Trees versus humans
Once upon a time, we crawled out of the sea. Crawled around on land for a while, but there was nothing to do there, so we migrated back to the sea. Millions of years later we went back to look… Continue Reading
ecology
DELY : Disabled Earth Life Years
We can develop beautiful so-called scientific methods to calculate all the effects of our impact, but in the end only two data are relevant: energy and material use, and the rest is derived from that: all emissions, to air or… Continue Reading
Biomass (-growth) is our reference : Back to the forests
By now its obvious: the way we are currently dealing with climate, environment, raw materials, food, biodiversity, will not help us prevent disasters. But what then? The struggle and discussion on solutions is in full swing currently. Just look at… Continue Reading
The Netherlands is worn out
Nitrogen levels are too high, as are levels of particulate matter, too much manure, CO2 emissions continue to rise, as does methane emissions, biodiversity drops dramatically, the agricultural land is exhausted, natural gas fields collapsing, heat waves of 40 degrees,… Continue Reading
Every agriculture hectare requires 7,7 ha input…. Embodied Land
Before going into agriculture, and the available figures for it, I will briefly summarize how evaluate keeping resource loops closed. Fot this a calculation method has been developed, called MAXergy, with Embodied Land as a measuring unit. To close resource… Continue Reading
Short of Land? the ocean, our next colonisation
On land probably we will not succeed. It gets a bit crowded with 10 billion, the available land per capita is decreasing, we resist giving up some of our wealth , our thirst for materials and technology. The battle of… Continue Reading
The hole in the doughnut, and more economics
And of we go, to Kate Raworth speaking in Rotterdam, about her book and ideas on ‘dougnut economics’. The evening started well: at the entrance I overheard a conversation between two students: One saying: “what a lousy students we are,… Continue Reading
The Growth syndrom : a pyramid game
Richard Attenborough summarized it as follows: ” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist..” The addiction to profit and money making by economists has simularities with religion… Continue Reading
People are complex, nature is not…
Again and again I come across the comparison of man and nature . And usually the story is that we as mankind approach things to simplistic or to reductionist, , we break down things in little pieces which we optimize,… Continue Reading
Circular? Or economy ? (the last one…)
For a while I am trying to understand what the initiatives for a Circular Economy imply. And when I look at the two words , they are in contradiction, from whatever angle I observe this. First of all what is… Continue Reading