Categorie: future

Stress test for cities

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…

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On Freedom: and a Short and a Long term government

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,…

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Capitalism and Comfort: a segregation of state and economy is needed.

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…

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Oppenheimer and ‘the Wealth race’

Last week, I watched the film about Oppenheimer, and that piece of history made me realize that what we are experiencing now is, in fact, a kind of (nuclear) arms race: who can grow the fastest, who can protect themselves the most, to acquire wealth, and who can extract the…

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Living off sun and wind , now , today.

Basing our current lifestyle on 100% renewable energy is not going to work, (see two episodes earlier [1]) What then if we adjust our lifestyle now to the amount of renewable energy cq electricity available today, and distribute it fairly, with some creativity? Then we are done installing and investing….

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yes or no 100% renewable energy studies?

The debate whether or not 100% renewable electricity supply is feasible, is ongoing. 100% at the current standard of living, that is. The standard of us, here in the rich countries. There are quite a few snags in that. It has to be built more or less from scratch, (we…

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Europe: looking for a climate proof housing location

Of course, it makes some sense, improving our house with some insulation, a heat pump and so on (or not, I’ll come back to that soon!) , but if you could choose where to live or build, or move, where would you go, given that you want to be prepared…

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Where to build, and where not to build (in NL)

I was asked that question last year by Thomas van Belzen of Cobouw,[1] and it got me thinking. It was an interview in Dutch, but let me return to it in English and in more detail at the beginning of 2023. The first reaction is of course: why build, we…

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Not a CO2 focus, but a Post-Fossil focus

The Quest in Egypt is actually quite simple: Not look for reductions of fossil, but how to live off the sun, and its derivatives, wind and water power. And where possible make things a little more effective with a little gravity and geothermal power. That’s it, in terms of energy…

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Forget tech-optimism…

The newspaper article on Saturday on the front page of the economics section of the NRC national newspaper , opens with the headline:  “believing in growth or shrinkage.” With that, I was immediately on the fence. Because it’s not about believing. It’s physics. You can calculate how much energy and…

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