18 November 2023

16:45 – 17:30

Amphitheater Say

Sylvain Rotillon

Putting a body into motion necessarily involves an expenditure of energy. The heavier the body, the greater the need. For most of its history, the human species has used the energy produced by living beings to meet its mobility needs. Over the past two centuries, however, we have massively substituted other sources of energy, mainly fossil fuels. This shift has made it possible to carry ever heavier loads, faster and further. But this reliance on motorized vehicles to get around means that we are less and less active, mobile yet static. What’s more, transport is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly sedentary, on the one hand, and accentuating climate change, on the other, our modes of transport are weighing heavily on our environmental and health challenges.

Conference: What if we changed the energy we use to get around?

Sylvain Rotillon works for the Essonne Departmental Council, where he has been in charge of the department’s cycling policy since November 2023. For the past two years, he has held the position of Deputy to the Interministerial Coordinator for the Development of Cycling and Walking within the Ministry of Transport. More specifically, he worked on walking policy and the links between active mobility and health and urban planning policies. Trained as a geographer, after a career as a researcher into the functioning of natural environments, he joined the Ministry of the Environment nearly twenty years ago, where he worked on water policy, natural and technological risks, and research policies in the human and social sciences.