Conversation

In 2019, France’s best known climate expert sat down to work with its most feted graphic novelist.
The result?
Perhaps the most terrifying comic ever drawn.

Part history, part analysis, part vision for the future,
"World Without End"
weaves the story of humanity’s rapacious appetite for fossil fuel energy,
how it has made possible the society people take for granted, and its disastrous effects on the climate.

Among French readers it was an immediate smash hit, selling more than 1m copies so far,
becoming the country’s top-selling book in all categories in 2022 and hailed as “one of the most brilliant summaries of climate issues ever written”.

But its controversial solutions provoked a backlash from some quarters.
The criticisms now seem set to follow the book into the anglophone world, where it appears next week in print in English for the first time.

When Christophe Blain began work on World Without End, he was already France’s most celebrated comic book artist and a recipient of international awards.
He was in the enviable position of being able to choose any creative project.
He chose to call Jean-Marc Jancovici, one of France’s foremost climate science communicators.

“I was frightened,” said Blain, in an interview with the Guardian.
“I realised that the climate change was a reality.
When I’m frightened I have to move
– I can’t stay still, I have to jump in the action.
And the action was to call Jean-Marc and tell him let’s make a book together.”

It was an opportunity for which Jancovici, already author of eight books on climate breakdown and energy transition, whose online lectures on the topics had been viewed millions of times, had been waiting.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/19/world-without-end-fossil-fuel-arrives-uk-comic-france-nuclear