 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Circular Metabolism Podcast. I'm your host, Aristide from Metabolism of Cities. In this podcast, we interview thinkers, researchers, activists, policymakers, and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities and how to reduce their environmental impact in a socially just and context-specific way. I hope you enjoyed your summer holidays, we're back, and today we will talk about a concept that you all know and that it has been used by all of you in one discussion or another. In fact, I think it's probably one of the most widespread concepts to quickly discuss about all of the challenges or all of our environmental challenges put together. This concept is the ecological footprint. To talk about it, we have today the co-creator or co-founder of this concept and the author of our ecological footprints Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. A book I read, I think, a decade or so ago. I still have some notes and post-its on it. And the author is Matisse Wackernagel, and Matisse has co-developed this concept during his PhD at the University of British Columbia. Since then, he has received numerous awards. Of course, one of the nice ones that are attached to our work is the one of the Worldwide Fund for Nature Award for Conservation Merit, the Herman Daly Award from the U.S. Society of Ecological Economics, the Kenneth Balding Award of the International Society for Ecological Economics as well. Aside from all of this work, Matisse has co-founded as well the Global Footprint Network, which is a think tank that develops and promotes tools for advancing sustainability, including the ecological footprint and biocapacity, which both measure the amount of resources we use and how much we still have. So with all that being said, welcome Matisse, and thank you very much for being part of this podcast. It's awesome. Thank you, Arstib. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Could you perhaps give a brief intro of yourself? I don't know if I've pictured you correctly or not. I don't need to know myself. But I grew up in Switzerland and I was born in 62. I think something very striking for me are the number of striking things. One is my parents and grandparents talking about World War II and the resource constraints. I mean, Switzerland luckily didn't have much war action, but the food constraints was a traumatic thing that people remembered and the rationing at Switzerland only had like seven months of food per year. And so the relationship between resources and our lives, that was a constant story we heard about. And also wondering how we still don't have such a high income and not having resources. That puzzled me always, particularly spent some time on a farm as a kid, like during the vacation, walking behind the farmer and kind of learning about how the farm works. It was just fascinating. And then wondering why do the farmers, like they send all their food to the city and get back very, very little. I'll look down upon, it's very strange, but it's so dependent on food and they're such nice people. And then we were hit by the oil crisis, not just Switzerland, the world in 73. And Switzerland reacted very heroically with three car-free Sundays, which of course is ridiculous. It's ridiculous three days compared to like the amount of fossil fuel used. But as a child, it was just eye-opening. Because back then pollution from cars was really stinky. I mean, it's horrible as a child and then the cars that took over the space and we could for the three days, bicycle anywhere we wanted, even on the highways. It was fantastic and it was quiet and our parents talked with the neighbors, which didn't happen otherwise as much. So it was like a popular party. For me, the idea of a fossil fuel free future seemed so tangible and attractive and inevitable. As a child, I thought, oh my God, I'm sure it's going to take a long time. I'm sure it's going to take at least five or 10 years. But now I'm here. A little bit later. Really is later. And we're still struggling with similar ideas. I mean, the ideas have progressed, just our consumption. I mean, I think the percentage of fossil fuel used now is still about the same as it was in the early 70s. It has moved a little bit, but very little overall. Just that the consumption overall is far, far higher. And like halfway through in 1992, we had the first climate convention. That's a long time ago. And still it hasn't shifted that much overall. I mean, there's some interesting trends. Windmills and the price of renewables is coming down, et cetera. But in terms of transforming our dependence on fossil fuels, it's quite stunning how far behind we are. Yeah. And I can imagine that this is the slight game between hope and frustration whenever you have like a big climate summit or whenever you see something happening like a crisis, like the one we're inside of it or outside of it depending on how positive we are and the ones of the ecological one before. And you think that, yeah, as you said, in a couple of years' time, all will be over, all will be well. But then we keep in this perpetual, let's say, I don't know, loop where we learn new stuff as well. I think we get out of the loop and then we get back to it somehow. Perhaps it's a spiral and not a loop in some kind. I think one big issue, the way where we are so stuck in the loop is that even from the environmental side, we have chosen a narrative that is not very helpful. And I think that narrative is too much based in painting the global challenges as our personal problems or another way of seeing, the more technical way of seeing is to be seen as a tragedy of the common sense of, oh, wow, it would be really nice for humanity not to be in that situation. But what can I do? I'm just such a small speck. So how nice can we be to the world? And that even goes to the nation's level. I mean, to have climate negotiations, you wonder and say, what are we negotiating about? How nice is Switzerland going to be to the world? That's a very strange question. That's the underlying question of the UN Convention. It's the other way around. I think the challenges we see in the world, that's our context. That's the context we live into. And the question is, rather, how will Switzerland be able to operate that world? What's Switzerland's ability to organize itself? It's much more necessary for the country and the country as a government. We have a sovereign in Switzerland. We have a sovereign on the side. And we do as if it was about how nice, are we doing our fair share compared to the rest of the world? It's really strange. While actually we are at stake. And the interesting thing is with any problem, if you react well to a context in a way that increases your chances of winning, you do things that also are good for the whole. So if your strategy is to do something that's a situation even worse, the likelihood on average that these strategies functions are very low. It's not replicable. But all replicable strategies that help you cope with that context also benefit the context. If you're very worried about kind of shifting us to context. But primarily see yourself, wow, if I'm not ready for the future that we can anticipate, I will not be ready. And it's strange because the future, I think, is more predictable than it is today. Never. Like we know that people would want to eat and sleep and be housed. We know that exactly. We also know that there will be far more climate change and resource constraints. The question is how much more depending on obviously some of the choices we'll make over the next decade, but there will be more climate change and more resource constraints. And given that and demand will go up possibly too. If the population trends continue like we see them today. The reproduction rates are coming down, but also we're living longer. So it's got all these kind of trends. So we know the storm that's going to come. Why are we not preparing our boats? That's the question, I think. And especially that before, because we're not outsourcing most of the issues or our economies were much, I mean, their hinterlands were much smaller. We could more or less still postpone the problem to the future. And now the outsourcing of each country touches upon the other one. So there is, you know, there is this Venn diagram where almost everything overlaps and we don't have any more space to move towards it. I mean, space and time overlaps. I mean, work on cities. Cities have huge time delays. You cannot turn a city around in one day. It takes like most of the infrastructure, particularly higher income cities will have in 2050 are already built. It's not going to be like totally transformed. So and but the speed at which the future comes to us is much bigger. So I think the time, how quickly we get into that future is shorter than it takes to adjust our infrastructure. And actually it would be very helpful for us to run much faster. In some ways, economically, I think economically the case is very, very clear. Only that we don't see it because we believe still in continued expansion, which in the end destroys our wealth from a wealth perspective. It's fueling a liquidation policy or what in English it's called a Ponzi scheme a pyramid scheme or I think sometimes it's called a snowball system. Where you live like you pay the old investors taking from them from the from the fresh investors you take from the future to pay for the present. It's illegal in all domains, but ecology and ecology is much bigger than the rest. We are a subsystem of ecologies. It's very strange that we encourage a Ponzi scheme. We say now we, but I think that the way most countries operate is kind of based based on policies that accelerate the Ponzi scheme. While in other domains, financial domains, it's actually illegal and people are put to jail. It's very odd. Yeah, well the legally binding element I think is one of the central ones, right? I mean, as soon as we will have some, it's the same thing with Commons. In Commons, you have laws and you have normally you should have regulations and you know, not punishment, but some, you know, there. Yeah, I think legal is not leading. Leading is following. So first you have to have the sense that this is what the right thing is. You know, so it's not, you know what I mean? And it's more attractive. That's for sure. Then it has to, I think the recognition that this is really hurting us. And then I mean, the laws are not just kind of formalizing this understanding, but the understanding is still widely lacking. And then I'm fascinated by that. Yeah. And it's funny because I think your concept is one of the ones that's really helped bring this to the forefront. I mean, the complexity of, you know, a thriving society or a thriving humanity needs. Needs resources, needs somehow to capture its emissions and needs to balance it out with what the planet can provide. So we have like many pieces of the puzzle together and you brought one concept to reunite these, let's say three pillars. How, how would you define or when you were thinking about this concept? How did you arrive to the term, let's say ecological footprint? And the concept, we thought about these things for a while. And I think it was kind of a great luck. Like Bill Rees got a new computer and the people told him that, wow, this has a small footprint on your desk. Oh yeah, that's a good way of doing it. But I think that the biological, we were both intrigued with caring capacity. Because animals, obviously, it's quite established the idea. There's only so much of an animal population that can be supported by a certain region, for example. And does it apply to people? I think the biggest mistake that people have made around that is to ask the question a speculative way. Like often hear the question, how many people can live on the planet, for example? It's a close to useless question because it's by nature speculative. Because, oh, but it depends on like, how much? But if you turn the question around, it becomes totally descriptive. Not how many people could live on a planet, but how many planets are people using right now? It's the opposite question, you know? And then it becomes totally obvious. Like the descriptor is not a speculation about the future. And people still think we make speculations about the future. And we have strictly just done bookkeeping, accounting of what actually is being used compared to what's being renewed. So I think the underlying inspiration is perhaps the insight and maybe that it's biased by my childhood on, like, vacations on a farm. That in the end, every country is like a farm. Actually, it is a farm. How big is the farm compared to what it takes to support that country, you know? And the farm, I mean, so waste and resource demand, they can be synergetic or they can be in competition. There's too much waste and actually you destroy ecosystem. But I mean, the manure from cows just goes back and then it actually increases the fertility of the pasture. So all the demands in the end, they do compete for what nature can regenerate. You can choose to build a bigger farmhouse and that's probably in the flat part of your farm and that would have been a very good garden or field. And so there's no carrots growing there. And you can, all the days, farms used the forest for fuel would, or you could, if you use fossil fuels, then you need space to absorb the CO2. You don't need to, but if you want to maintain natural capital, so accounting essentially means it's capital maintenance. Like what's the flow needed to maintain your capital? So if you use more fish than it's being regenerated, it's like using bigger fish stock. If you cut more trees than are being regrown, it's like using a bigger forest. If you emit more CO2, then it's being absorbed. It's like using more capacity of the biosphere to absorb things. And funnily enough, when we started, people laugh at us for putting also CO2 into the equation of saying, this is a competing demand. And now, I mean, now we know because people sell reforestation credits for CO2 reduction. There's a very strong, the limitation of fossil fuels, and that wasn't as clear back then, is not so much because of how much is on the ground. There was still some hope that actually there would not be enough in the ground, so it will come teeter out by its own devices. But actually, the amount that we already discovered on the ground is far exceeding what the biosphere could meaningfully take on with that kind of massive, massive change in climate. And I mean, there were much higher CO2 concentrations in the beginning of life. There were no humans around, it was just suffix here, and I could kind of start to turn CO2 into oxygen. Or some technologies, but technologies rather. So yeah, so people laughed and said, why do you put fossil fuel in there? I think it's ridiculous. And then by 2000, suddenly everybody moved just its own carbon. Yeah. The carbon footprint. And people have heard more about carbon footprint now and carbon footprint. It doesn't even make that much sense, carbon footprint. If you really think about it, what's the kind of carbon footprint? So when you see it in the context of all the other demands of nature, it may make sense. I mean, it's great that it was pushed so much, it was pushed also very strongly by fossil fuel companies. We were always a bit afraid of that. I don't know if it was a net positive or net negative. The term is more used. It's also more accepted. Like, I don't know if you remember the early 2000s, people in the fossil fuel industry were not allowed to talk about peak oil. Even though peak oil, peak, there's no mountain without a peak. It's a mathematical thing. There will be a peak, but it's just a question of when, you know, it's like, it's like, it's not always. I've seen a mountain without a peak, sorry. But that mathematically consistent term was not accepted by the carbon footprint is kind of accepted, but obviously more meaningless than BCCA. Actually, it's helpful to look at the whole, everything that competes for regeneration, because yes, the carbon footprint has become larger and larger. That's the reality of our life today. But also, driving it to zero, where do we get the metabolism from? Are we just going to, like people would want to fry their chickens? Will they just chop down more trees? I mean, like, so we have to look at the whole and also recognize the whole. We may not be able to use the whole because there are other wild species too, with whom we compete. Like the seal eats a fish. I cannot eat that fish. And vice versa, the fish that I eat cannot be eaten by the seal. So there is competition between human demand on what we could say what's the limiting factor for the human economy, which from our perspective is regeneration. Regeneration becomes kind of this common currency of everything. So, so, so what we offered is more kind of interpretation for a burn say how may it be helpful, simplifying to look at the world, taking out as much speculation required. I think, like, you can go back to limits to growth, like seeing one part that kind of made them so vulnerable. It's an amazing book. I mean, you can read it today. How many books that I do technical analysis can read nearly 50 years later. And so they say, wow, yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, it's amazing. So, so, but because by nature, talking about the future is speculative and so so you can never win an argument. Will there be gravity tomorrow? I don't know. We can only find out tomorrow. So, I mean, that's kind of higher. Will technology save us? It's an unsafe. I mean, it's a ridiculous question because you can never agree and that by keep by keeping the argument alive, it's unsettled. And so we can maintain business as usual. So there's a lot of interest in maintaining business as usual, even though it's actually hurting us collectively. And that's what we haven't seen. And we can go into why that is why we have become so blind to our physical existence, so blind, particularly in the social sciences. And it's talked about the Venn diagram. I mean, the Venn diagram is a picture of what some people could call kind of colonial thinking, you know, so that you can always get more from somewhere else. That's the essence of colonial thinking. And it's now you will find it anywhere. I mean, I think kind of this whole trend to urbanization is based on a colonial thought, you know, that you build cities without concern, whether there is actually the resource security to maintain these cities. So, so, so, so, so, oh, yeah, we build it and we can buy some from somewhere. But if in net terms we use more than what can be regenerated, how long can you do that? And I think we haven't focused enough in our work also to look at the, because we look at kind of, if you look at financial parallels, we look like at the flow situation. How much do we like use compared to how much is being regenerated, but we don't look at the capital stock. It's more complex for natural capital to say what's the capital stock and to track in meaningful ways. I mean, from a data perspective and conceptually, but there you can look at the various stocks you can look at our fish fisheries okay, other forests okay. And the atmosphere I mean if you go from 300 to 305 ppm C or two equivalent in the atmosphere who cares. Like the impact like minimal. But if you if you make the same addition where we are right now actually last year according to US government. And most students I asked that the study environmental science haven't heard that. But even the US government measures now how many ppm of CO2 equivalent do we have today in the atmosphere and the last measure like the last kind of accumulation of all the greenhouse gases. As of 2020 is 502 502. So if you go from 502 to 507 you know the five that's very different. So it's like when you get the money if you like the first little debt, oh yeah, I still have like more assets so I can I can overspend a little bit. But once you're closer to bankruptcy, you know, add an extra $5 or five francs of spending. It's dangerous so dangerous so so on the capital side to I mean we're starting to see the brittleness of the system. And so we believe because we could overspend the past we can overspend in the future. While you're now entering a totally new era, I think that's that's what's not recognized and somehow that's kind of puzzling me as well with I mean climate change is more recognized now. It unfortunately strengthens this narrative that we talked about of saying oh it's just about his global comments what can I do, which I think is a misrepresentation of the whole dynamics and go into that as well. But it kind of has strengthened again with I would call the electromechanical mindset of just it's just carbon, not even seeing carbon in the context of a biosphere you know so and how it competes with everything and so I think we we we it leads to solutions. That are not really helping other problems as well so we're kind of solving one problem at the help of another one I could go into, into dramatic examples. If you want, but in the end that kind of that's kind of the. I think the misconception that we've been more removed from the biological reality. Sometimes we call it. I would say it's like the things in English expression you know, we focus too much on the last straw that's breaking the camel's back. And then that obsession gets us think about what's actually the total amount of strong the camel's back. So so so we don't have to be worried so much about popping pointing fingers at who is the last straw we just need to remove, remove straws. That would be more helpful. But I'm wondering so let's go back to young Matisse that left Switzerland. So you did a mechanical mechanical engineering degree. Yeah, at ETH and then you went to British Columbia to do your PhD. And so, I guess your appetite for, for calculations came from this engineering background and somehow. Yeah, yeah, I was I was fascinated. I always loved math. My poetry is math, you know, numbers speak to me. I can look at numbers. But your PhD is in regional planning. Community planning. Essentially, I probably wouldn't allow it to be saying that but so I started first mechanical engineering, because I thought technology would change like things much more than I recognize it also has to be the social side. And regional planning is probably the closest to something we're not allowed to say but it's like social engineering. It's like it's the question, how do you turn knowledge into action? You know, it's not just the theory of Habermas and then somebody has buried ideas and then we drink coffee and we'll sit around. But it's actually it's totally applied. How do we use knowledge to generate shifts? That's the that's the core idea. And the human language planning has not been as accepted in in. I mean, was in the western world generally because it was like the common is planning. That was like in the Cold War, like I just started my PhD just at the end of the Cold War. And then in the in the in the Germanic languages probably because of World War II kind of the fascist planning kind of superstate was also not very welcome. Somehow because they weren't associated with fascism apparently and you know and everything. And so they had that that functions are kind of keeping the cities beautiful. So the commonwealth tradition is pretty strong in planning and alive. So where it's going beyond just kind of making houses nice in the city but it's actually truly kind of thinking more fully about it's a policy program now it's probably called public policies and other in other places. And it was just at the time when the Brunton Commission had written it's for the common future so so when sustainable development became much more a topic of the global stage I mean it started in 72 with the Stockholm conference but then a term sustainable development got enshrined in in in public pardons. Back then every day sustainability is too long of a word it will never catch on nobody like the companies will never use it it's kind of it's too it's too complicated words. And but the stunning thing was the, the, the effort they took to make it complex and not measure it you know, I thought oh they just haven't found out how to measure it. Because why do we have sustainable development because we only have one planet. And then so how much do we use compared to how much we have like how much we need to do actually told my mother that's what I'm studying during my PhD. She could worry worried. This is such a simple question. I'm sure this have done it you will not get your PhD. Be worried, because her brother started his PhD and something that somebody somebody else already worked on and then he had to kind of start again in a different direction something. She was worried about my well be that so that's so that's too simple. And it's still kind of. Yeah, so, so, so I think I've learned a little bit more that the confusion around sustainability has has more actually system it's not it's not really lack of understanding or lack of intelligence or anything it's it's amazing the car the intelligence and the sophistication we as a species, but not the whole species but particularly as kind of the well endowed part of the species. The urban elite and it's putting into this cultural complexification to maintain business as usual so we can feel good about all you're thinking about it, without having to act. But you don't have to act that's the whole thing that's kind of the misconception. Nobody has to act the question is, would it be in our interest, I think it is. I think that's the conversation that's missing to say, if we build cities that depend on resource flows that will not be available. We build ourselves a most dangerous trap. And because the time scales are so short. If you actually truly did a net present value assessment of our cities. You would recognize that economically we're destroying ourselves. So it's not some sophisticated analysis. This kind of is total misconception that we only look at flows and it's a GDP focus. The worst about the GDP focus is not that we are money is doing anything that matters. But I think that the fundamental words is that we only look at flows and not at stocks. So say hooray, we produced 100 Swiss francs, and we forget how many hundred dollars, we actually lost in assets to produce these hundred Swiss francs in some ways. And so resource costs are so diminished, so small for going to reasons why Cape Town didn't pay much for water, you know. And then Cape Town runs out of water like they didn't fully and they found out the solution. But I mean, it's much more difficult if a city runs out of water, the whole city is worth nothing. So it's not about the value of water, but what did the city pay for water? That's nothing. It's what are the implications of not being resource secure, then everything becomes zero because the economy as we know is a subsistence of nature. So not being able to be a subsist means you don't exist. It's not the other way around. And that means you lose all value. Yeah, I mean, it seems so obvious when you say it like that. I mean, after let's say 25 years of when the book came out. So you've probably seen so many different people use the concept and people have seen the value of it in order to understand this complex issue. And yet, I mean, we've seen also that since the 70s or wasn't the 70s that we're now using more than what the US can provide. So we know that, right? Yeah, I mean, the message was totally not like we failed in explaining the message as I also have shifted things. So one thing is to me, bio capacity is the bigger chapter and footprint is a piece of that. But bio capacity is the lens and bio capacity is not even understood that much. You know, that's kind of the importance of regeneration. That's that's one part. And then even bigger. I mean, the whole reason why we went into this is the concept of overshoot the possibility that you can use more than what the capital regenerates. You know, we can overshoot financially. Many have done that. And we can do it ecologically and still the word overshoot barely exists. I just actually that's why we started earth overshoot day as a way to explain the concept in ways that has it only uses two syllable words, apart from the word January. And that's what I'm most proud of. It could be so simple that from January 1st or January that was the three syllable word from January 1st to this year, July 29. People have used as much as our planet can renew in the entire year. You know, no three syllable word apart from January. So primary school children can understand and say, wow. And then it's not just understand the idea. Oh, we have used more than what there is. But even though we didn't put that much of a number in it, people think it's not a number, but actually there is a clear number. Because primary school students will say, wow, it's still a long way from Christmas when I get my gift. And that's still not the end of the year. There's a lot missing. So to bring the piece overshoot in, but then I just did some media analysis to see how the terms actually picking up. And the earth overshoot day is picking up really nicely. I mean, not as much as Beyonce or kind of, you know, or we look for it. But they're quite, I mean, I think we had about this year again, 6,000 media articles that are documented like on the web that you can find. And it's hard to say what the impressions mean, but this media search to kind of translate into how many eyeballs have the possibility to see them. And I think that's half seated, but half the possibility of access to kind of these platforms. And that's so they come up with seven billion in the end. So it comes out, but still, and then if you look for the term ecological overshoot, it barely shows up anywhere. But ecological overshoot is the big topic. Earth overshoot day is just one way of kind of talking about it. And so I think that's kind of where we are struggling so much that we have a huge disease. I would say that we say overshoot is the second biggest risk humanity face in the 21st century, because the biggest risk is not to look at it. So that's really kind of, it's quite humongous. And then you go to a doctor and say, I feel so sick. And I say, sorry, we don't even have a word for your disease. Oh, let me look it up. Oh, somebody said overshoot, but not even a therapy, of course. So it's kind of, it's hard to translate the word in other languages. I mean, we have now established some translations because we have an international campaign, but it's not common parlance, even though it's the underlying thing. And that's kind of going back to the camel idea. So we focus so much on the many straws and we forget kind of the underpinnings. It's quite stunning, I think. And so why do you think overshoot? Is it just because it's two syllables instead of ecological footprints? So you have 10 of them or something that, that it, that it was accepted even further because ecological footprint was already very much accepted. But now overshoot, you say is much more than that. Or that's a big theme of, I mean, I'll just have talked about it. There's been ecological study and kind of the world. That's the world. That's Cabotera cycle, you know, kind of thing. And then, so. Footprint just kind of captured the imagination because it put together like the sense we leave an impact, but also space that we actually use space that space ultimately I think is the ultimate like competition ground. I think modern economics tries particularly at the non at the macro level tries to avoid the idea of competition. I mean, OECD that drives GDP has in its name cooperation. And that the biggest discussion I've had with many economists to see cannot say we're competing we're helping each other through trade, trade is only net positive. And, and, and we are attacked. I mean, we're so much attacked much more on implications than on the tool we call our approach pedestrian science. It's a bit of a joke because you know the footprints pedestrian science, but it is totally pedestrian. It's high school science. We just add up everything we use according to how much regeneration it competes for because then when it competes for you can add it up. You know, things that are overlapping cannot add up but things that compete for you can add up. I mean, the principles, it could be more basic, it's more simple than money accounting money is more complex because you have like you have to distinguish between profit and revenue, you know, so it's kind of, you know, it means that if you get money, actually, you also have to think about how much to take to make that money is it's only kind of the value at so calculating GDP is more sophisticated like which flows do you have to account for material flows the way we do it. It's much more straightforward because we can add up all the things that compete for space. So, so, so that I mean if devil's in a detail and get to get how to get the data and we use you and data sets and they're probably flawed but they're internationally accepted. But 50,000 data points per country and year. It's a lot and it's not a lot because the country is a big entity, you know, but I'm so so it's it's it's it's it's super pedestrian super simple in the end, not that complex. Why is it so hard to kind of be seen or recognized. It's, it's, it's very interesting. I think, I mean, that's why like we say, it takes. It's probably underestimate Switzerland takes four and a half Switzerland's to support itself. And the finance ministry in Switzerland thinks that's irrelevant to Switzerland's long term perspective. It's funny because I don't know whether it's your background in in planning that has land as the ultimate denominator of these or or something else. Well, of course, on the planet we have limited amount of square meters right be it of land or ocean. So that's one of the things that we have limited elements we have other stuff but which are unknown, like reserves, resource reserves or how much CO2 we can put in the in the atmosphere. We know that CO2 that's linked to the square meters. I mean, so that's why we said we map it to the surface of the of the planet to and then to the productive part. And of course the bio capacity can change from year to year because we can like the way we manage it and that's that the word gets probably hotter and wetter it could well be that the productivity of the planet is going down or becomes more erratic and so so agricultural yields will not be as steady, you know, so, so, so, so we're not saying everything is static but just bookkeepers like how much you earn this year how much do you spend this year. And then we do translate into like for every year we know the surface was that much the productivity was that much. So, so it's it's I mean it's it's is your budget limited because it is it doesn't mean that next year may earn differently. So it's just it's the same idea and I think that's for some that's not it's not inspiring. But it's like I say by capacity, it's like gravity, you know, an architect to say oh gravity I hate it I would like to build my pillars differently. I don't want to fall I don't want to gravity say good luck. I mean, so so architects fully embrace gravity. I haven't heard much many conferences where architects go to but they cannot occupy gravity. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's it's interesting to see that. Well, space I think speaks a lot and when we talk about cities, which is a weird, a weird human invention, which is let's say, a place where by definition, survives because of surplus of somewhere else. Right. I mean, cities where and cities jobs exists, thanks to let's say agriculture that was once outside or that a surplus of land that exists somewhere else. So I don't know how you feel about, you know, dealing with cities in general. Do you have you? Well, I can imagine that you have done a number of studies with with cities but what is the that at the same time what what can we say to us to a system that it's by definition the on ecologically sound let's say from a GDP perspective and economic perspective, Canada would be much better off if it just kind of said let's keep Toronto Montreal and Vancouver, let's operate the rest and give it a very give it away because, you know, so that's where the GDP happens so so you have companies much more GDP effort let's just have Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal and get rid of, rid of the rest. If you actually took economics seriously, that would be the logical conclusion. Perhaps just of sentimentality that they're not doing it with the land. I don't know. I mean, so so the economic system is so skewed to urban areas that they can suck the value add out of the entire system. Once one thing that's most shocking insight I've had in the last few years, which I could have had early if I just kind of made the diagram before is the following. And I still haven't resolved I don't know actually I mean I don't know what I have implication what it means but it's the following lowest income countries, typically over 50% of the GDP and the workforce work in agriculture. Let me say lowest that let's say country under $2,000 value add. So just look at that because like the agriculture is really so significant you know so. Then I also would say from my experience as a boy being on a farm. If you have a bigger farm. You can have more cows. They have more throughput and they could buy a more shiny car. So bigger farm helps you to have more productive capacity and earn more money. So applying these two insights that would say oh, wouldn't that then say that those countries that have more access to buy capacity per person in the low in that field would logically have like be better off. So we made that just you can do it yourself you can use our buy capacity data you can use our you can use the words banks the GDP data you cross correlate. And what we found is a total cloud with slight negative correlation actually kind of late late late line to. And even today with massive massive overshoot because the overshoot we are in right now. Okay, we can document 70% more than what is being renewed, but the UN data set doesn't even document like all the destruction like soil loss etc. So it's kind of you know so it's probably not all demands are captured either and still at 70% more and little detail. And arguing we should use the entire planet is like so many other species to so you Wilson says maybe half would be a much better goal for maintaining 85% of the biodiversity in the world, maybe you should just use half. So half compared to 1.7 for that's more than three fold off so we have a you could say that your three our metabolism our biological metabolism is three fold larger than what a sustainable level could imply like that that can have also would be better versus also probably good for climate if you were smaller and prices totally did not react. It's stunning. So, so if prices react then the market will react and then we will adjust gradually that's the software if prices do not react. And the system does not react like with the watering in in Cape Town, then you have disruption. And I told disruption course, because our system, the blindness of our prices to that reality. Make is not react. And I think also our as our as our worldview has moved more towards a mechanic or electromechanical perspective and that's driven also by our city experience. And realize our biological dependence overall, I think we put too much emphasis, oh, let's look at the resources or iron ore or lithium or is there enough lithium. There's plenty of non renewables on the planet, I think it's just a question how big how big holes we dig, you know, so and how much energy we have to concentrate. And also they're limited. I'm not playing it. I mean, we have to carefully manage our other resources as well. But I think the misconception is not recognizing that the so called renewables are even more fragile. And I think many urbanites are all renewable. It's fine. Great renewables. Let's just do all renewable and then we're fine. Actually renewables can be more significant for us and they're more fragile. They're done. Yeah, the potential removal is like the golden goose is renewable. We kill it. The goose like like basic old next. Very good biological metaphor because it does as gold was much better, much more important than biological things. So yeah, so it's an underappreciation of the biological cycles and that's what I, I hoped actually that we would, we would find the recognition that biological existence far more in the COVID situation because COVID obviously tells us we are biology and by biology we are connected with each other. Biologically. And somehow that insight has not become that much stronger, I think a little bit stronger but not not to the extent that Wow, biology really matters. So, so anyhow. You've been doing this, let's say accounting work for 20 plus years right so actually that's 130 more than 30 years and you've done it at different levels. You've done it at the global level national level. You've done it. Cities. Well, you've done to the city level as well but I'm wondering so is there something. So over the years you also probably see that the amount of pressure we put increases that probably the by capacity also decreases a bit or at best remain stable. Is there something that you've seen that still was surprising something that you could have never thought of it while while looking at all of these data for for years and years and years. I mean there's so many surprises. I, that's why I love working in the field because I've worked for 30 years and seen the same question, and I don't get bored. Like, it's like, it's more puzzling every day. I mean, on some levels kind of how to think about these aspects I mean to what extent, I mean, it's also what happens in the word and how we think about it like for example we just did a rough study about Australia which has been very large by capacity but it's population, just because of the population not that large, it's a fragile continent. Then we did a rough calculation about the forest fires in 2020 and say, if we include that and say like, if that's actually lost by capacity you could have negative by capacity if you have a forest accumulated and you lose that then it takes years to rebuild it so that means it's like you overspent that year so your assets went down or your assets went down far more than you had income. And so actually for that year Australia became an ecological or started to run an ecological deficit so the net use of by capacity or including the loss they had in their capital exceeded what was regenerated while that's shocking. That's kind of like a place that has extra. You never thought this could happen, you know, theoretically. And so quickly like the scale of this thing. The other thing is, I mean, the UN data sets, I mean there's more the surprise of kind of the blind spots that doesn't have clarity around loss of soils, you know, loss of water, fresh water that leads to agricultural loss so we're still seeing the athletes so by capacity seems to go up using you and data sets. Well, the reality probably it's not the case it's kind of we're just airing on the side of not exaggerating the situation so sometimes we say tongue in cheek we are more worried about our reputation and about global survival, because when exaggerate it's overshoot is probably underestimated. I mean, I mean, the surprise is also kind of on the data set, for example, with for some force that becoming net sources apparently there's more and more studies coming out like the Amazon becoming a net source of CO2. So, so force productivity obviously has a huge impact on the on the carbon balance. But when you look at FAO data, it's like a static number at best like how much force able to generate. And I'm sure they're changing in productivity with more forest fires and tests and so, and it's not being tracked. And it is kind of this focus that we think monetary wealth can bias everything. And so an Angela Merkel, for example, I'm sure just to take one example, she's more worried about the stability of the euro than the stability of the soils in Germany that are able to produce potatoes. And that's probably true in many countries and that's kind of the wild thing about how powerful we have made money that it can move around so easily that we trust money more than physical assets which are more difficult to trade and exchange. I mean, if you have a farm, you cannot just take a little bit of the farm and buy a cup of coffee, you know, it's kind of selling a whole farm is very complex comparatively. So, so there's this huge advantage and I think Herman Daley said it best I mean the challenge becomes with that creation. There's no limits to negative pigs, you know, I can promise you the pig for the future, even if it doesn't exist and so you kind of influence the negative pigs and then you start to realize wow there's not enough pigs to kind of cover the negative pigs we promised each other. And so that's kind of the pickle we're in. That's not a surprise in some ways. The surprise is more where does it resonate. This year was very excited. I mean one of the highlights of Earth Overshoot Day was that financial times had the graph of overshoot day over times as the main graph on the front page, it was an upper fold. Awesome. And the number of phone calls we got was amazing too, because it was like zero. Zero phone calls. I mean, I'm not surprised that's what happened. It's kind of it seems so apart from the logical. Oh how interesting what I do with it. I don't know what to do with it. Let's continue. Even though it's actually the action ability is quite straightforward from my perspective. So I mean, we work with some companies that I think for so many, it just, they know kind of what the way they operate just doesn't fully fit with the tweetively and so that it's so daunting to them, which is strange because they have to deal with a lot of daunting things. And so understanding your context, understanding the situation allows you to make bets that are much more likely to win. You know, if you bet blindly, every decision is a bet in the end that bet on the future. It doesn't serve you. I mean, it seems like so obvious, but so, so, so I'm a little bit that's this is kind of the puzzling side is, I think it's the social side, I think more like how we are addicted to a noble narrative. We talked about that. And I say addicted because it's to be righteous, you know, so say you're wrong is so satisfying perhaps, or the urgency, we call it like the urgency makes it. But in the end, the question for me is like it's not like for cities. That's what as you work with cities, the question for the city is not how nice can you be to the world. That's kind of how we approach it. The question is why is Basel where I'm from destroying Basel. That's the puzzling question. What does that mean, like are you committed to your own long term success. If you know how the future comes to you, what would that mean, would that mean building more parking garages is that like the best use of your money. You know, so, or like, what would it actually take to be successful. And do you want to be successful. Why do you think this future is not going to come quickly. Because I mean the future, there are many different paths, but they have a lot of aspects in common. So we could say, oh, maybe we will not decide to get out of fossil fuel fast enough, you know, let's see what the others do. If we don't, then we'd have to deal with more climate change, which means more disruptions, more difficulties to get our food, more resentments around the world, less like a higher price to have a global trading system. And you don't have the resources locally and you haven't prepared yourself you have become like you have to totally wrong assets. Or you can sweat a bit more and prepare yourself early and say no matter what, we'll have to get out of fossil fuels, even if the others don't actually the faster we are the more we are prepared because our systems will be able to operate in that future. The future is regenerative whether we like it or not. That's the only possible future. It's actually a certain future. It's going to be regenerative. The question is how quickly we get there. That's the third thing by design or disaster. That's the that's the choice. And I think we always think is sustainability is an option. It's not an option. It's either with us or without us. That's the only thing. It's not even that binary. But I mean, it could shave off a big percentage of the global population. I mean, there may be that the buy capacity may be so much lower than that the budget is so much lower. That's going to be much more difficult for the large population to operate. I don't think that the human species will disappear very quickly. I mean, overall, but it could be a very significant shock. So you touched upon very briefly about actionable elements. You mentioned companies. So what type of how does this work? So let's say there is a company or a territory that uses these principles and how do you do they use them to make them actionable? Do you have some examples? So we're working quite closely with Schneider Electric, for example, they are in the business of digitalization and decarbonization. And somehow they recognized luckily they have a great CEO. Jean-Marce Caldricois, who was an engineer as well, and they can recognize, wow, we are actually a force for sustainability. We don't have to greenwash. So it's actually what more Schneider, better word, because we need to electrify the word and we need to decarbonize the word. And decarbonization and electrification needs digitalization to kind of manage the energy flows, etc. And so they actually look at how much carbon it takes to operate Schneider compared to how much they reduce in the world. Are they getting better at helping the word decarbonize? And through that produce value for the clients. So it's one of the fewer companies that fully embrace sustainability. They're not just saying, oh, it's about sustainable development goals. There are 167 indicators. We contribute to three of them. So we are part of the game. So now it's actually essentially, so they have been able to say that maybe they did a little kind of booklet with them on it, which I thought was quite intriguing. That it's not about how nice are you as a company? Do you have a CSR department? Rather, it's to say, are your goods and services contributing to humanity's success? Because if they are, your markets will more likely open. If not, they will more likely close. Now, it's not the only thing that determines success. But it's like playing soccer on a field that goes downhill. They may still be messy on the other side and even uphill, you will win. But it's on average, it makes life much, much easier. And it's such a simple question, and few companies have embraced it. So I think because we approach the question too much from a kind of a normative perspective, who is good, who is bad. I mean, even people say, what's the footprint of a company, which is scientifically, I think a totally nonsensical question, because companies don't have footprint, it's activities that have footprint. So the question is, what activities do you want to look at? So it's like a functional thing, like with money, you have to say, like, what's the question that you actually want to address, rather than making up kind of ways of calculating things nearly willy, that are not based on clear scientific principles or clear sense of relevance, I would say. So that's, I think, how we work with companies or cities. I mean, it starts from the question of saying, like, we want to help you kind of be successful. Are you committed to your own success? That's kind of the driving question or the underlying question. And if so, then it's awesome to work with them, you know, to say, like, and for a city to say, like, what does it, what does it actually take to be long term successful? Like, what do you want to invest, whether you're not going to invest with companies? Like, I mean, so it's pretty, I think it's pretty straightforward. So once you recognize that the straw on the camel's back and say, any reduction of straw, you know, takes pressure out of your system, like, what does that mean? And so some, some cities now, that's not because of our work, but I know, for example, where I lived for Berkeley, like they're saying, we are taking the gas grid out of the city. We will not have a gas grid in the future. We have to electrify it. And so, so the argument is to say to people, you don't want to be the last ones to have gas, because otherwise you, the more and more of the costs of the whole infrastructure will be burdened on you. The earlier you can get out of it, the more you shed yourself on these kinds of costs that you don't want to be part of it. But that's not the conversation I hear very often around the world is to bring the stranded asset conversation far more kind of practically into people's view. Which is also the problem of, you know, government cities and all of that, which do not own necessarily much of what they are dependent upon. Like sometimes infrastructures, they don't even know them. Sometimes the lands, most of the cases they don't own. And so, you know, it's this weird situation of how do you, even in committing in your own successes, well, cities, what can they really do? Sometimes they only have, let's say, a fraction of the land, a fraction of the infrastructures themselves, because they had to outsource everything. I would say, I would challenge them and say they can do more if they want to. Every city is different and the legal situation, not just the more, but I think one is kind of to be clear from which framework to operate. If that's the organizing principle and say we need to get our city ready, and the citizens, they are mad for every fossil fuel dependent project that is kind of added. And the fossil fuel dependent project is to add houses that still need like fossil fuel heating and cooling or like whatever. So they're not well built or adding more parking infrastructure and all these kind of things. So about how like the zoning power and kind of their development permits, et cetera, can also shape in which direction we go. So if the citizens think, oh my God, it's like, this kind of development is destroying me. There's a different type of energy that you're saying, oh, you want to be a little bit nice and have like more green points associated with our city. Or where do you see kind of the metabolism interest of cities? What do you find like what resonates with cities? Well, from my experience. From what I've seen is that a lot of cities are confused from what they'll get once they do the study or once they've accounted for their flows. The thing that there is, you know, the keys to paradise that they're going to be handed off to them as soon as they're going to perform this study. Whereas it's very much as you said, once you do any type of accounting, then you also need either a clear vision or a clear commitment to something. And then your action plan or your strategy roadmap will come after that. But unless you have like a clear idea of, yeah, we want to not harm the environment anymore at any cost. Well, of course, your strategy and roadmap will be completely different as if you say, okay, we want to, I don't know, reduce the amount of waste coming out of my city. Which is another metric, right? I mean, reducing the amount of waste can also be by exporting it and not treating it locally or etc. So I think a lot is lost in the translation of things after this quantification story. They don't have yet all of the possibilities in their minds of what they can do, what they should do and all of that. And of course, the different layers of administrations don't help and the different politicians that come for a short amount of time, whereas administrations are there for a long amount of time. There is this duality of time frames which often hurt like every politician comes with a vision. They come out, I will do the circular economy. The next one is going to do the, I don't know, the green economy. The next one is going to do the other economy. Inclusive. But at the end of the day, they just reshift or rewarm the plates in the microwave, but they haven't made radical change or they did not measure as well. They didn't have an indicator at the beginning of the political vision, say, are we circular or I don't know what the term is, how much are we today? And how much did we become at the end of the mandate? So isn't there also a step before to understand what's actually, why is it relevant to us? I think for information that's kind of something I learned painfully. There's like three parts. The first part is more question now as we see kind of in politics. The first one would be, it has to be accurate obviously otherwise it's not like it can be found out. It has to be on a scientifically sound basis. I think it's probably still the long run because things are being found out so you can maintain lives for so long but not forever. So anyway, it's helpful. I think I still believe in the scientific method, having a clear research question and then obviously to make that useful it has to be relevant to people. So how is it relevant to you, like in some ways? And then the third one is the most difficult because many things are relevant but maybe we don't like so much, you know. So how do we also make it empowering? So empowering to say that actually with this information you're better off. And so I think how we embedded it is so important. I mean we have, yeah, so how do you engage with cities so they feel they're stronger having that information? We tried a little bit, just because ultimately I think the tension, there's so many names around it like in China they call it ecological civilization with the state of development. I think the essence is we want to have thriving lives and there's only so much physical budget and I think the most physical budget is the regeneration. That's kind of the tension we're playing. So I mean, a donut economy, there's a lot of talks about that or like there's so many aspects. We did some diagrams with countries and saying, okay, let's look at what's your social outcome and you can use a number of measures. For example, use the human development index, you know, this is a social outcome. How many resources does it take to produce that social outcome? What's your risk exposure if you use more than what's available globally? I mean, that means you bet on forever being able to outcompete others. You know, that's kind of, is that a stable bet that you always will win the world championship forever, you know? I mean, some are confident that they can and for some it may work out, but it's not that replicable and it puts fragility into your bet. And then you can track that and you can make the point right now. This is the city where it is right now. How is it moving over time? You know, so how is it moving over time? And is that helping? Is it making you stronger? So if they say, yeah, that's what we want. That's great. What we see as limitations is often, I mean, our numbers always come with delays, because I'm just going to delay it that they're outside of the administration's probably time frame. Oh, that was the last administration, even though they don't budge that much over time. But that's kind of one way that goes out. The other thing that people get frustrated, I wonder actually how you deal with that, is they feel, oh, we make so much effort and it doesn't budge the needle. You know, this is going to take so much. And in reality, if you think of it like from a physics perspective, actually the things that don't move the needle much, you have to do even earlier because, you know, if we cannot adjust, if it's so hard to adjust, we cannot adjust the last second. So it actually makes it more urgent, not less urgent, but in the political rationale, the needle not budging that much. There's a discouragement that's kind of the opposite of what actually is needed for a city to succeed. And so how to translate that in something that, I mean, perhaps some ways, but I think that's kind of typical ways. I wonder how your experiences with other kind of the like the metabolism doesn't change much. No, but and you're right. I mean, let's say in general, the flows of cities are let's say energy, food, water and construction materials. These are the big ones. And so there's no magic, right? I mean, you reduce the amount of buildings, you reduce the amount of construction materials, and energy and water, and you switch your diet from one to another, you switch environmental impact of food. So I mean, the answers are there, they're pretty straightforward and all of that. However, I mean, to implement them, it's a massive thing because you need to change consumption patterns, you need to change, you know, companies and advertisement and all of that, etc, etc. And you pissed off your voters. And you pissed off everyone, you know, I mean, that's, I think what they want is like small short term wins. Like what can we really do that still makes sense? And that is a small landmark. And so we had this small thing. So we did this study seven years ago, almost for Brussels. We measured all of the flows entering, exiting the stock and all of that. So we did a big picture image and then they asked us to zoom in some flows, some very tiny flows, let's say, because they thought that might be, let's say, an interesting solution or something that they could work after that. And one of them was the wood flows and Brussels has a forest down south. So has the Zonian first. And by, I called the forest stewards to understand how, how does that work and what happens once they cut off the trees, because they're sick or because, you know, they renew all of that. And they said, well, actually most of them are bought and leave for Asia or China. Oftentimes they come back in Brussels as, you know, as furniture, but that's, yeah. But it's funny. I mean, you would never know that unless you ask these people this tiny piece of information. And it got more or less buried for X amount of years. And then I had a colleague of mine that took this on with other people. They created a cooperative and now they buy this wood locally and try to repurpose it locally because there are no soul meals anymore and all of that. And of course, as soon as the politicians heard about this initiatives, everybody really pushed themselves towards it because it seems like a no brainer. So, you know, you take back, I mean, you don't export to China, you reuse locally, you create local production. It is your own biomass, et cetera. I mean, it only wins in on any front. So I think this was one of the things that, you know, a tiny contribution of such a study could perhaps help. And people, as soon as you ask this to any Brussels citizens, they all would say it's a fantastic idea. There's no, you know, no one would say no. No, no, it loses that has to say the Chinese lose, but they're far away. So if you find these tiny pieces of success somehow and either you export them so you showcase them from somewhere else, because of course this exists in Montreal, this exists in Amsterdam, this exists in many countries. So perhaps you showcase some tiny examples that get your citizens and politicians, well, together into one thing and then they move on. Once you have one victory, you can very easily move to another one and then another one. But yeah, I don't know if that makes sense or not. Yeah, yeah. To us kind of a litmus test in the end is, I believe, I've seen ministers sweat when they hear like bad news about, oh, unemployment goes up. I mean, you see like this, like, and I'm sure they don't sleep that well, they have heart palpitations or things like this. There's a somatic expression of kind of this, whatever bad news is, you know. So that means they have internalized it. Oh yeah, this really means something. And it's, I don't know if we probably know the book thinking slow thinking faster. So we need to learn like these abstract things like that unemployment is bad, we need to learn. And then we notice and then it's deeply in us, like if you ask a child, what about unemployment, they say, oh, hooray, then my dad is home and then we can play together. You know, so, you know, I mean, so it's not in itself obvious what it means. I'm not belittling unemployment, but it's just saying we have to learn that it's a bad thing. And then we know and then when you say, oh my God, it's a really bad thing. And I think we are at the place where kind of overshoot or kind of an ecological death of a country doesn't produce any sweat pearls or any ministers, forehead or heart palpitations or anything. And not that I wish heart palpitations and ministers, but I mean, it's a sign if it's not there. Just a bit more than now, you know, it's not becoming actionable and one way of knowing this are your economic plans your competitiveness plans. Do they see resource security as a major axis that you need to be ready for and that it's not the case you see it. I mean, it's just one of the documents, but for example, the World Economic Forum, which is fairly influential there. The most influential report is the Competence Report, I would say what they kind of say which countries are really kind of like good there. They take somehow add together with no scientific principle obviously because it's like indices. I don't think have any scientific validity, but they're being published in academic journals. I'm not sure why, but anyhow, that's another story. So they add up this kind of index for competitiveness, use 100 plus indices indicators. Not one of them has any physical dimension, like not like energy, nature, whatever. For sure, not biodiversity, not even water, like nothing, food, nothing. Like as if like economies floated in space. I mean, the only physical thing in there is number of airports. So, so competitors that I wrote with them like that. Isn't that a bad kind of long term productivity? And isn't sustainability about long term productivity? Like it's a bit of an overlap there. I don't know. So I'm poking fun at that one. It's just it's a manifestation of kind of this schism. But I think that's kind of in some ways kind of the, you know, how do we exactly really core is not just a nice thing. And on Sunday afternoon, we go and visit and say, oh, this nice windmill. You know, but it's, it's how we recognize that resource security is something really fundamental in some ways. And so, I mean, that's why we have worked with countries. And then also with cities, we have now a project in Portugal with about 20 cities, like looking at the metabolism and and the difference between rural rural cities, more rural, more kind of metropolitan cities and a resource dependent. And still struggle to be totally honest of saying that because it's the economic rationale just still does not digest that reality. Yeah. It's, it's, it is surprising. And, and yeah. I mean, today does not the solutions do not make sense in a term of economic sense. That's why a lot of, you know, well, but when we, yeah, but when we now talk with, with, with regions, they say, oh, we want to be the climate plan. So you don't need a climate plan. You need a competitiveness plan, but a competitiveness plan that recognizes the world we live in. Yeah. And a competitive plan, you know, not a five year. Or even 20. Yeah. I think because I mean, because we need to move out of fossil fuels pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that there's like the bio capacity that we would like for, for instance, to build up again. I think this is like a probably more than 20 years. But the point is, I mean, I think that typically it's clear. Like, like, actually, I think I'm not sure why IPCC continues to say that we can be at 1.5 degrees by kind of moving out of fossil. Already the concentration having the atmosphere today puts us in a two degrees track, even if we stop today. So, okay, maybe we have, we have net sequestration in the future, but we're from because we also then don't have fossil fuels. So we need other inputs. We just don't see the pathway kind of so clearly physically that we conference. You can say we can move that. But I think there's no argument that says we can wait for longer. Like we should, we can still use fossil fuels beyond 2050. You know what I mean? So just just want to say it's a very fast track. Everybody born after 1985. You may be in this category. I'm not sure everybody born after 85 will still be in the workforce in 2050. So it's not like, oh, it's not in your work life, you will have to kind of retool the economy is something quite different. Not have to, I mean, it's kind of if you want to maintain some level of positive life. So, so, so, so it's actually so much, it's so much closer in some ways. And so, so, so, so we're already now destroying our net present values. It's not about kind of the long term planning so much it's going to with every decision make right now. I mean, what we built today, most likely will be part of our infrastructure in 2050. Most likely. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, otherwise, then it's even worse because then how will we have the money to kind of totally rebuild what we already built today? Yeah. So, so, and I know. So that's kind of the time frame. I mean, that's kind of what what time, time and space is missing in the social theory since World War two for a number of reasons. But that's kind of this idea of the market will kind of see it and then we adjust. It hasn't for a century. Yeah. This physics here. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably also. Yeah. Good. Sorry. No, no, I'm just wondering. So given all of that, I'm wondering how you move forward. So let's say in 2021. So you have this project with the Portuguese cities. Do you have any other project that you hold dear to your heart? I mean, we do a lot of kind of thing. We do quite a bit in the Mediterranean. So on like on ecotourism on food consumption. We're just now starting a new project just on food, the future of food. I think on energy, it's clear. It's not easy and we haven't made much progress, but I think it's conceptually at least clear where we need to go on food. It's even more stunning because the implications of the new word for food. We call it the eight impossible imperatives that are hitting us, you know, on food and just do the tongue in cheek. But I mean, just so many things happening in terms of like farms don't get much money and that's not going to change. They should be able to operate without fossil fuels and fossil fuels is now so essential to agriculture the way we run it. I mean, including just the amount of plastics that are being used at the load. I mean, it's not just the plastic is going to fertilize the tractors the pumping and etc. The production chain like keeping food cool and like this is so much this there's so much that takes fossil fuel and then they should even become net sequestration. Like, but I don't know how they would be paid for it, you know, so and they should actually produce more food because there will be more people and so the list of the imperatives that are hitting them and then be less polluting overall. The divide diversity threat. I mean, just like Switzerland, for example. So it's kind of that's so we'll be working with bargaining and university and a larger project to kind of see how can how can food become one plan compatible what does it actually mean. You know, so and then how could we shift things. And that's fascinating. Then conversation to the number of places that record that I mean that wanted to like carbon neutrality whatever. And then we have this honest conversation with them and say, you really want carbon neutrality. I mean, that's what you really want want want. You know, so, because if you if you if you have it as a conditionality, like, we do everything as we did and then also carbon neutral. You get into this impossible competition between reducing carbon and paying for your schools and the health system that is fragile. And how can a Dominican Republic. I mean, allocate money for that, you know, so you have to that's ready to think totally out of the box and say, how can a Dominican Republic be successful in the long run, given the word we're in. Like, what's your economic plan that has to react to this context, and then it becomes more meaningful. And I think that's kind of people. Oh, yeah, that's true. Because this is such a, like this, this this making environment a conditionality rather than the underpinnings of long term success. I think that's going to have to shift. You know, we're trying to speak into, and it's very slow, in some ways. I mean, so I'm fascinated and entertained by the projects we do here and there. And and learn a lot. I mean, I think one big insight that just came to me recently talked about kind of this for the city, the self interest to act seems so blatantly obvious because a city cannot move very quickly. You know, talk where it is. And, and it built in metabolism, you know, so it's not that doesn't shift that easy leader, and time is flying by so quickly. So a city that doesn't prepare itself, like, what are you thinking, or as we say what are you smoking I mean it's the hell is going on. And so, so the self interest is clear. And still we talk about, as if it's because it's nice and I see the noble effort, you know, even though it's so it's it's crucially essential. And what people then confuse and that's what I realized like when you go back to the individual. So you have a self interest as a person, it becomes much more complex and I start to liken it, you know, the Brownian movement of like, you know, thermodynamics, you know, thermodynamics. All the molecules moving around, you know, and it generates temperature, the temperature is quite easy to predict and to measure, but you cannot predict all the molecules. And that's kind of the situation for each individual for the individual that's so complex. How will this hit me. I mean, will will will I kind of lose my job with my house burned down, but I don't have water. Well, would there be a disease or like, there's so many things that the complexity is incredible. But if you look at the higher scale that temperature, like for example, then in the middle of the molecule, it becomes much more obvious how to act and I think that's kind of the mental breakthroughs to kind of acknowledge that for individuals maybe. I mean, it's really at those system level where we have control over because we have city governments you have country governments, and the trajectory is quite clear because of the, the sum of the of the of the statistical that sometimes looking at the problem bigger, it because the micro movements kind of average out, you know, so so so that the law of the big numbers in some ways, and then how to make that case more clearly, and also more empoweringly. That's kind of that wonder that's why I'm talking about you, because I want to learn more to do that. It seems like we have a lot on our plates. That's a Matisse, we generally ask a last question, which is what type of books or articles or movies or something that you've seen or or read recently that you'd like to share with everyone. I'm not sure, like, if it's that relevant because I tried to kind of read kind of totally out of the box. So, so, so I'm reading kind of a story from a from a defected spy from from Czechoslovakia from the Cold War. How they were like the how they are trying to see disinformation. You know, and so, so the system of kind of how ours information system is breaking apart and now our technologies even better I kind of have spread this information, and it's still the same people in power. So, so kind of how, how that works and like, how can we become this is kind of the inspiration why I'm reading it. This is all the book from. And how was it called your this book. I can't even remember. The name. I was just picking it up. It's kind of like from the Cold War about how spy operations work. And it's so consistent with the time today like how like how the various powers kind of look at each other. And then there's an Oxford scholar who just wrote the book about extinction that would have to look. I'm better at concepts not at words. I can look up what the name is. And I was stunned like what what what drive extinct is quite fascinating. And he's kind of just worried that the species survives not the suffering in between as much in the book. And so it's kind of, so, so, oh, you don't have bees. That's kind of like that only reduces food production about 4% is not that doesn't do us in. It's not great. But it doesn't do us in so we don't have to worry about that as much. Like, by making the problem too big and say oh it's a total extinction, everybody goes or not, you know, and then also the idea we are like, our history has barely started we're only 200,000 years old and like, so now we just determine the next. We have still a billion years of sunshine. I think biologically as a species we're not that stable so it's really more like about the next 50,000 frame, like your framework, even if, if not shorter but I mean like biologically we are like, we shift you know so so who knows how we manifest as life, our species in the future. So I don't think we'll be stable for a million years as a species, not like the sharks that have been like this sharks that have been stable for 100 million years you know, but that's very unique species. Anyhow, so what I'm fascinated by I'm just more reading is more news articles it's kind of the situation in Afghanistan, a number of things like the, the, the kind of the cult that the clash between self determination like the identity with what that drives people and so even kind of a not well equipped army like over years of war can say like has to drive to kind of say we want to be like self determined. I mean, I'm not the artist and the blindness of the most amazing apparatuses with like a trillion dollars spent on like on the war and and and it's still cannot be fathomed by like the powers and it's not just the United States is also there were the Americans were there the French, the British were there the French were there trying and and and could not predict you know so so a very simple underlying force. So it's just a psychological implication from that I find fascinating. There are also some psychological books. And how to think the book that I find interesting just as an inspiration kind of getting more clear about like what makes us tick or reflect upon that. So, I can, I can write down the titles. Please do I think add them to the reading list because I still have a lot of these other. Yeah, the answers are not in the books but it's in kind of wrestling with the problem every day. Yeah, honest conversations. Yeah, it was it was a very nice one and thanks so much Matisse for taking all your time to well to share what you've learned over the years but also what what you what makes you tick and what you will be working on for for the next years to come. Thanks so much again and thanks again. Thanks as well to everyone to listening until the end won't hesitate to share it with your colleagues and friends. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks everyone. Thank you.