Colloquium organized as part of the " Avenir Commun Durable " initiative.
It's a given : we're going to have to face up to the climate change we've caused or exacerbated. But beyond the imperatives of adaptation and transition, we need to ask ourselves what these terms mean, and ask ourselves about this " nous " to whom it is incumbent to diagnose the past, take stock of our means of action and map out the future.
The past seems to us a reservoir of fears and reassurances. On the one hand, with the Anthropocene, we see the origin of a frightening, perhaps paralyzing, trajectory of environmental transformations that affect the climate in particular. On the other, some optimistically assert that we have " always adapted ". While this observation may not be wrong, we need to critically refine our judgements, drawing on a variety of disciplines, whether specialists in the long term or the present.
What has the adaptation of animal and plant species meant in the past? Where do we see this adaptation today? And what about maladaptation: what light does it shed on species adaptation and the time it requires? Do we have that time in front of us when we talk about societies grappling with the effects of climate change? What have past societies done when faced with drastic environmental changes in climate, nutritional resources or, even worse, the threat of pathogens? Or when they exposed themselves, through their mobility, to environments that represented different constraints? What happens in the society that responds to such constraints, who decides, who is left out? Is the choice simply between " adaptive success " and "collapse"? And once again, what exactly is a society's maladjustment in the face of environmental change? Do societies disappear like species?
