TED Community » Fred van Zwieten

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Saving the planet

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• TEDCred score: +24.60 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Talk: Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim

  Apr 3 2013: Another interesting idea: http://www.tedxdelft.nl/2012/10/nynke-tromp-disrupting-democracy/
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim

  Apr 3 2013: Money is always a bad thing in elections. Every political party should get an equal amount of money to campain, payed by general taxes (so, by the people). How they spend it is basically up to them, but everything must be transparantly accounted for on a web site.

• A comment on Talk: Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic

  Oct 19 2012: Please have a look at the proposed solution from Boyan Slat (www.boyanslat.com). He has given a TEDtalk @TEDxDelft 2012 but the video is not online yet.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?

  Jul 16 2012: Greg Bear has written a two volume Science Fiction story on this very subject. It is called "Darwins Radio" and "Darwins Children". Highly recommended.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Paul Gilding: The Earth is full

  Apr 6 2012: I just found an article in my feedreader that I tought I should link to here:
  http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-04/new-research-tracks-40-year-old-prediction-world-economy-will-collapse-2030
  
  It's basically a resarch that finds were right on track on the predictions made by the club of Rome.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Daniel Pauly: The ocean's shifting baseline

  Mar 2 2012: Mr Pauly will get what he asked for. Here is a quote from Cameron: "Avatar 2 narrows the spotlight instead of just nature in general or the rainforest. It focuses it a little more on ocean issues, because we have a planet that's a blue planet. From a distance, you look at it, the Earth is a lot more blue than it is, you know brown, the land mass. We're making the oceans unsurvivable for a lot of the species right now. For a lot or reasons. It's just a way to focus a little energy in that direction."

• A reply on Conversation: What are your thoughts and questions on "the magic washing machine"?

  Mar 21 2011: As an example, look at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/10/solar-power-breakthrough_n_833483.html where you see a breakthrough on solar power. If we could invest the same amount of money into fundamental green energy research as is being put into nuclear and ways to get the difficult-to-get oil out of the ground, I am personally convinced 2050 is a reasonable goal. Other ways to make it work is through the wallet. In my country real green energy is more expensive than "grey" energy. Change this! Make green energy cheaper!

• A reply on Conversation: NEDT, the "Net Environmental Damage Tax"

  Feb 16 2011: The main effect I want to establish with this NEDT tax is to make products that damage the environment more expensive than competing products that do not damage the environment. That way, the market will correct the producer by no longer buying their more expensive products. This forces the producer to clean up his/her act or stop all together. The fact that this tax generates money is, to me, a side effect. This money can be put to good use, for example repairing the damage. Another example could be to subsidize green producers, enforcing the effect. The less money the NEDT tax collects the cleaner the world will be.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: We need a political party devoted to maximizing the value of people's TIME.

  Feb 15 2011: No no, not a Time Party, but a Happiness Party. Why are so many political decision based on economics (it's NOT the economy, stupid)? Goverments assume money is the key driver for happiness. Goverments should measure the state of the country and there selfs by creating a "happiness Index". If it's money that makes people happy, ok. But in most cases it's not. If it's time that make people happy, put that on the agenda.
  
  It's time for the Happiness Party!
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Do we need nuclear energy?

  Feb 15 2011: There are quite some developments in the nuclear industry.
  
  Let me first mention the new "traveling wave nuclear reactor" design from TerraPower. I'm not a MS fanboy, but Bill has invested in the right thing (again). These new reactors work on nuclear waste. I'm not sure what their waste product is and what the safety risks are, but it sure sounds promising. See here: gigaom.com/cleantech/terrapower-how-the-travelling-wave-nuclear-reactor-works. There is also a TED talk about it from Bill. Is this would work out, it's a game changer.
  
  Second, China want to build "greener" reactors based on "thorium", a much more available product than uranium. They also want to make so called "molten salt" reactors, what seem to be the same sort of design as TerraPower's.
  
  Don't get me wrong, i'm all for green energy. But the brutal facts seem to be the global warming if happening at a pace that rules out the development of enough really green sources of energy like wind, solar and tidal. So, nuclear has to be an intermediate solution. Development of these reactors take to much time, i agree. But a lot of this is red tape.