Categorie: future
As human beings, we seem to want everything faster. Or at least, that’s how society and industry are structured—faster cars, fast fashion, fast food (who even peels their own potatoes anymore?), and so on. We call it progress, or prosperity. And we convince ourselves it’s a good thing—mainly because many…
Imagine you’re on a small island (metaphorically speaking, a little ball in the universe), and you theoretically have only one source of concentrated material—a small hill, so to speak. You also have a piece of land just sufficient for growing food, and nothing else matters. Let’s say that hill is…
It seems that more and more energy is needed to keep the capitalist exhaustion of the Earth going, which also requires more and more material. How did we get here, and where do we go from here? A thought experiment. Originally, however, there was (and is) plenty of energy—solar energy—and…
Dear readers, at the beginning of the year, let’s get some steam out, for a fresh start… Is it really that difficult to understand how the world works in essence, or do we still refuse to grasp it in 2025, or deliberately avoiding the subject?Look, it is still the case…
The Earth is a physical subsystem of the universe, and the physical processes within it are fairly well-known and describable. For example, concentrated reserves of raw materials are limited, and within such a finite system, infinite growth (organization of molecules) is not possible. This is bound by limits, just as…
How long do buildings last? There’s little scientifically sound to say on the matter, and there are hardly any studies that have fundamentally examined it. Like the question: when does a building lose its primary function as a dwelling when no maintenance is carried out? In other words, when is…
The year 2100: Finally! It’s the year 2100, and for the first time, CO2 emissions from buildings will start going down. It should have been already zero by 2050, but due to spreading emissions over the lifespan of buildings, it’s only mathematically the case from 2100 onwards. Yearly that will…
It will be cities that in the coming decades (and partly already now), will have to face people’s problems most directly. Which was my reasoning in my recently published book ‘Post Fossil Life.’ ( in Dutch, later this year in English). To start with Interpersonal problems, as we already see…
Our biggest problem is that people, or humanity, do not observe or respect boundaries , to anything, and when facing them, they also want to constantly push those boundaries. And when starting to talk about boundaries, it quickly becomes a discussion about the freedom to choose for oneself. During Corona,…
I have to admit, capitalism has worked, allowing us, at least in our part of the world, to live in luxury. Even the poorer part of society here with us don’t have it as bad as in large parts of the rest of the world. However, the whole system has…
