Luc Semal
Luc Semal has a PhD in political sciences from CERAPS (Lille 2 University). His work focuses on the political and social implications of the current ecological crisis, his thesis focuses on the transition movement and transition towns. He is also a member of the editorial board for the degrowth review, Entropia. He has co-written a chapter in the French edition of Rob Hopkins’ “Transition Workbook” (2010), and occupies a teaching position at Sciences-Po Paris (Politiques de la Décroissance) and at Sciences-Po Lille (Théorie et Politique de l’Environnement).
The Politics of Catastrophe
During the 2000’s decade, two social movements, the degrowth movement in France and Transition Towns in the United- Kingdom, have contributed, both in parallel, to a renewal of the green political landscape. The catastrophist dimension of these two movements, understood as a form of political thought based on the anticipation of major ecological shifts (peak […]
Manifesto
The Momentum Institute met for the first time on the 10th of March 2011, the day before an earthquake struck Japan and unleashed the nuclear catastrophe we know as Fukushima. The twofold catastrophe that engulfed the inhabitants of the northern part of Honshu Island was both local and global. It demonstrates the fragility of the […]
Brèves
Local Dollars, Local Sense
In response to the magnitude of the energy, environmental and economical crisis that strike the United States, the Post Carbon Institute has recently undertaken the production of a series of community resilience guides.
Post-Fukushima Food Resilience
Only 39% of calories consumed by the Japanese come from local production, the remaining 61% are imported, often from far away.Japan has one of the world’s lowest levels of food self-sufficiency.
Dennis Meadows Forty years after “The Limits to Growth”
To mark the 40th anniversary of the Club of Rome’s report , Dennis Meadows discussed the challenges of forging ahead into a sustainable future at “Perspectives on Limits to Growth: Challenges to Building a Sustainable Planet”.
Europe facing Peak Oil
Benoît Thévard, an energy engineer member of the Momentum Institute, published a study entitled ” Europe facing Peak Oil”. Peak Oil is the period of time when global oil production starts to decline due to the depletion of the exploitable resources.