 For me, the biggest change that people can make, whether it's on a personal level, in a company, in an organization, in a city, is to shift glasses, to change from, as I mentioned earlier, this compliance. We have to do this. We have to be less bad at it and put on the glasses of opportunity. What can this bring us? How can it enrich my life to start biking more instead of always taking my car to start eating plant-based, et cetera? And you can do that on all levels. Serge DeGelder is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Serge is CEO and co-founder of Future Proof, a company driven by the belief that a sustainable, fossil-free future is a better, more attractive future. Serge believes that it is within our power to reverse the climate crisis and build a fossil-free circular economy. Taking action represents the biggest business opportunity of the century. And action will sort the winners from the losers, both in business and amongst cities and nations. Serge co-founded Future Proof, a leading sustainability and climate action company serving both cities and businesses with a digital tool to collaborate, develop, monitor and implement their climate plans. Future-proof cities is the current trusted and used by 140 European municipalities. That is unbelievable. Serge is an avid speaker taking the stage at global events such as TEDx, Flanders and Innovation Summit and appearing in publications like the World Magazine and DeGelder. I'm not even sure if I'm saying that right. Probably some Belgian magazine. He's given hundreds of lectures in cities all over the world, including Stanford, Yale, Sinha, Beijing, India, Dubai, Togo, Budapest on the choices we face regarding climate change and the opportunity of a sustainable economy. Serge trained as an engineer in Lebanon and in Delft and work for Baxter Healthcare for seven years, including 15 months abroad in Chicago, Illinois, USA. There's one other thing that my listeners need to know. Serge is a climate reality leader, one of the first to be trained in Europe by Al Gore, specifically chosen, selected to be trained. And I really am glad to see him and to have him here. Welcome to the show, Serge. Thank you, Mark. What a great introduction. Thank you. You're most welcome. I'm so glad you can make it and it's good to see you. Our paths have kind of crossed over the years as climate reality and I've stalked some of the things that you've been doing online and it was just really nice to, by chance, have the opportunity for this to work out because we both do things in innovation. I received a message that we should get together and align and speak through Innovator's Magazine and 1.5 Media and I'm glad it worked out because you're a great man and been doing this for a long time. So your original training was in 2006 in Nashville, Tennessee and you were involved a little bit before that as well but after that you've kind of done your own thing and refined it and made it such a popular, I don't know, a good cause to be following and I think it's taken this course over the years. So I'm excited to set out with you today on a little deep dive dialogue discussion and I wanna start off the bat with probably to get it out of the room, the elephant in the room. How in the hell have you weathered this year, this pandemic? So I know some personal things have come your way but Black Lives Matter, the pandemic and many other things happen. You've had these years of experience and focusing on climate and solutions and trying to put a positive spin on what actions we can take. Has any of that helped you weather this craziness? We've occurred this year. Yeah, it's been a crazy year but first let me tell you, I was really excited to learn that you were actually in the first group of trainees with Al Gore which was still held at his ranch in Tennessee. That's so exciting. I was in the second training and I found it an incredibly eye-opening experience but I never actually met one of the true pioneers. So that's great. Now about this year, it's been personally for me a strange year on many levels because last year in end of October I was also diagnosed with leukemia. So it's been not only the difficulty here that everybody had had with everything seemingly crashing down together in the world in terms of what happened with, as you say, Black Lives Matter and COVID and then the election and all of that. But on a personal level, I was out for six months trying to, you know, battle my way out of acute leukemia. Luckily, that went well. So I'm back to work now. The worst is behind me. But I had a kind of a preview if you want of what the lockdown would be because I was locked up in the hospital and all of a sudden, you know, your world changes as it does now. When you look at the images of people working with masks on the streets, it looks like scenes from a science fiction movie. I just, a couple of days ago, I rewatched Avatar, you know, the James Cameron movie, the extended director's cut and there's some additional scenes. And the very first scene is a scene in a city very densely populated where everybody's wearing a mask and it's set in 2145 or so. And I thought, wow, this is so close to this reality that we're facing now. The flip side though is that I think many people have rediscovered a lot of values and precious moments during the lockdown. I did so when I was ill, you know, everything is suddenly grinding to a stop and then just spending some time with my kids and my loved ones and friends, whatever it is, how small it is, it's all of a sudden, you know, all that counts. And I saw that around me during the COVID lockdown, people suddenly rediscover the beauty of just walking or biking or even having just a Zoom conversation without distraction, you know, feeling the connection. And so there's a lot of what my son calls collateral beauty that came about of this crazy year, I think. And if you take it one level higher, the businesses and the cities we talk with have also been faced with a stark reality but are really set to grasp this crisis to come out better. You know, like Leuven is a city where our offices are. I'm involved in the non-profit in Leuven that drives the climate roadmap. It's called Leuven 2030. And part for that, Leuven won the European Capital of Innovation Award this year for the climate efforts. And when you talk to the mayor, he says, you know, it's really hard to deal with COVID and lockdown and, you know, Leuven is a very warm city where people, you know, stick together, et cetera. And now they have to be apart and stay at home. It's really hard, but he's really set to rebuild Leuven grasp that opportunity to, you know, rebuild it in a fossil free way, if you want, but also deal with the consequences of COVID at the same time. So it's hard, it's unexpected, but it's a good wake up call that anyone's life can change like that, you know, at the moment's notice. But it's also an incredible opportunity to look at what we have that's precious and valuable and to rethink how we want to rebuild the future. One thing I'm fascinated with is that we're all stuck in this race and there's always a moving goalpost, you know? We study, we want to have a good diploma and then a good job and then a promotion and then a house and then a bigger house. And the goalpost is always moving. And all of a sudden everybody's been faced with this reality and I think there's a lot of good things that will come out of this if we make the truth. I really agree with that. I, sustainability is not an endpoint. That's not something we ever reach or something that we always need to strive for and keep working towards. It's a continual journey throughout the decades. I want to, you know, without prying too hard but I want to kind of do a little bit deeper dive in what you said and maybe kind of try to draw out some more things. So I'm so glad that you fought this and because having leukemia being in the hospital that puts you in the high risk of somebody who could be vulnerable to get COVID as well but also just a weakened immune system and all sorts of battles that you're going through there physically. I want to know that all these things that you've been doing over the years with that sustainability, with the climate, with resilience, with these overarching subjects that you've had focus on, have any of them given you strength or resilience that made it a little bit easier to fight the fight, to get through, to know how to eat properly or how to deal with the things that you were facing with leukemia, as well as not just that but maybe in your family life. And when you did get back into business to just kind of say, you know, because I had a little bit better foundation or base of this different way of living or this knowledge that it provided me with a better model or a little bit more resilience to make it through these hard times because I knew they were coming. Is there anything like that that you could say? I mean, you might have to go back and kind of reflect or review for a second but is there anything like that that sticks out in your mind and say, boy, if I hadn't had all that experience, if I hadn't spoken about those things that probably would have been a lot different or probably would have been a different situation? Yeah, it's happened in different phases. So it's a great question, Mark. I think it happened in different phases in the sense that at first something, I think scary for me happened because I've been doing this for 20 years. I started Future Proof to late 1990s as a site project while I was still taking parental leave and still working at Baxter and then it became a thing a year later. Several things. On the one hand, I thought all of this would happen much faster. When I started and you probably can testify to this when I started with this, I thought the business case is so clear to move to a sustainable future that this will happen like we saw the digital revolution happen. Nobody forced people to use iPads or switch to iPhones or so. It just happened because it was compelling. And so for me, looking back, I thought it would take much less time to get up to speed. But when I was in the hospital, something scary happened in the sense that they say with healthy people, they have 1,000 wishes. With sick people, you have one wish and it's really to make it through your condition. And all of a sudden, very quickly, everything focused to just that. This being said, when you are in the hospital and you see what's happening or not happening and especially how fast we see the changes, signs of climate change, the things I've been speaking about for years that seem to be materializing like methane emissions and possible tipping points that you are triggering, et cetera, very scary stuff. And when I think about my kids who are 19, 22, and 24 and who are starting their student and professional life and have their whole life before them, we really had a crossroad. And it's for me, really, on the one hand, scary to see those signs. But on the other hand, it's also really exciting to see that when they start their professional lives, they could really be the generation that starts to implement everything we know that needs to be done and that presents some clearer and more and more compelling business case. When I used to, and you probably as well, talk 10, 10, 15 years ago about climate change, it was this niche thing. It was for philanthropists and hippies and all of that. Now you see the black rocks and the banks and pension funds of this world divesting from fossil fuel and you see every single sane major corporation has a carbon or climate roadmap and knows that if they don't adapt, they will be the next Nokia or Kodak or Blackberry, but if they do take this seriously. And I mean, not on a level of some hobby club that meets over lunchtime and thinks about switching disposable cups for recycle ones. I mean, at the CFO and CEO level, if they do take this climate opportunity seriously, like Patagonia or Tesla or other leading companies do, there's a huge opportunity for them. And so that seeing those both sides of the coin on the one hand in the hospital scared me and depressed me because I was out of the game for so long. I was really like looking through the window at real life happening outside and things continuing to happen. That's very strange feeling. But on the other side, you saw those signs that it's starting to become mainstream and talked about in boardrooms. And then I thought, well, maybe this could be a tipping point in that sense as well. And all the work that we put in for so many years is now just leading that the McKinsey's and others of this world to start to look at this as something serious and maybe it's gonna try. I don't know if you're gonna be on time and meet science based targets and all of that. There could be a lot of greenwashing and all of that. But it's a double take on this. And for sure, just the proximity and the idea of my kid's future when I really reflect about it, I can still be very worried and sad about how we miss all these years. But on the other hand, I'm an optimist by nature. And this is what I do. I try to be the cheerleader and wave to the carrot and tell people that there's opportunity. On the other hand, and I'm sorry if I speak too long, on the other hand, the carrot is not enough. And that's why six years ago, I initiated legal action against our governments. To force them to up their game in terms of climate objectives. It's something similar to what's happening in the Netherlands where this group of citizens won. So I believe that we'll need more than just a shiny carrot to get there. Thank you for sharing that. I'm glad I'm a little pushy and made you go deeper because some beautiful things came out. And I wanna take us out of this crazy year and kind of move us into the future a little bit more of where we're going and some things. But I do wanna tickle on a few things that you also said. So you've spoken all over the world, you've spoken in Beijing and other places in Asia, I as well. For years that I've been speaking there, there'd be times where I'd go there and a lot of people were already wearing masks and there was no COVID, it wasn't also in the time of SARS or any of that. It was surely because of the extreme air pollution and that there was some really heavy things and the going on in the air. There was a time when I was in China where I didn't see the sun for three weeks or it was a time where I was in India. I didn't see the sun for three weeks and everybody who was sane was wearing a mask. This year I was in Bangkok, Thailand, right before the true lockdown and outbreak occurred and everybody was wearing masks there for probably only already three months because the air pollution was so bad. And we're very fortunate we live in Europe and move around in a lot of developed countries that really have good air quality and not a lot of people are running around with masks because of air pollution. But there is a very, and I don't wanna get too much in the science but there is a very tight correlation to air pollution and climate change, our biome and the health of humanity and how that ties as well as the spread of a pandemic or a biome. And so that is definitely not a future I want. It's not a future I wanna lead my children or my grandchildren, I'm sure you don't either that we're just getting used to wearing face masks. And I mean, what's the next plan? What's the next level? If we're thinking on that thought that we're already forced to wear a face mask because of air pollution. Well, the next pandemic or when air pollution gets even worse, now we go to a gas mask or an oxygen mask and there's gotta be a time where we stop and we leave this planet better than we found it. We live within planetary boundaries and we kind of as business as social entrepreneurs as people that we don't just do the bare minimum, we say, okay, here's the standard that government or the regulators have given us and we're gonna meet that minimum. Why don't we set the bar a little bit higher and leave the planet and our production, our products, the way we do business, a little bit better than we found it because if the entire world today were to stop and reverse their direction on their impacts on the climate crisis on air pollution, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, the world would continue to warm. There would still be pollution here. It just doesn't disappear if we all stop. Somebody's left with that cleanup and we need to as businesses and this is what you mentioned earlier and I also mentioned in your biography is that, and Peter Diamanda says this as well, the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities and the same with climate and biodiversity and all these things. They're the biggest opportunities for us to unite as global citizens and make our world better to clean up and to fulfill that golden rule to do better on our planet. And I'm not an evangelist and not a preacher and not some crazy tree hugger by no means. I just know how the world works and if you're doing good business, if you're leaving things and employees and planet and clients in a better situation than you found them, there's more job satisfaction, there's more profits, more returns, more opportunities, that great jobs, investments and profits. And you mentioned CSR and the new CSR is really environmental social governance. And as you mentioned BlackRock and some of the other big organizations in our world that have divested and invested in sustainable index funds, during the worst pandemic our world has ever seen the worst financial downturns or worst things that they're saying is depression and those things. In the first, second and third quarter of 2020 sustainable index funds have outperformed conventional funds eight out of 10. The Morningstar review 25 out of 28 on the Morningstar review sustainable index funds outperformed their conventional counterparts. Nikki Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs, S&B Global, S&B 500, all. The proofs and the pudding. And so when you mention those things, I think not only we're aligned but I see that beautiful vision of where you're going and that hopefully that gave you enough reserve during this time to weather through. I'm seeing that you look like you, you wouldn't look like someone who's just fought a hard battle. You look like you've come back stronger and more convicted to move forward in the right direction. So I'm so glad that's the resilience I see. That's the positive message of what I'm hearing from you. And so I thank you for sharing that for me and we're gonna go further into it. Yeah, go ahead please. Can I build on your point? Cause I really like that point Mark that you make that, you know we're moving from this CSR where there are is the responsibility thinking where you have to do it. It's compliance. You have to be in order. You want things less bad, you know wearing masks and this gloomy picture to suddenly a shift in which it's, you know it's something desirable. It's something that works and speaks the same language as businesses do. They see an opportunity but not only businesses, also cities. And for me that's been the DNA of what we do at Future Proof what I've been trying to do the last 20 years is telling people we don't only need to do that to save polar bears in 40 years or so but if we do it right now there's so much return even on the short term. I sometimes compare it with the concept of, you know the financial metric net present value. It's the present value of future brand benefits you're gonna invest in something and you know the benefits will be in the future but there's already value today in doing that and the comparison you make with air pollution is a great one because I believe air pollution is a metric for the carbon intensity of your economy but it's an immediate return, you know whereas with climate change there's a lack of 30 to 40 years between emitting one ton of CO2 and seeing the full effect of climate change which is a scary thought in itself because it means that whatever we're seeing now is the effect of emissions up until the 1980s but on the other hand if we look at other what we call co-benefits it's much easier to sell climate action to cities and to corporations and one example that I found great when I was in the hospital I saw what happened in Paris in which Anne Hidalgo, the mayor has been very vocal about giving back the city to cyclists and pedestrians and she's been doing that for a year and we were in touch with the city hall a couple of years ago we went there to present future cities, et cetera and in the hallways people were saying, yeah, Anne Hidalgo she's going for it but it's political suicide, you know taking the car, the king car off the road and giving this back to citizens it's crazy, it's worthy but crazy and then what happened in February of this year she went all in with her campaign of developing what she calls 15 minute cities in which neighborhoods should be organized such that by foot or by biking everything you need is within 15 minutes whether it's public transport or your job or groceries or the place where you work or whatever and she wanted to push that idea reorganize the big metro hall that is far as into neighborhoods, villages in which green and pedestrians and cyclists have absolute priority and she got massively reelected that was for the re-election campaign and she had incredible support so visionary leaders whether they're in cities or corporations that not only say things have got to be less bad but that realize that there's so much to gain from it on the short term and that have the guts to push that vision will be rewarded for it and she was on a political level and it's the same thing I believe with corporations again Tesla I think is the most inspiring example on the front of automobiles everybody laughed at them when they started 15 years ago and it was a toy, a go cart, et cetera and bit by bit and they never sold it just for the climate even though that's their mission accelerate the advent of sustainable energy but they looked at the immediate benefits make exciting cars that people will want and all of a sudden there be emotes and all of the established players now only wake up and see that they're missing big time on this opportunity so what you mentioned, I think this shift from a compliance thinking to a climate opportunity thinking is really a key leverage point to help us move ahead, Fenster. I totally agree, my first question really to get into things today is are you a global citizen and how would you feel about the removal of all borders, walls, divisions, limitations of humanity dividing humans from one another? That's a very good question. I never gave it deep thought like that but it's a very good question because I'm reading a book that's called How to Argue with a Racist and I'm just in the beginning I don't know if you know of the book it's fascinating and then you realize that those maps where we have arbitrary lines or those division based on pigmentation in your pigmentation level in your skin, et cetera and how we like to label and put people in categories and buckets how artificial that is and how little signs evidence there is for categorizing people like that but I never gave the thought of... I can't let you think about it for a second and tell you why I asked it because I'm kind of leading in a direction I wanna see if you've had some thoughts or if you've formulated over so your business future proof cities is working with cities all around the world with cities outside of Belgium across other nations and divides during this time in the lockdown we've had a lot of black lives now there are people of color issues issues about strong nationalism and things but there's been a few things that are really global citizens during this time and let me tell you one is food is cross borders when humans haven't air, water, species and obviously the COVID has not held held into boundaries or borders and so those are all things that are global citizens but where a lot of the problems are coming in is where we're trying to capsule ourselves off into these nations and divisions and really this may be the map behind me but I just had a Parag cana on my show a few weeks ago and he does a lot about cartography and geospatial data and talks about maps and he used geospatial data to look at maps and how our world's built up by supply change and movements of goods and different things and the picture that turns up is much different than the one that's how we're presented with on a much different level and when it comes to business and solving global grand challenges nations or cities can't divide themselves from certain problems because those problems cross boundaries, cross nations and borders and so it's really to get to hear your thoughts or feelings of future proof cities or even on a personal level where you're thinking and where you're going where you're at with this type of idea and how you apply that with your businesses and how we can get others to think on the bigger picture and you mentioned one good example just a minute ago where you mentioned the mayor in France that really is setting example but that example does as a whole to her mayorship that holds to the example she sets to others in the world because there are some leaderships in cities that are really where especially believe it or not in Saudi Arabia, Middle East they look to Germany and France and Europe quite a bit and say, oh, they have the best hospitals or they have the best quality production and they kind of copy that and they look to others who are doing it good or better or have some success as an example and so and I'm seeing that in climate and other things and that's kind of why I asked you that question as well because you studied in Illinois, you speak English and French and probably Flemish and other languages as well but so just that's why I was kind of leading you trying to ask that question. It's a great question and especially when how it pertains to climate on many levels. So I don't know where I should start maybe on the macro level it's just the fact that on the crisis side there is again a big global asymmetry as to our historic rucksack if you want here in the West or in the North about how we are massively responsible for climate change that we're seeing essentially now whereas people living in the South have almost you know less than one ton of CO2 per person per year per capita emissions so they're nowhere near as responsible as we are for the massive accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that will go on for hundreds of years. So in a sense we have a much bigger legacy carbon legacy and we have more responsibility I think but the effects do not see any boundaries and will likely be worse in those part of the world who are least responsible for adding to our bathtub of carbon emissions. So there's a very asymmetric and unjust balance there I think on the other hand on the solutions part again when you look at what our future looks like you know from a very high level we're essentially just moving from fossil to renewable energy that's the basic of our way out here and when you look at the solar income this is a very new kind of resource that's not concentrated in Saudi Arabia or in the Gulf States very dense concentrated source of all the energy that the world needs leading to all the problems your geopolitical problems and wars, et cetera if we are serious about moving to renewable energy now the solar income is spread much more equally across borders and if we can tap into that opportunity and help those nations in the South build on that and capture that it could completely flip also this power imbalance if you want of having a bit of concentration here and there so that's again I think an opportunity it's very tricky as you said Mark you also spoke elsewhere when doing your presentations on climate, et cetera what I remarked when I was speaking in India for instance that even though there's this opportunity there it's a very tricky message to convey because it comes over as patronizing we have our cars and our air conditioning and our amazon.com and whatever all the convenience and luxury and now you go and speak about the climate crisis and it's as if you are waving your finger and telling developing nations oh don't develop too much and don't buy cars and this and that because we have a climate crisis whereas we are essentially responsible for that if you flip it though and you present it as an opportunity and you're really concerned about well-being and economic situation of people in the South for instance and you can help them not make the mistakes that we made on an urban planning level on an energy systems level then it's something completely different then it's being on their side instead of just waving your finger and it has happened before for instance in Africa when you see what happened with telephony from no telephony they didn't go through a landline system but they immediately skipped did a quantum leap to cell phones and for many years before we had Apple Pay and Google Pay they were already doing financial transactions through their phones even though they were just not smartphones but normal functional phones so it's possible and you see it in countries like Kenya and others that they fully embrace this solar economy and instead of rebuilding an old fossil energy network with all its in flexibility and infrastructure needed they are starting to build distributed energy internet that's based on small solar installations with smaller batteries, et cetera and provide villages with direct improvements in comfort so there's that level, the big level there's other, if we talk about boundaries it doesn't even have to be I think cross country I read a piece in the New York Times a month or so ago about how there's been a systemic bias to black communities in American cities and how at the beginning of last century some neighborhood, black neighborhoods and cities were really redlined as being dangerous to invest in because they were mainly neighborhoods with black citizens and so for years this has propagated and the result is now that in big cities in the US those neighborhoods that are hardest hit with urban heat island effect with less trees, the worst infrastructure, et cetera or typically those people the neighborhoods with a large population of African-Americans and it's sort of a bias boundary then within a country that has been artificially kept alive and that now results in real consequences people having a hard time just having comfortable houses or studying or getting to work, et cetera and it's just heartbreaking to see that for people who already have a difficult time there's this added legacy that's thrown in there but again, I think we can flip that and people like Eric Garcetti, the mayor of LA for instance was a very powerful advocate for climate action in city he has a beautiful tattoo by the way of June of this year really worthwhile watching about how cities and mayors represent a real opportunity for climate change he said that this is what they do in LA for instance try to prioritize building resiliency in neighborhoods that have this historical disadvantage and start there to start dealing and acknowledging that this bias has been there and that we really did a poor job addressing that and so again, if you see it as an opportunity there's, we can start to mend that but it's a very big question and I think it's a very important topic because the effects and the solutions will cross borders so it's sometimes very depressing to see these nationalistic reflexes like we have in Belgium in Flanders for instance where it's us against them that's not the way to go about this see this from an opportunity mindset there's plenty for everyone especially if you go to renewable energy future and it will only work if we all stick together and that's the idea behind huge proof cities is that we see that city teams more often than not, they're a small team it's one or two people working on climate and they have to do permits and all kinds of things on the side so they're overwhelmed, that's one two, it's really hard for them to focus and to know what can I do with my city team should I drive permits for renewable energy or make sure that we use recyclable cups at events or whatever, turn public lighting to LED there's so many things to do where do we start, what's the biggest impact what's the biggest urgency what's the biggest financial return, et cetera but three, and that's the most depressing I think is that most of their peers in other cities are facing exactly the same challenges and so there's a lot of reinventing the wheel everybody is trying to do their best with the small teams and means that they have whereas, and that's one of the things we try to do with future proof cities if you can help them focus on those actions that matter and give them the tools to sell climate action to their city council and tell the mayor, this matters this will cost that much this will create that much co-benefits local job creation, property value that increases biodiversity, clean air as you mentioned, reduced energy cost so if you help your mayor decide and carry that but not only that, if you help your peers in other cities do as you do and share your failures and successes with them we believe that there's, you know that this is a real way to accelerate climate action in cities who are responsible for 70% of the carbon emission and that's, it's a great opportunity and that's exactly what Eric Garcetti the mayor of LA says, you know cities around the world have so much in common it's complex to run a city that you know have all these layers of problems as infrastructure but at the same time, it's a great scale to act on you know, you can talk about big country level targets and European or global level targets Paris, Accord, et cetera this is very abstract you and I live in a city, you live in Hamburg which is great, by the way I think it's a great city and you see that, you know bikes have priority bike lanes and that there's a program to insulate your house this is where those big road maps actually translate into tangible action and so the idea there of crossing boundaries and you know, avoiding reinventing the wheel everywhere is one of the things we try to work. So I can tell you're not I'm throwing you off with my format a little bit because we have this deep dive dialogue I definitely wanna talk about future-proof cities a lot more that I'm trying to lead up and ease my listeners a little bit in with some of the questioning and what you mentioned about global citizenry and about removal of nations and borders and how we truly function is important for us and the listeners not only how you see it but how future-proof tackles it and you touched upon some very important things there and one important thing was that we speak in developing countries and countries that are really still struggling and wanting to get the basic needs met they haven't had them yet and the example you mentioned on telephony is perfect what we want is by no means not them to develop and not to them to have super infrastructures but we don't want them to make the same mistakes that we've all made before and actually leapfrog some of those infrastructural mistakes that we've made in the past and get them up to one that's got a little bit more resiliency definitely more sustainability in it and one that is easier, profitable it's a better model and that's kind of the things that we're talking about and so I love that you touch upon that because it's absolutely vital but that's where future-proof cities really comes in as far as I understand you're providing some tools and some services for cities that makes their life a lot more easier but also is kind of a form of a global operating system as something that kind of can be unified with a few other cities and almost helps them leapfrog some of the older systems or some of the pains or uneasiness they've had in doing things in the past if you could now kind of go into a little bit more of what that looks like and how you came up with that and some of the success stories that you're seeing with that kind of get us up to speed and then we'll go from there kind of maybe talking a little bit more about the future. Okay, great. Yeah, what we want to do is actually to fast forward cities to climate action. When you look at climate action in cities there's three parts really. It's starting by knowing your baseline, knowing where you are in terms of emissions, CO2 emissions and knowing if it's mainly from housing or transportation or industry or power generation you don't just have an assessment of where you are and this is typically done through studies, et cetera. It involves consultancies like we used to do a lot in the past, we were a consultancy and we worked and we want tenders and we work for cities. The second is drawing up a plan. What should I do first? Should we do a massive energy renovations in neighborhood? Should we build or rebuild our city in a more resilient way with blue and green networks? Should we cover all roofs with photovoltaic? Whatever and not make mistakes in urban planning and all of that. And then third is actually doing that, executing that plan. And we wanna fast forward to that third part because the first two are the most important to get started but the third one implementing, executing, have a transformation in your city is the litmus test really, that's what's all about. And so our platform should improve cities, guides cities in their city journey if you want and in this very step. And we try to meet cities where there are because the usual suspects like Humber, Heidelberg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, you know, they're way ahead of most of them. They have a vision, they have a big team, they know exactly what they want, they know the tools to get there. For instance, Stockholm, there's a great tech talk about that, how they introduced congestion charge, you know, for limiting the movements with cars and entice people to take public transport or use their bikes. And they first did a poll and asked the citizens, what do you think? And I think like 65% of the people were opposed to congestion tax because they say life is already expensive and blah, blah, blah, all the valid and usual reasons. But then they imposed it during six months, they did it as a test. And then they did the poll again after those six months. What they saw is that the very first day of this test for six months, it was 20% less traffic and 20% less traffic. It means that essentially the traffic jams dissolve and people say, oh wow, and they discover their way to buy planes or to public transport. After that, on August 31st, I think in, I don't know, maybe 2007, a while ago, they canceled the pilot and it was like before, people could drive whenever they want for free. And they saw that on the September the first, it was just as before people jammed up, you know, long queues, et cetera. And then they did the poll again and they saw that slowly the support for congestion tax completely flipped and that people saw that sometimes an adult needs to take a decision and say, this is how we do things. Like, you know, not smoking in restaurants or wearing seat belts or not using asbestos when you built, you know, new houses. And sometimes somebody needs to take that decision. So you have those cities that are way ahead of the others that have financing and rules, setting, et cetera, all figured out. You have others, as you mentioned, that are just starting this journey. And with Future Proof Cities, we want to meet them where they are. And if your need is just to establish your baseline and drop a climate plan about what you can do, this is what we will help you with. If you're already, you know, fully in the organizing phase and organizing and executing this and you want to learn from your peers, we'll help you with that. So it's a platform that's easy to use, compelling, attractive, not too technical. That will help cities throughout their journey, on this climate journey, if you want, from the very beginning to the execution, but is built with the idea that, as I just mentioned, that many peers like you will be facing the same kind of issues. So in the tool, the tool is useful, even if only one city would use it, but we built a community in there. It's a bit like LinkedIn or so, where you can share with your colleagues, your peers, and saying, look, we did this. We built a district heating system in Brugge, and this is how we got European subsidy for it. Or we're developing a new real estate project, and we want to get rid of the parking places, but instead offer car sharing. And this is the tender document that we use to do this. This is the kind of exchange that we see on the platform. And then we bring our user base together. We used to do it physically before COVID because it's mainly users from Belgium now, but we're starting in Spain, Sweden, and France also. And we bring these users together because they have a real need for being connected and talking to their peers and seeing what works and what doesn't. The first part, we're also just to close on that. The first part, we just made it public and open source. So we have now, you know, the database engine of future proof cities that we open source, we call it Launchpad. And it covers all 95,000 municipalities in Europe. So any city in Europe can go on Launchpad.futureproof.com and see their carbon emissions, see how it's been evolving in the last couple of years, see if it's transportation or mobility. And so we wanna, you know, skip that part and move to the real important stuff which is how do we get this financed? What are the co-benefits? Who's doing what? How can we collaborate with the team? Whether it's a city team or a team with your peers and, you know, focusing on this action. And this is what we try to do. It's a modest thing though, Amar, because we cannot claim that a tool or a platform like that will change the world or, you know, solve the complexity of climate action and climate action in cities. It's a small thing we can do, but it's like you would have Strava, you know, a workout app or drawbacks or, you know, Spotify. Better tools to get your goals done. Better tools for better progress. I have a few questions or a few comments as well. So I do a lot of ESG advising and help companies and basically it's for the end of the year annual report that they do after the year. And the way that has typically worked and I wanna see, this is what I hear out of you and also what I kinda wanna make a comment about is that the end of the year comes and say, okay, we gotta put out our annual report. What did we do this year that could be where we can fit these SDGs or this sustainability matrix or this CSR into our annual report so that we can report upon it? What I hear from future-proofed cities and that is it's more action-based. So it's like what actions can we take and projects can we place and start now to manage and record and to have that data and then create projects and actions that will lead us to more monies, more funding, more actions that at the end of the year we'll actually have some actionable fun things to report on. At the end of the year and say, and they're all success stories. They're all, you know, some could fail or some could go wrong or you could have a learning curve but the majority of them are all kind of an action-based transition a journey to the end of the year. And then you say, oh, wow. And look, we achieved this and we lowered this and we were able to get this funding and we had the data on this. And that's what I hear out of what you're saying. And that is the key. And that's also what I advise all my, all those companies that I deal with on as well is instead of waiting until the end of the year and see how you can fit your annual report into the SDGs or the Paris Agreement or CSR, why not set actions and projects and things at the beginning of the year and then have these wonderful fun actionable things throughout the year that at the end or at the end of each quarter, at the end of each month, you say, oh my God, we reached this many people or we had this draw down our emissions this much or we had this positive impact and excite and rally your customers, your clients, your corporation, your organization around that. And then at the end of the year, when you report it's not a greenwashing, it's such a positive story and narrative that they say, holy shit, wow, this is fabulous, this is terrific. And it's great. And that's kind of what I hear out of what you're saying but I had a couple of questions and I'm almost wondering if you could go a little deeper in it to me because you talked about these congestion maps and congestion tax and things, are you using geospatial data? Are you using systems dynamic modeling any of this or is this a little bit more analog to get that information and that's maybe more of the future? What kind of tools are you providing them where they can say, wow, this is something fabulous? Can you tell us a little bit more on that? It's a very good point, Mark. So as you summarize, well, this is what we try to do. So we help focus on implementation. We make sure teams have everything integrated in one place instead of having Excel and MS project and this and that all over the place and we help them collaborate. And it's this exact shift that you mentioned from a reporting mindset to an action mindset. That's what we try to do with future proof cities. I'll get to the geospatial data question in a second. One of the key elements that I didn't mention is that we focus on those co-benefits as well of climate action. As I mentioned in the earlier discussions, we believe there are short-term benefits for climate change and it's the same thing for cities. So instead of having this reporting hat, as you mentioned, oh, this is the end of the year. What can we tell? You know, what makes a good press release? It's again, what are the intrinsic co-benefits of driving climate action in a city? And there are many and we visualize those in the tool. As I mentioned, can be job creation or dinner air, but there's also very strong financial case to be made. And so one of the things we built in there is what is called an abatement cost curve in which you've seen these maybe in which you can see how much which will each action actually cost or yield because many of the things are actually profitable and how can I bundle those into a package of measures that will have a big impact, CO2-wise, but will still have some profitability? And if you do that, you think in terms of, you know, project development, you think like we've been doing city transformation for decades when you look at a new, I don't know, a new sewer system or a new square or public lighting or whatever. We see city transformation happen all the time and it's being planned, organized, financed. And for some reason, when it comes to climate action, we're stuck. It's like, yeah, it's too costly and we don't have any money for that. You know, if you see it as the same way as doing infrastructural change and improving a city, it's no different than that. So we offer those tools to help with the city transformation in a collaborative way. To your second point is it's a very good point because we are, this is the future we want to go to but for the moment on both points, it's more analog than that. In fact, the very first iteration of future-proofed cities was all about better, higher resolution data. Like you said, geospatial data, we looked at cell phone data, real-time data from utilities about gas, water, electricity use. We had access to all of that. And we use a process called the design sprint in which before you build something, whether it's software or something else, you actually prototype it and you test it with your users. It's a five-day process. You know, you create your IDs, you sketch them and then you build a prototype and then you ask your real users, hey, we're building this, how do you like it? And you look at how they use it. And we did that with proof cities. All about this better data and we had real-time feedback groups about traffic and energy and all of that. And cities said, great, yeah, that'd be great but it's not helping us solve our current problems which is get these climate actions, the opportunity of climate action up to the priority of the mayors and the city council so that they take it seriously and that we can get going as we do with other city terms. So that was their main question. And so we kind of put that on the back burner a bit but now as we grow bigger, we have what is called an API and application programming interface. So we are able to connect and export to other platforms and you see the rise of digital meters. You see initiatives like, for instance, Google environmental insights explorer which is a platform in which they have 3000 cities mapped and they look at the traffic flows. They look at the opportunity for solar PV by having detection of the type of house, et cetera. So there's all kinds of new sources of data available and our vision is to wear useful again for the city teams because there's a danger that we would fall in love with our product and that we build a solution in search of a problem. That's a real risk. So we always are informed by the questions and the challenges that our city teams experience and they say, hey, we need to do this or this doesn't work well or we don't understand this or this has never been used. This is what drives our development team but we see that in the future we'll be able to connect to better sources. So we're really open for that and certainly looking at it. The second point is, or the third point is are you more pertinent? Do we look at this from a systems thinking perspective? And that's really interesting that you mentioned that because the genesis of future proof, the company actually is very driven by systems thinking. The book that made me switch careers, if you can say I was in the medical business before is called Natural Capitalism by Aymarie Loven so you may have heard of it. And it's all about systems thinking about how if we look at the big picture and take everything into account we can actually drive improvement in a much better way. And this applies to cars or data centers or heating of houses or building factories instead of just improving one little bit. Improving for instance, I don't know the rolling resistance just of your tires or improving 3% efficiency of your engine. If you start by making your car lighter you will need a smaller engine and you will need smaller hydraulic systems which in turn will reduce rolling resistance and all of that, you know. And so it applies for many, many things. Looking at it in a systemic way is always the way to go. Again, it's not like that yet in future proof cities. We're at a more basic if you want a list of 100 plus pre-calculated measures. It's like a Spotify catalog if you want of solutions for mitigation and adaptation with nature-based solutions that we adapt to a regional context. This catalog will be using different data in Sweden than it will in Spain for instance but they're not interlinked yet. They're not seen yet from a systemic way but we are going there, you know. That's not, it takes time. Yeah, that takes time. So I mean, but I just appreciate your answering that and yeah, no, there's always that journey and it takes time to develop especially the good things and I look forward to really seeing that develop and see more, but it sounds like a fabulous, a fabulous idea company doing good things and exactly different than as I mentioned before, than what we're used to seeing which is really where we need to go with a little more actionable, a little bit more positive help for cities which they really need. The cities have the unique ability to be a lot more flexible than big nations or countries and the respect that there's not as much separation of ministries on what they can do so they can work more in systems and a lot of respects. So that's, there's quite some benefits and so I'm really glad to see it because that's where we live. We live in cities, not in, you know. And so it's nice to kind of go bottom up for the resources and make that shift and change. So thank you for telling me about that and I have a few more questions before we wrap up because we've already been talking quite a bit. I haven't even hit on the most important, hardest question I have for you today might make you think for a moment but it's the burning question WTF and it's what we've all been probably asking ourselves this year and it's not the swear word although we've been asking ourselves that it's what's the future, what is the future? Wow, that's a million dollar question. Again, it's hard to answer that honestly. It's really hard, I think. I was asked this in a podcast a month or so ago and I was taken a bit off guard by this question because it was put slightly different. The guy asked me, you know, my kid is now 10 years or so or six years and you know, what will happen when they're in their 20s or 30s like the interviewer was and you know, what will their life look like in 2040 or 2050? And it took me a bit off guard because a point that I mentioned earlier even if we were to be successful and really moving off of fossil fuels quickly in time following the science-based targets we have this delay, as I mentioned, of 30 or 40 years and we know that whatever we do, how successful we are things are probably gonna get much worse before they get better again and that's sometimes I think a very hard thing to realize because on the one hand, we have this terrible division. I don't know if you saw the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma about, yeah. One of my good friends, Person Harris was in that and he'll actually be on the podcast in a couple of weeks. Oh really? Yeah. That's amazing. And you know, this big idea of the internet would all bring us together like it does sometimes like this is great but actually turned out into division and polarization and much worse things. So we have those things. We have other real issues, COVID, et cetera. And on top of that, we know that there's this latency of the climate system. So sometimes I think it's really hard to maintain that optimism. On the other hand, what I mentioned earlier, I truly believe otherwise I would have given up a long time ago and just spend time writing books and going kite surfing. On the other hand, I really believe that we are now seeing the advent of the tipping point with the divestment campaign, with the automobile and fossil major under pressure with the leadership that cities are showing and the response that people give when you create 15 minute cities or your priorities, bike lanes or you create land-based, tasteful foods or all of that. People are embracing that because it's better. And then not just the niche of early adopters but it's reaching a wider audience reaching the mainstream. So that makes me very hopeful. And so I'm torn about the future and I want to believe that we will be successful and be in time to tip also, the balance in favor of a more attractive fossil free economy and society. But I don't wanna be naive and you know it better than anyone, probably we're not there yet. There's a lot of hard work to do, but I'm hopeful. I remember when I did the Al Gore training, the first night we went to a house of blues with the people and Al Gore was there and we talked and he said that at the time he had already been doing this for years or decades. Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably. And he said it felt very solitary for this time and I know that we joined, you know, the cavalry was there. He probably said the same thing to you. It's a very striking image. And I feel that now the cavalry is arriving on many levels. But the question is still out there, will we be in time and will we be distracted by division and nationalism and other things? Because if we don't solve the climate problem and if we don't transform it into a climate opportunity, you know, we can forget about all the other problems really the risk of this tipping point is so big that, you know, but overall after, especially after this crazy year, I'm still hopeful and I'm still working towards that goal that that's all I can do, try to have fun with it, try to, you know, point to the benefits of doing this and ready as many actors as possible in cities and companies, but also just amongst citizens because the more we convey this message that it's feasible, it's necessary, but it's most of all attractive to go there, to move off of fossil fuels and build a sustainable world, the more chance we have of actually realizing it. Thanks for your optimism and for your honesty as well. And I can tell that you've been doing this for a while and it can take the wind from your sails that you're like, oh, you know, we've got a lot to do and it could be teetering. So I like to hear your optimism and that you're, you know, wanna be naive in any forms of the mean. I truly believe in humanity. How about you though, Mark? I truly believe in humanity. I believe that I understand the exponential function and how quickly things this year has shown not only all sorts of things bubbling to the surface, but has shown a microscope on all the problems in our system and by showing us where the problems are in our civilization framework and our climate efforts and our biodiversity efforts and our energy efforts, et cetera, we've also under the microscope been able to see where we need to do, what we need to do to fix those and the biggest thing is the basic needs of humanity and really rallying humanity together as global citizens unifying ourselves that we set a new global operating system and level of unification worldwide for humanity, but that in a pandemic, we can do amazing things in the time of crisis, we can do amazing things. And I have extreme hope and optimism that we're on the right path, we will do it. We've seen the take up of new leadership and shifts at the beginning of this year. This is the beginning of this year started out with a bang. It was a decade of action, lots of movements, a lot of companies reconfirming, making some actions and positive steps. And now so even more, not just the financial returns that we're seeing through ESG investments for a second and third quarter and what should be a horrible year for everybody shows that by having a better model, by having a better system operating system to do those in which is environmental social governance, put connect ourselves with the planet but put planet first that we don't harm our resources and our energy sources for the future is really a better model. And once we really understand that, that critical mass will put us on this exponential roadmap to solve a lot of problems and do it in record time. The thing that you mentioned that was interesting is that and I mentioned this in the very beginning if we all stop today to pollute, to hurt our environment and we all were doing the right thing, every business, every individual, it wouldn't be enough because our planet continues to warm and continues to heat and have climate crisis. As you said, it could take anywhere 20 to 30 years to see but if every business in the world didn't just do the bare minimum and stop but cleaned up the planet and did more in a positive direction to rebalance us using the exponential function, what would happen is we would not only go in the right direction, our whole world would be different where we would get back into the safe operating spaces of our planetary boundaries. And right now we're out of balance of five boundaries of our nine planetary boundaries. And if we use the exponential function and the tools through planetary services to clean up like violent slate is doing with the ocean cleanup project like Elon Musk is doing with his overarching mission with all his things and many, many other greats are doing out there to clean up. If we had 100,000 or reached a critical mask of individuals like that that made a shift in the consciousness that critical mass is enough to get us on that exponential curve and create a rebalancing that would solve a lot of problems. And it's not all, we're still gonna see problems and disasters in the future. But what it does is creates a solid infrastructure for us by December, 2030 for the sustainable development goals or the Paris Agreement. I just wanna touch on that for one second. Throughout all that you mentioned, and the question was, what's the future? And the reason I mentioned that and why that's so important, what's the future is if you don't know, it doesn't matter if it's you, me or anybody else. If you don't know what the future is, guess what? You're never gonna get there because without a plan, a roadmap or a vision of what the future is, if you don't have a government nation or city that has a clear roadmap or plan of what that future is, you're never gonna reach it. What's gonna happen is you'll be in the future and then you're gonna look back and say, how can we fit the past into our annual reporter, our business model, right? You're gonna do exactly what we talked about. But you and I come from a generation of Star Trek and these movies that show these different visions of the future. So today on TV, instead of seeing dystopian visions, we have media or we got these visions of what a future would look like. I guarantee you, we could engineer, architect, create, design and reach those futures with that plan, that vision and that mission. It's like Simon Sinek's why. It's kind of like, what is the future? And if you have that vision, even if it's wrong, a wrong vision is better than no vision because with no vision, you're never gonna reach that no vision. We need to unify ourselves as humanity and have one or two unifying visions of a certain end date of where we wanna go in the future and then rally ourselves around that. And my last rant as far as getting on my soapbox is that's really the Paris agreement. If you realize it's the world's first ever global moonshot. If you think about it, 197 countries for the first time ever came together and agreed on the sustainable development goals in the Paris agreement. First time ever, if you know anything about diplomacy or politicians, it's hard enough for two countries to decide where they're gonna go to loan, let alone 197. And so not only is that the first global historical moonshot first ever, but it's a historical precedence. It's never occurred before on a global level. The time before that was John F. Kennedy saying we wanna go to the moon. Now it was one nation and a couple of thousand peoples and some partners in other countries, but this is a historical precedence. And if we chose that as our vision and our message and our vision of what's the future and we started to work towards that, I think we would have a better chance than just saying, oh, I think it's the new Green Deal. Oh, I think it's the Trump-Pocalypse vision or Biden's vision or I think it's the Bolsonaro vision. I think it's the Brexit vision. If we unified ourselves with a new global operating system, a new vision that was sustainable and resilient and also had media and visions of what that looked like, we'd have a lot more things to work for and that goes back to what you're doing. It's action-based goal or mission or target that we're going to. And if you have that, you can be optimistic and hopeful and see the future. If you don't have something like that, then it's really easy to get muddled up. Well, I don't trust Bolsonaro. I don't trust Trump. I don't trust the Brexit. I don't trust the Putin-Shays-Dewart-Pays-Erd ones and they're not looking out for my best interests and that's why we have so much unrest, unease because humanity is kind of uncertain about our current civilization frameworks. It's failing us. It's not giving us the vision. We need to say, don't worry. We can relax. We've got a beautiful vision we're working towards. Nobody knows what we're working towards. We're going to go from masks to gas masks to oxygen masks to this dystopian futures and we need some different types of futures. And so I'm sorry to get off on a rant, but I really want you to know that I see the optimism of what you say and I want to not, don't get discouraged because you've been doing this so long or think, oh, I'm tearing out my hair because this is kind of frustrating. You see, there's not much left. I think it's a great, great point. It's a great and important point. I've been criticized about being too much about this vision and what could be and then my business associate, for instance, is a very grounded guy and it's about how things are and we need to step into the shoes of businesses or CT teams, et cetera and understand that reality and both are valid, of course, because if you stay up there, you know, financiers or others will say, yeah, okay, well, keep dreaming, but if you don't have that vision, as you said, it's a very valid point and you do back casting and starting from where we want to end and then you calculate what are the steps needed to get there instead of just having marginal improvements here and there, it's a great point. And as you say, it's kind of happening. The Paris Accord, it's five years ago, but what we see with the European Green Deal for instance is like a translation of that Paris Accord for Europe and it's for the first time that it's so front and center for European Commission while at the same time, we're disagreeing with nations and we have the Orbs and others, you know, Hungary and there was things happening and nationalism flaring up. It can be a real unifying vision for Europe and for the world to say, this is what we're going to do. We're going to translate that Paris Accord into a compelling vision, creating jobs, you know, become energy and independence. And as you say, one of the most exciting things to remember when you have this vision is the power of exponential improvement, learning rates of solar or wind or EVs. And when you see how that's progressing and how could that could lead us to this future, it's true, there's a lot to be hopeful for and very specifically like in Europe when you look at how we lead in terms of offshore wind, Germany as the second, UK as the first country in the world, China then and Belgium. We only have 67 kilometer of coast but we are the fourth in total amount of produced terawatt hours of, we have two terawatt hours of offshore electricity being produced and it's gonna double in the next coming years to four. So it's gigantic for a small country. And again, if we package that not only in marginal improvements or tech things or what's happening here and there, but if we package that into this unifying vision of the Paris Accord and we translate that into tangible benefits for people, there's a lot to be hopeful for. So thank you for pointing that out. I fully agree with it. I used to have a fun slide. I don't know if I still have it in my presentations, which was a passport and on this passport, a European passport and instead of having the stars of all the European nations, it was actually the backbone of the super grid that we need to build to become fully, fossil free and relying on renewable energy. And the beautiful thing there is that this is a real hard problem to solve if only Belgium or the Netherlands look at it, but it becomes much more feasible if all of us start to build because there's always it's gonna be wind somewhere. We're gonna be able to pump hydro in the Alps to store it and have more solar on other places, et cetera. And to make the problem more feasible, enlarge it and attack it with all of Europe or all of the world. And I thought it was such a hopeful image to build towards. So thank you for reminding me of that. And I think it's a great takeaway. You're most welcome. Al Gore always says the only thing political will is a renewable resource in and of itself and that he's a recovering politician. And there's another saying that you're only crazy or utopian or audacious or naive until you actually do it. And I think that, you know, here's to the crazy ones that actually do it and then it's not crazy anymore. It's just a better business model. It's a better operating system for our world. I only have three questions left for you and then we'll wrap it up. And they're really selfish questions for my listeners because it's something to give them a little empowerment and a little bit something to take away from surge and future proof cities. And that is if there was one message you could depart to my listeners a sustainable takeaway that had the power to change their life. What would it be your message? For me, the biggest change that people can make whether it's on a personal level in a company in an organization in a city is to shift glasses to change from, as I mentioned earlier, this compliance. We have to do this. We have to be less bad at it and put on the glasses of opportunity. What can this bring us? How can it enrich my life to start biking more instead of always taking my car to start eating plant base, et cetera too? And you can do that on all levels. And, you know, switching the way we look at the world is on a systems thinking level. When you look at what Donela Meadows proposes we can turn the dials and knobs and improve a bit here and there. But just like to your prior point if you look at the world differently and you see this as an opportunity, it becomes very different. It becomes something you want to do instead of something you have to do. And then there's a lot for you for the taking and to get going. So I think that's probably the most important thing people can do now and more and more are doing so. That's beautiful. What have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start? Yeah, the biggest thing there is don't just have a great idea but think about your customer. There's always a customer even if you're in a nonprofit or you wanna solve malaria or you want not just to be thinking about you, I have this great idea for product or service or business or whatever and go out and do it. No, whose problem are you solving? If you're starting an artisanal bakery you know, what do people need and want and step into their shoes and try to really understand their needs and then build something for them that you can reliably provide and make sure that you can pay your bills and the salary of your team with but really always start from your customer and finally listen empathetically and test your ideas, et cetera then build whatever you're offering to them. That's probably one of the most important things and business. So I see future-proofed as an sustainable innovation company and future-proofed cities as a form of a planetary service that you offer to cities, city service which as really goes in the direction of sustainability environmental social governance and real the bigger picture biodiversity and kind of the big climate issues the big energy issues of our future. What actions could startups, innovators, citizens or decision makers take that would help to accelerate the impact that your field could make in your company and future-proofed cities what could they do to help you to accelerate your impact? That's a great question. Thank you for asking it on your podcast. It's a bit opportunistic and just to ask for things but the help that we can have is to build out the network effect. You know, if you go to a platform like Strava for which is a, I don't know if anybody knows it but it's an app to track your running and biking activities, et cetera. This app works great if just you want to go run or bike and you can track your performance and have inspiration of what tracks to run, et cetera. But it works even greater when there's a group of people cheering you on and telling you, hey Mark, you should really check out this great trail in the woods or I set out a bike journey of five days in the north of Germany that you would like, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. Then it becomes even greater. And I think we're still really at a micro scale with future cities. We have 140 cities even though it already represents something when we look at their investment which represents 4 billion euro in investment in climate action. Collectively those cities save 350 million euro a year with their energy savings and 1 million ton of CO2. It's not much but it's a start. If this were to increase and our goal is to go to 1,000 cities in a couple of years, the value of this for each of the cities becomes much larger. You'll have a team of experts at your fingertips if you want in the community and not only again the pioneers but cities or municipalities just like you. And I think if there's any way to help us increase that's what they call network effect and then our cities will be served better and we have a better chance of accelerating climate action and beyond the track. So that's our vision. It's easier said than done but slowly but surely we're moving in that direction. So if anybody can help spread the word about this people try out or demo or reach out to us. So that'd be great. I'm sure my listeners will and they'll go, I'll put your links in the show notes so that they can go there. Is there any other place besides Future Proof website that you want them to go to or check something out or is that good enough? Let them have a look at the Launchpad which is our open source initiative. It's always an interesting starting point and there's the information as well but it's gonna be linked on the Future Proof website. Another thing I do which is my other hat we didn't talk about is the climate case. I run in Belgium, it's a stick, it's a different approach but it's also a real leverage point that people have. You know, if they want to demand this change and it worked in the Netherlands, it's called, in our case, it's called klimatsak.eu I'll send you the link. And it's the ID that we are facing these decades of transformation and that we cannot just do it through individual change or through businesses or cities but that we will need the help of our governments. Like we have done that in the past to build out energy systems and the highways, et cetera. All of that, you know, we need the guidance of our governments. And so in the Netherlands, they want this legal case forcing all political parties to align and stop making this a political issue and instead think, how are we going to get this done and financed in Belgium? We have the same thing and in Ireland, they won. So it's another tool in the toolkit that we will need. I would like nothing more just to have the carrot but we'll need all of it to get there, I think. That's beautiful. Please know I will put those in the show description so that they can look at those links. And that's all I have for you today. It's been a sheer pleasure. We could speak for hours, I guarantee because we were only tickling the surface but there's so many interesting things that we could discuss and go into deeper. We're gonna have to do that maybe next year for another podcast and I wish you a wonderful holiday season, a new year and I look forward to speaking to you again very soon. Thank you, sir, so much. Have a wonderful day. Thanks, Mark. It was a pleasure for me. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.