Ecological transition: the central theme of the 225th anniversary of the Ecole polytechnique
Ecole polytechnique decided to celebrate this 225th anniversary by committing to a strategy of sustainable development
For its 225th anniversary, Ecole polytechnique organised on June 7, 2019, the international scientific symposium : “RefleXions: researching, educating and acting for sustainable development”
For the occasion, the students of the school launched a call for an ecological awakening, alerting about the emergency to react, to create a radical change for an ecological transition and avoid terrible scenarios for the end of the century like deadly heat waves in south areas of the globe, causing population movements or like temperatures reaching 50°C in the north of France.
Aware that the stakes are high and that they have to ensure the success of scientific, technological, economic and regulatory revolutions of the century, they urged their audience to face the issues of their generations as climate change by declaring they will only accept to work for people and companies who engage themselves into the ecological transition.
They asked those they will replace one day about their implication in the fundamentals social issues of nowdays and reclaim that big themes like sustainable development, sobriety, social and solidarity-based economy are being added to their scholarship programs.
It’s around these themes that the conferences of this day were articulated
Jean Tirole, Anna Creti, Jean-Marc Jancovici and Benoît Legue talked in the morning about the existing initiatives and the way to reach a low/no carbon economy.
To go deeper into the awakening of consciousness, students have set the carbon footprint of the campus to see that the biggest carbon emission is caused by plan travels for internships or school trips, by the meat served at the school restaurant and by the gas heating system.
The change requested by those students for companies, schools, searchers and citizens has already begun thanks to the many initiaves around the campus they took years to imagine and achieve. Now, we can shop our groceries from an associative shop that sales local products. Hives have been set up around the place to dynamize biodiversity and the organic garden is the favorite place of chickens and hens walking around.
They also wrote a manifest for an ecological awakening with other schools, signed by 600 students.
In this spirit of deep change and great initiatives, Grégory Labrousse, founder and chairman of namR, Emmanuel Bacry, Senior Researcher at CNRS at Paris-Dauphine University, Scientific Director of Health Data Hub and co-founder of namR and Bettina Laville, honorary State Councilor, founder of Comité 21 and board member of namR spoke in the afternoon about how data platforms can contribute to ecological transition.
Grégory Labrousse talks about about namR’s program : tRees that helps for the energetic renovation of schools, using open data.
“Invest in sustainable development”, Bettina Laville, Gregory Labrousse and Emmanuel Bacry
9:00 – 9:30 a.m. : Eric Labaye
École Polytechnique: towards sustainable development
9:30 – 10:30 a.m. : Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Michał Kurtyka, Scott Barrett
Global warming: science and geopolitics
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. : Jean Tirole, Anna Creti, Jean-Marc Jancovici, Benoît Leguet
Toward a low-carbon economy
1:30 – 2:30 p.m. : Gérard Mourou, Philippe Drobinski, Camille Duprat, Bérengère Lebental
Research at l’X for sustainable development
2:30 – 3:30 p.m. : Shenggen Fan, Marion Guillou, Markus Amann, Matthieu Coutière
Breath and nourishment: urgent challenges for health
4:00 – 4:30 p.m. : Bettina Laville, Grégory Labrousse, Emmanuel Bacry
Invest in sustainable development
4:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Closing speech
Grégory Labrousse, Founder and Chairman of namR, answers 3 questions :
What is the “green economy” ? The energy transition : job creator or job destroyer ? Are you optimistic ?
If you want to learn more about the events planed this year for the anniversary, about the history and the cultural radiance of Ecole polytechnique since 225 years or participate to the open day in October, visite the anniversary website
