Coriolis Seminar - More, more and more : an all consuming history of energy

The "energy transition" is based on a certain past. Its strength of conviction lies in its ambiguous nature, straddling the line between history and the future. Just as in the past mankind made a number of transitions - from wood to coal, then from coal to oil - now, faced with climate change, we need to make a third, towards nuclear power and/or renewable energies. However, energies are as much symbiotic as they are competitive, and these relationships explain why they tend to add up rather than replace each other. So why has the notion of energy transition come to the fore? How did this future without a past become, from the 1970s onwards, the future of governments, businesses and experts - in short, the future of reasonable people?