The figures arriving from Météo France carry a peculiar weight this week. Fifty departments already placed under vigilance, with more to follow—such numbers would have been remarkable a generation ago. Today they announce themselves with almost routine gravity. Yet routine should not breed indifference. I have spent my career insisting that phenomena, however familiar, demand rigorous observation and honest interpretation. The heat accumulating in our atmosphere is no different. We measure it, we record it, we verify the measurements across multiple instruments and methodologies. The experimental method leaves no room for comforting denial: the temperatures are rising, the episodes are intensifying, and their frequency accelerates.

What strikes me most forcefully is not the meteorological fact itself, but our civilisation's fragile attempt to continue uninterrupted during conditions that reveal the brittleness of our arrangements. That examinations—the baccalauréat oral examinations—must be postponed for students suffering in examination halls speaks volumes. We have built our institutions, our schedules, our very rhythms of life upon assumptions of climatic stability that no longer hold. This is not melodrama; it is elementary observation. The experiment called industrial civilisation proceeds, and nature provides the results we should have anticipated.

Yet I resist both panic and resignation. The same rational method that documents our predicament must now guide our response. We know what produces excess heat in the atmosphere; we understand the mechanisms with precision earned through decades of careful study. The question is no longer scientific—it is moral and political. Can a society that has learned to synthesise compounds, to bend chemistry to human purpose, find the will to reshape its energy systems? The chemistry of combustion has served us well; the chemistry of carbon capture and renewable energy waits for the investment our moment demands.

France possesses genuine advantages in this transition—a nuclear fleet, agricultural expertise, scientific institutions of the first rank. What remains uncertain is whether we possess the courage to treat climate disruption with the seriousness it commands. The heat will intensify. Our response must accelerate with it. This is not faith; it is the simple logic of cause and effect, verified through every thermometer and every cancelled examination.