understand the physical limits of the world

Can we exploit the planet’s resources indefinitely? This is the question posed, with false naivety, by the comic strip Resources. A challenge for humanity (Casterman, 176 p., €28), written by engineer Philippe Bihouix and drawn by Vincent Perriot, who has already published the comic dystopian series Negalyod. Known for his books on the criticism of growth and the irrational use of technologies, Philippe Bihouix finds in comics the opportunity to make multi-level thinking accessible.

The comic features a joint stroll between Philippe Bihouix, who plays the role of a professor who travels through the past and the future, and Vincent Perriot, fan of science fiction and technology. She succeeds in a difficult challenge: to make complex concepts understood in a few pages, from infinite growth to techno-solutionism, including low-tech, the development of sustainable and easy-to-access technologies. We find there the intellectual obsessions of Philippe Bihouix, which he already developed in Happiness was for tomorrow (Seuil, 2019) or in L’Age des low-tech (Threshold, 2014).

The work does not hide its relationship with the successful comic strip The Endless World (Dargaud, 2021), written by Jean-Marc Jancovici, also an engineer, and designed by Christophe Blain. The scenario is written in the same way – a sincere and erudite dialogue between the master engineer and the student designer – and the vision of the world is quite similar: it is a matter of giving orders of magnitude to understanding. to measure the scale of the challenges that await us. The message is intended to be very clear: the planet and the laws of physics impose limits on our lifestyles, and we had better realize this before it is too late.

The book begins by dismantling the science fiction imagination of Silicon Valley giants, from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, who see space expansion as a solution to the depletion of Earth’s resources. It also details the limits of miracle technological recipes to save humanity from the ecological crisis, from nuclear fusion to artificial intelligence, including humanoid robots. And tells how the dematerialization of the economy has made us lose a form of understanding of the world. In their wandering through ages and places, Philippe Bihouix and Vincent Perriot gradually tell how everything around us is the fruit of these activities. They move from coal mines to oil rigs, as a reminder of what really makes the world go round and what we often choose to ignore.

Vicious circle

The comic takes the time to transport us to industrial areas around the world, to understand how mining began, how resources were formed and how we exploit them. “We have never extracted as many resources as currently. In the next thirty years, we will extract more than since the dawn of humanity”explains the engineer, who emphasizes that the consequences are numerous: pollution, deforestation, release of toxic sludge, heavy metals which remain dangerous for centuries, massive energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. With a vicious circle that formed as the resources of the earth’s crust were exploited: “Always more resources to capture, convert, transport, store, use energy… and always more energy needed to extract resources that are less and less concentrated and accessible”note Philippe Bihouix.

The same reading grid is applied to digital, recalling that“a smartphone requires more than 1,000 times its weight in resources and waste, or around 200 kilograms”. The comic also returns to the limits of metal recycling, which only allows us to recover part of what is produced, and to the immense waste of materials used for anecdotal uses. This physical and philosophical stroll also engages in a sharp criticism of economic growth, perceived as infinite, when, precisely, the resources on which it relies are not infinitely available.

To escape from this Promethean vision while relying on the strengths of technology, Philippe Bihouix suggests demonstrating “techno-discernment”in the footsteps of the work of the thinker Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). To better understand what we really need and what we can do without, to foresee a sustainable future. Resources succeeds in being a comic strip that explains the limits of the physical world by offering an intellectual journey rich in historical and philosophical references. An additional brick, especially for readers of the Endless world who want to refine their understanding of these issues.