Okay, I do not wish to diminish the financial and economic crises. But I happen to be one of those people that feels that another ‘crunch’ needs more attention than it is getting: our climate. Notion: this is not your usual business-like newsletter story…

At the end of this year, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen for the follow-up to the Kyoto protocol. Hammering out any global political deal is no picnic, but this one will be even more impossible than any other before. Which is why these deals are usually preceded by many less formal meetings. Other gatherings of political leaders are used to broker the first deals or at least set agenda’s. Not so much this time.

These other crises are taking the focus away from the one that is of a more sustained nature. Yes, the economic crisis is hurting many people, but most of us will get over it. Not so with the climate crisis. Those problems are a bit more severe. And yes, that is an understatement.

But nothing a few billion won’t solve. There have been many calculations that money spent towards fixing the climate is indeed money spent towards fixing the economy. Our future economy, that is. Or rather, our children’s economy. We didn’t inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrowed it from our children, the adage says. And boy, is it more true than ever before.

So, in all humility, I actually believe that we need to spend even more billions than we are already doing. Let’s add a few euro’s more in order to prevent our children from having to fix what we knew needed fixing. Who knows, maybe a few banks can lend us some?

Qurrent and the crisis
You might wonder how we are coping with the economic turmoil. Well, we see it as a storm: it’s here, we’re holding on to the helm firmly and worry less about speed and more about saving crew and gear, so to speak. Yes we are in a financing round and times could be better for that. And yes we are focusing on building projects and times could be better for that as well. But the other side of that story is that we are still in an early stage and our organization is very lean. To wrap up the metaphor, we are sailing into smoother waters, ready to go even faster than before.

7 April 2009