Jean-Marc Jancovici is a French engineer who early in his career specialised in issues relating to climate change and energy resources. He is the author of a blog (manicore.com) with a large specialist following, as well as of several successful works advocating a carbon tax. He is a member of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation and president of The Shift Project, a think tank that urges efficient energy transition.

Recent environmental history can be regarded as a succession of squandered good ideas, of constantly postponed life-saving insights, and of misunderstandings about crucial issues. Renewed economic growth, a university education for all, the Arab Spring, the French National Front, the debt crisis, taxation of fossil fuels: these are some of the subjects that are analysed here from a radically different viewpoint — one that stresses the pre-eminent impact of energy resources on global politics and the economy.
The author shows that in a world with finite energy resources it is simply wishful thinking to believe in relentless economic growth. He argues that the absence of growth is totally bearable; that putting a large number of highly qualified individuals on the job market need not be a priority; that the Arab Spring resulted from climate change as much as politics; that some French National Front voters can be identified as the first members of society to be marginalised by a stalled energy system.
The reader will also discover why we hear so much about climate change and so little about the oil crisis, when the two are so closely linked: climatologists are generally academic researchers, in whose interests it is to publish results, while oil experts, who are financed by private funds, are more interested in hiding their findings. These are some of the indispensable points revealed here which will enable the reader to understand the true nature of the environmental crisis.

• Jean-Marc Jancovici is the author of many successful works and a French media personality.
• In 2015 France will preside and host the 21st Climate Change Conference.
• A brilliant analysis of the crucial role that energy and the environment will play in the economy and politics of the future.