Categorie: landuse
The world is getting a bit crowded, and most people have no idea of the real impact of their activities, especially when it comes to land degradation, as the ultimate foudnation for our existence. They might be somewhat aware of their travel behavior (such as flight shame) or their eating…
Land is our capital, and everything can be expressed in the space-time needed for the activity, in hectare-years of output to capture and store (solar) energy. This can be as food, as raw material, or as stored energy.But it’s not only ‘raw materials’ that require land; social activities and hobbies…
Recently, I read some interesting books again about developments in quantum physics and space relativity, essentially the micro and macro aspects of physics, and the attempts to unify the two. It’s not entirely my field, but incredibly fascinating. What I struggle with most in the formation the theory are the…
How to deal with CO2, causes quite a bit of confusion. (See also earlier [1]) No wonder, considering that focusing on an effect rather than a cause leads to such confusion, but more on that in a moment. I was once again triggered by the debate about Carbon Credits. For…
Essay-longread, original: ‘Hub Holland Hub’ It is well known and frequently in the news how Schiphol and KLM defend themselves regarding the impact and number of flights via Schiphol. Especially concerning the ‘hub’ function, meaning that half the world cannot function without us, that if they don’t offer this hub…
Cork. Lately I regularly come across publications and buildings with Cork. Ideal insulator, it seems, and weatherproof, And quite a decorative material, recently saw some nice applications in construction design. Well, that could be so, but is it a serious option? For that, we have to dive into some figures….
Vertical farming, and thus “indoors,” is a form of enormous technocratic hubris, which costs more than it yields. I wrote about it before, that trying to beat nature, millions of years of evolution, is complete madness.[1] Growing crops via natural selection/cropcrossings and maybe indoors ( unheated greenhouses),with yields accelerated thus…
The Netherlands is grappling with its land. With its land management and spatial planning. From all sides, there’s a demand for scarce land: by livestock farmers for pasture and spreading manure, they want to expand more and more. But also for construction, roads, and solar parks. And data and distribution…
Regularly questions and discussions arise about wool and sheep [1]. Is it effective and/or useful, is it better/worse than alternatives, and so forth. Time to delve into that and try to put it into perspective. First, let’s look at some numbers: There are approximately 800.000 sheep in the Netherlands, producing…
I’m sitting on a terrace on the borders of the Moselle, tasting some local wine. And looking out over the slopes along the Mosel, I come to a rather confrontational observation: we have deforested an enormous area, in order to be able to grow our wine… All the southern slopes…
