When Galileo pointed his telescope at the sky in 1609, he discovered mountains on the surface of the Moon, turning it into another Earth, and Earth into a planet among so many others. In this way, the cosmic order was irretrievably disturbed, just as was the political and social order of his time. Four centuries later, the role and position of our planet has, once again, been profoundly shaken by the new sciences that reveal how human actions can cause the Earth to react in unexpected ways. If Galileo taught us that the Earth moves, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis have discovered a dynamic and self-regulated Gaia. And, once again, the whole organisation of society seems to be called into question.

A lecture-performance by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati, in which the social and cosmic order is described as “heading towards an unparalleled political and economic collapse”, due to the climate crisis.