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…
Last time I wrote about about project development, and how everything was optimized within project borders, but the effects outside the project boundaries were neglected. But between architect and client, it’s just the same, and even worse, as became evident once again when I attended a presentation about a new…
A building is usually assessed sec, as a building. Or as a complex of buildings, within the project development boundary, both energetically and financially. See previous contribution. But that is often at the expense of effects outside the project boundary. A few examples can clarify this. Some years ago I…
In projects with students, it regularly clashes between economic and environmental cq climate objectives, and thus also between real estate and building physics tutors. Or between ‘the project developer’ and the ‘energy calculator’. And the battle is fought over the heads of the students ; they have to find a…
This summer I started decribing some bullshit Products, mainly on Linkedin.It was a great success, it got a lot of attention.The idea originated from readig the book Bullshit Jobs: I relised that whatever job, you can still but bullshit products…. Here is an update of those Bullshit products, previously describe…
A significant part of humanity is engaged in say “pushing papers around” not really contributing to generating value, physical value that is: investing and capturing energy, for example, processing materials, growing plants and food. They are engaged in trading in it, to make as much profit as possible, or writing…
On a recent trip, in one of the excursions I was sitting in a bus behind a young couple. The bus had just stopped for a pee and drink break, and as soon as we were driving the guy in front of me turned on the video on his phone,…
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…
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….
This week I was confronted again with CO2 calculations. It was about the (absolute) CO2 budget, the maximum that can still be emitted to keep a chance of staying under 1.5 degrees, and which will be exhausted at the end of next year.[1] The starting point, of course, should be…
