Objectives: This research is based on the observation that scientific knowledge about the bioclimatic context is insufficiently central to the public debate, which is saturated by different types of political narrative that regularly have nothing to do with the facts. We have produced a typology of political narratives in the Anthropocene epoch. The purpose of this typology is to help people make political judgements and to distinguish between facts (accessed through the mediation of scientific knowledge) and narratives (most of which are ineffective in containing the bioclimatic runaway of the Earth system). This is a major challenge for education. Theoretical framework: The underlying theoretical framework is the new geological epoch we are entering, the Anthropocene, characterised by a lasting change in the conditions of habitability of the Earth for all living organisms and for human life in society. We are mobilising both biogeophysical and socio-political knowledge of the Anthropocene to produce an effective interpretative framework for reality. Methodology: To assess these new narratives in terms of what they contribute to the human adventure or what they plan to do with it, we will use two analytical criteria. The first is scientific, based on current environmental knowledge. Our guide will be the scientific state of play on the planet, i.e. the research that has led to an international scientific consensus. The second criterion is political: we will focus on what deepens democracy rather than what weakens it. We will examine the political threat posed by the current environmental context. Data sources: 300 documentary sources were categorised and analysed in an attempt to identify the six major political narratives of the Anthropocene. Results: A deciphering of the six political narratives of the present day, which provide a possible breeding ground for de-democratic failure and/or ecological failure: the false narrative, according to which we are not sure that climate change is man-made; the Chinese narrative, according to which the end justifies the means; the Californian narrative, which holds out the prospect of techno-scientific salvation; the carefree-but-not-so-carefree narrative, which bases global change on each citizen's conversion to ecology; the perverse narrative, which wants to make everything fit at once; the alternative narrative, which postulates that only a democratic radicalism will enable us to live together on Earth.

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