I’ve always disliked writing biographical blurbs because I never know how to begin… well, let’s say I was born and raised in Saint-Nazaire, a small industrial city in Southern Brittany and have graduated from Science Po’ Aix, a school specialising in law and political science – I must still have the diploma in some drawer. Like most French men of my generation, I spent some time in the military and had a rather banal career in the municipal administration. At thirty-three I engaged in politics, in the UDB, a small autonomist party. As the head of the local branch, I do the usual campaigning, scheming and politickering, while measuring the growing impotence of traditional politics as a tool to get us through the energy descent without too much damage. I am also a member of a local think-tank called CELA. Being a minor politician, and a political scientist by education, I am especially interested in the political, sociological and cultural aspects of the energy descent.
Green bankruptcy
There has been a lot of bad news for European Green parties lately and it must be said that those woes are not really undeserved.
October 29, 2013
Remember Tewdrig
Mass migrations, or more specifically mass culture replacement, is one of the more troubling aspects of peak energy.
July 26, 2013
Corruption and privileges
As the amount of net energy available to the society shrinks, it becomes less and less able to both maintain its infrastructure and actually do things.
June 10, 2013
Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the risks of activism
Even if it is hardly a priority, I suspect that a significant minority of my readers have heard about the Notre-Dame-des-Landes question. For those who haven’t, I will summarize it. Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Our Lady of the Moors in English) is a rather unremarkable village in the southern Breton countryside, which happens to have been chosen as the location of a future airport. Locals have predictably been upset about that choice and saying that the project has met with some resistance is the mother of all understatements. Things have turned even more messy when Jean-Marc Ayrault, mayor of nearby Nantes, has been appointed as Prime Minister of France with clashes between protesters and the anti-riot police making the headlines of the national papers.
May 13, 2013
In memory of the Bank of Saint-George
There have been a lot of talks about banks lately in France, both because of the Cypriot debacle and because the minister in charge of the French IRS has been caught red-handed hiding a substantial amount of money in some Swiss bank.
April 24, 2013