How Engineers Communicate–Learning from the French

You will find out over time that I am a person with some strong passions, some of them strange (steel-cut oats), some of them (perhaps) less so (bicycling).  One of my passions is France and the French language.  While English has become the dominant language globally, if we know another language, we can experience non-English-speaking cultures more fully and learn from how they do things.  In France there is a very popular form of publication called the Bande dessinée (BD), which we might think of as comics.  However BD’s are not always fictional and they treat a variety of serious subjects. (When I first was learning about them, I was surprised to see that the French Holocaust Museum had an exhibit about BDs related to the Holocaust.). Recently a French engineer, Jean-Marc Jancovici, published a BD called Le Monde Sans Fin (The World Without End), in which he tried to explain energy production and usage to a popular audience.  In the BD Jancovici uses the character Iron Man, claiming that access to fossil fuels has given humans the power of superheros.

He has a very simple explanation of nuclear power (which he is in favor of)

He also makes the argument that growth (croissance) is fundamental to our societies.

This book has been a best seller in France. The book store I went to had it marked #2 among all books they sell.  Jancovici has been a regular on French television and radio, explaining climate change and possible approaches to it.  His work reminds me of the importance of effective communication and I don’t think there is an engineer like him in the US.