Read IPCC reports to understand the world ahead

Collège de France lectures as part of the AvenirCommun Durableinitiative.
From March 29 2023 to June¹ 2023.

The Collège de France is organizing a cycle of educational readings of the IPCC's 2021-2022 report. In addition to uncovering the scientific basis of these documents, the challenge is to understand the idea of society that the IPCC advocates, and the societal and legal values that are taken - often implicitly - as models.

This lecture series, organized by the Collège de France under the supervision of jurist and legal historian Prof.  DarioMantovani, will comprise five sessions. Each session will run from 5 pm to 7 pm .

1. IPCC, the voice of the climate - 29 March 2023
2. Principles, methods, salient findings, and some avenues for improving assessment reports - 17 april 2023
3. Consensus-building - the experience of an author of the last two assessment reports - 12 may 2023
4. Values and models implicit in reports (1) - May 15 2023
5. Values and models implicit in reports (2) - June¹ 2023

Science, utopia and reality

Since 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) has been regularly publishing thick reports, ranging from two thousand to three thousand pages, presenting the state of knowledge on climate change, its causes and impacts, and ways of limiting its extent and adapting to the world of tomorrow. These analyses are the fruit of the collective expertise of several thousand scientists, which in itself is a remarkable and probably unprecedented collaborative effort. Given the density of the reports, we are most familiar with the simplified version which takes the form of a " Abstract for decision-makers ". Even if they are not prescriptions, this " abstract " has an impact on political decisions, and therefore on all our lives. Dates, deadlines, scenarios : our future takes shape here. In an age thought to be doomed to " presentism ", i.e. contemplation of the present, oblivious to the past and unconcerned about the future, a new form of planning is taking hold, and on a scale never seen before. This may remind us of certain utopias of the past, such as Plato's Republic. And as in Plato, the question arises of the relationship between science and the political dimension.

So what do comprehensive reports have to say, especially when states are not directly involved in their drafting ? In the abundance of data and information at our disposal, what should we retain and what should we understand ? What is the scientific and institutional methodology behind the collective work process ?

The Avenir Commun Durable initiative is supported by the Fondation du Collège de France, its major sponsorsCovéa and TotalEnergies, and its patrons Faurecia and Saint-Gobain.