We just fish the fish from the sea, without any consideration. The fish is not asked anything. And they are not paid for. We haven’t even sown those fish. So, at a fish stand, they are earning money with something they have taken from the sea for free, from a…
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…
I’m not much into a kind of spiritual approach, at least, as a beta scientist I’m not sure how to deal with that. I’m more into physics, what can we prove (or at least: what we can’t change…). On a fundamental level that is, not within limited system boundaries where…
Loss and damage fund, filled by miljonairs…?- COP28 The first result of COP28 seems to be already there, a loss and damage fund for ‘weaker’ countries. However, there was already an agreed-upon investment fund to help those countries get into transition. But that fund is not functioning, still largely empty,…
Degrowth is currently a topic of significant interest, presenting the idea of “degrowing” as a necessity to address our problems. (this is based on a previous article on Linkedin). The implicit message is clear and seems to point in the right direction. However, it all depends on how we define…
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…
