Radio France Inter — “Chroniques littorales” program · October 25, 2023 · Feature by José-Manuel Lamarque, with Mathilde Munos
In his literary program *Chroniques littorales* on France Inter, José-Manuel Lamarque hosts Thibault Lamarque, founder of Castalie, to discuss his essay *L’humanité a soif et les baleines boivent la tasse*. Presented as a manifesto, the book sounds the alarm about water as a finite resource and plastic pollution in the oceans. The conversation blends personal observations, educational insights, and a call to action, without succumbing to doomsday scenarios.
Key takeaways
- Published by Novice, the essay *Humanity Is Thirsty and the Whales Are Drowning* is a short, practical manifesto born of the observations of a water professional with twenty years of experience.
- The 2022 heat wave served as a catalyst: it convinced Thibault Lamarque, the author, that he needed to alert the general public to the end of the illusion of an infinite water supply.
- The book emphasizes the central role of agriculture in the use and quality of water resources, presenting farmers as key agents of change.
- The author points out that in France, 16 billion single-use bottles are consumed each year, of which only about half are recycled, with the rest being incinerated, landfilled, or lost.
- The title, which is deliberately tinged with humor, reflects a conscious choice: to offer a book of solutions and explanations rather than a text designed to make readers feel guilty, in the vein of a manifesto like Stéphane Hessel’s *Time for Outrage *.
- Filtering tap water at the point of use, rather than transporting it in bottles over hundreds of kilometers, is one of the practical approaches to reducing both single-use plastic and the transportation footprint that the book advocates.
Source: France Inter, “Chroniques littorales,” October 25, 2023 — a segment by José-Manuel Lamarque. Listen to the original broadcast
