( a short version has been published on Linkedin) . Whats happening now, with the corona crises, shows how the world / human beings have become vulnerable to disruptions of “business as usual’ , or better: current ‘life as usual’… Continue Reading
The Scottish Island Eigg, with around 100 inhabitants, for some 10 years now runs its own independent electricity network, and functions fine. (see previous article). In part 2: what now? With such a joint electricity network , which works fine… Continue Reading
So I went to Eigg. I had already heard about it, and also wrote about it, on the basis of information collected at a distance. But I wanted to know what was really behind it, and why it had happened.… Continue Reading
In the Netherlands most houses are heated by natural gas, but now we want to phase out that gas heating. Which of course is in principle easy: just close the tap, which is in the gas-fields in the North of… Continue Reading
Society faces an immense problem, preventing catastrophic climate change in order to save itself. Which requires a huge turnaround, and choices in what can and can’t be done any longer , and all that very fast, we only have a… Continue Reading
It has been a year since the Dutch version of the book was published, Gebroken Kringlopen (Broken Cycles). I handed out the first copy to Marjan Minnesma, who is on top of the required transition with NGO Urgenda. The English… Continue Reading
Why didn’t we realize this before… Since a year or two there has been a working group of a number of collaborating scientists in Europe, under the wings of an international NGO (iiSBE) who are investigating what the ‘carbon budget’… Continue Reading
A few months ago I wrote about agriculture, and that the EROI was 0.16: 1 (energy return on (energy) investment) – on average across all agricultural products in the Netherlands, and the EL (Embodied Land) no less than 7.7 ha-year… Continue Reading
Amsterdam needs around 50,000 charging points for electric cars. 50,000? Really? Have we gone completely nuts or what? Doesn’t alarm bells start ringing: “What the hell are we doing?” Where do all these raw materials come from, and the energy… Continue Reading
The introduction to the Dutch version of my book was headed: the world on fire. ( after summer in English available!) “Well”, was often the reaction, “a bit exaggerated, isn’t it? Sounds like doomsday thinking right?” But it is not… Continue Reading