In April 1974, France prepared to elect a new president. Rights were shared between Gaullist Jacques Chaban-Delmas and “forward liberals” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and François Mitterrand bringing the “joint program”. But we are also talking about the oil crisis, gasoline shortages, cars. There are three television channels and the official campaign site is widely followed. One night, some sort of scientist Cosine appears on the screen. White hair, red sweater, glass of water in hand, René Dumont, 70, speaking to French. Presented by Friends of the Earth, the newcomer caused a sensation. “We will soon run out of water and that is why I drink in front of you a precious glass of water since before the end of the century, if we continue to overflow like that, it will run out…” A sequence that has become a cult, stands out in the grand imagination of French politics.

Who is that boy ? A scientist with children’s eyes. The first environmental candidate in the presidential election in France, he retrospectively enjoys the aura of a pioneer, at the forefront of media ecology, the forgotten ancestor of José Bové. All this because, in the weeks leading up to this election, a handful of environmentalists looking for a candidate to embody their new movement had thought about it. Dumont, the father of political ecology in France? The man didn’t always come from this camp. An agronomist, he is one of the craftsmen of what the West does worst: agriculture in the