement everything we've mentioned, knowing that these are professions which, a priori, uh, if we

have them in mind—that would be farmer, then technician, electrician, plumber, etc.—don't have a high

desirability rate. What kind of work do we need to do to get worse? >> Well, they don't have a high

desirability rate for the French, but they have a high desirability rate for many immigrants who come to fill them.

Uh, but effectively, uh, to make this transition, we're going to need—well, we're going to need to adapt certain

jobs. H >> uh, for example, uh, in the repair and maintenance of automobiles. If we

switch from combustion engine vehicles to electric motor vehicles, there is a part of the maintenance where people

will have to learn to do things differently. Mechanics, advisors, etc., they will have to learn to do things

differently. Uh, there will still be wheels, there will still be a chassis. On the other hand, there won't be an

exhaust pipe anymore, there won't be a gearbox anymore, but there will be an electric motor, there will be

electronics that will be different, etc. They have to learn, they have to learn that. So here, we're not talking

about people changing jobs, but we're talking about people changing the way they perform their job. They are still

repairers or mechanics, etc., but they are, well. Uh, likewise in the healthcare field, to take another

example, from the moment you have fewer disposable products, more products, we will rediscover the virtues of the

autoclave, I don't know, uh, etc., well , you have a way of practicing your profession that will change. Uh, and

then you have new professions that appear and old professions that disappear. So if you are a worker in a

factory that makes parts for combustion engines, well then your job will disappear. Uh, and the question is, can

your skills be put to use for a new job ? For example, can you learn to manufacture batteries? Uh, can you

learn to, uh, manufacture bicycles and bicycle derailleurs? I have no idea. Well, anything really.

>> Uh and here there will be a need for retraining. And so one of the exercises we did at the Shift Project is that we

tried to give orders of magnitude of the number of people that will need to be retrained. So, people who were going

to lose their jobs here and the employment needs we were going to have there. if we were effectively making

this transition to a decarbonized world . Uh, so here, we are in the field of continuing education. Hm

>> hm. Uh, and indeed, we've estimated a few orders of magnitude, and we would therefore need the training programs

necessary to be able to do it. Uh, then there's another thing. Uh, when you talk about...you're talking about

desirability, uh, we're talking more about initial education here, uh, that is to say the young people who are in

school. Do they or do they not want to become plumbers? Well, that's it, we were talking about it at the beginning,

a lot of service-sector jobs are being taken from us. >> And for a very long time, the national

education system, which has many virtues, still had a big flaw, which was saying, "If you're no good, you'll

end up in a manual job, and if you're good, you'll end up at university." Uh, I think we need to move away from that

narrative. Uh, our Swiss and German neighbors don't have that view at all, since the normal path to a profession

is apprenticeship. Uh, that incidentally leads to social relations that seem more peaceful to me. Uh, and

at least in the professional world, anyway. And so in France, we have an issue that we haven't tackled either,

because for the moment we have never worked on the national education system , uh, which is the discourse we

maintain, uh, regarding trades, their nobility, and their relevance. And perhaps we have to go through what we

are currently experiencing, that is to say, enough university graduates who can't find jobs, uh, because there are

indeed skills today that are surplus compared to what we need in a world in transition and in a world that will be

fully impacted by AI. Today, is there any point in studying languages, uh, in a world where everyone has access to

translation, to translation by artificial intelligence? To assume that in the world of tomorrow, there is more

AI. >> Uh yeah, but the world in which there is more AI is a world that will

probably have changed in many other respects. Uh >> we agree.

>> There you go. So, I have nothing against students who study languages. I am talking about the organization of

society as a whole. Uh, do we need so many students pursuing studies? I don't know, social issues, anyway...I know,

I'm just saying anything because I know , but I just think we need to ask ourselves the question today: what do

we really need in a world that must, or will, in any case, be forced to decarbonize because oil is exhaustible,

and gas too. Uh and uh today, it seems to me that this reflection is not taking place. Meaning that we are

projecting the educational system into a world that will remain globally what it is, which is obviously not what will

happen. There you go. So we, quite modestly, have once again tackled the issue of continuing education and

retraining, and job needs here and job cuts there linked to the transition to a world that is decarbonizing.

>> And more jobs in France, a priori that means a better economy if I'm not mistaken. And there is a fairly

well-known phrase that you say quite often, which is GDP or CO2, we will have to choose. A priori, this plan, in

any case, it's something one could naively say would increase GDP while lowering CO2 emissions. What do you say

regarding this aspect that we have no evidence to demonstrate that our plan would increase or decrease GDP because,

in any case, we haven't looked at whether that's what it would do. Hm >> h

>> uh there are people outside who might have an opinion on it. Uh I don't have one. Uh well, I don't think so. I have

a global view which is that until now, global GDP has been extremely dependent on the amount of available energy.

Which is normal for me, since the economy today is machines at work and not people at work; I mean, people are

there, as I was saying earlier, to operate machines. Uh a world with less energy is a world in which there are

fewer machines working and therefore, all things being equal, less production .

>> Uh well, it's not necessarily easy to evaluate today because there is such a large part of activity in services, uh

where in services, correcting for inflation is just impossible to do. Uh GDP is normally calculated by adjusting

products and services for inflation, but in services, adjusting for inflation is a real challenge. It's

it's it's it's, I mean, it's just a convention. Well, by convention, we can decide that GDP is rising, or by

convention, we can decide it's falling in the service sector; essentially, we do whatever we want. So, with less

energy, personally, I think there will be less actual GDP, and in fact, I think that's what's already happening

in Europe, because for 20 years, for instance, the amount of goods in circulation has been dropping year over

year. There is an indicator maintained by Eurostat, which is the quantity, well, the number of tons loaded into

trucks. >> And since every good in Europe will have passed through a truck at some

point or another, basically the tons loaded into trucks in a given year is not far from being the total quantity

of goods in circulation. Well, this quantity is dropping, so the total quantity of goods in circulation has

been falling for 20 years in Europe, ever since the energy peak. So I am one of those people who considers that, in

any case, the decline in actual GDP is already underway. And our plan, I don't think it will prevent that. H

>> However, I do think it will help ensure that it doesn't become a tragedy. Whereas if we remain in a form of

laissez-faire, free-market approach— I’m not at all against capitalism, mind you. But just because I'm not

against capitalism doesn't mean I think the free market should apply everywhere . I’m delighted that the free market

doesn't apply to the French hospital system. >> I think it was a huge mistake to put

electricity into the free market. There you go. So, on the other hand, that my local carrot seller is in the free

market, I think that's just fine. I’m not sure it would be very appropriate for me to have a civil servant selling

me bread or growing my carrots. And the countries that have tried that sort of thing, it’s only half convincing. So,

there you have it, so that doesn't mean that the free market must absolutely be everywhere. I don't know what I'm

talking about anymore. However, I think that if we don't plan, uh, if we don't organize, if there aren't some binding

rules for market players that they must comply with to try to globally manage this decarbonization and ensure it

doesn't stop us from wanting a future, unfortunately, I fear it won't go very well.

>> What would success look like for the PRF if we project the ambitions? Well, it would be the fact that, uh, a

significant fraction, uh, of the economic world and civil society says, "It's a good idea to do this." There

you go. I won't speak on the support of the political world, uh, because, uh, it's very difficult to have consensus

in the political world, to speak of an initiative I launched not long ago, moreover, which is "Un Commun Accord."

Uh, I would really like one of the impacts of "Un Commun Accord" to be that political commentators on TV shows

, instead of asking candidates what differentiates them, ask them what brings them together. Hm.

>> But what do you agree on? Uh, I would like >> to be able to move quickly on that.

>> There you go. Because we need to agree, uh, on a certain number of things to move forward. We can't move forward if

we don't agree on anything. It's not possible. We can't coordinate. We can't have any concerted plan, uh, when we

agree on nothing. Uh, we have to agree on a lot of things to move forward together. So, uh, a good success for

the PRF, uh, would be that, uh, a good part of civil society says, "This is very good, uh, we support it, we're in

favor of it." Uh, and at that point, we must hope that on the level above, well , the law of numbers will lead people

to say the same thing. >> But, so, we have no guarantee. No, >> that it will happen in terms of

transmission. So, are mobilizations and demonstrations a good way to bridge, let's say, this, uh,

>> Well, I don't see people marching with signs, uh, "Implement the PRF," well, I haven't seen that. Uh, for the moment,

uh, we talked about it earlier, uh, these mobilizations are demonstrations of distress.

>> Uh, is the demand being made on this occasion physically possible to satisfy ? Well, if we satisfy that one, we, uh,

don't satisfy another. Is it actually necessary to give money to students so they can pursue their studies? I mean,

giving money, building, continuing to maintain a system that lets students pursue studies that fundamentally

aren't the right ones? Uh, there you go , so the debate is more complicated than that. Uh, on the other hand, I

don't think that it's in the streets that we're going to instill an overall plan. Uh, I think that in the streets,

you win a specific fight against something specific. There you go, that's what happens in the streets in

general. >> Well, if you have nothing else to add. Thank you very much Jean-Marc for this

interview. I'm doing the usual check >> and so don't forget to like, comment, and share this video so it's seen by as

many people as possible. If we were able to make it, it's also thanks to the individuals who support us. To all

the donors, a big thank you from the bottom of my heart, and we'll see you for the next video. That was Johan.

Look at that smile. What is your definition of reality?