Green energy, will that subject never become old? In my eyes definitely not! I think that it will continue to increase in popularity. Work it out: fossil fuels will be completely used up in a cosmic blink of an eye. Nuclear energy currently still results in too much radioactive and therefore dangerous waste. What remains is 'sustainable energy'. This is therefore what humankind will have have to make do in the future!

Much better too, really. Solar panels and wind turbines don't stink and generate no smog. Agreed, they also have disadvantages. Wind turbines generate quite a bit of noise pollution and are therefore less suitable for urban areas. And the production of the necessary materials will also require a fair amount of energy, of course, and at the end of its life it will all be discarded. But the environmental impact of this waste is easier to manage than all the gases that are now pumped into the atmosphere. And much of the material can probably be recycled.

Urban environments will in 100 years have changed unrecognizably. Whether everything will be electric? No idea. Perhaps a brilliant invention (nuclear mini-reactor in the shape of a button cell?) in the future will bring us unimaginable quantities of (hopefully clean) energy...

Last week we reported about the Bioo Lite, which promises to charge two telephones daily from a healthy plant (which will experience no disadvantage from this). I find this personally a very good development. Not only this specific project, but the fact that people are working on this subject. That's heartening. And gives hope. Hope that common sense will prevail some time and that we pause to consider the consequences of our doings. How does that slogan go again? “A better environment starts with you”. Yes, that's the one!