My writing hut overlooks a medieval polder with the skyline of Rotterdam in the distance. It is a protected nature reserve, every now and then a kingfisher or green woodpecker flashes by. But lately I’ve also been seeing stranger birds. They wear green or orange vests and have iPads in their hands. I call them counting birds: they count which animals and plants can live here, that’s called a quick scan. The idea is that you quantify the ‘natural values’ so that you can, for example, dredge an area for a construction project, with the promise of then ‘compensating’ for it elsewhere.
We put ‘compensation’ in quotes because it is not possible. You cannot compress the last piece of medieval Rotterdam, with its centuries-old farms and mulberry trees and very young orchids, into a kind of zip file, a data set that you can extract elsewhere. You also cannot ‘compensate’ for a Rembrandt by making a quick scan of the paint types, burning the painting and then going to the Praxis for new paint. Gone is gone.
This compensation thinking is based on the misunderstanding that you can translate everything of value into figures and therefore buy it out, buy it out, buy it out. But it doesn’t work that way. See Groningen, see Allowances. The wrong people always get too much money, and money is of no use to those who have suffered real harm.
See also Moerdijk, where a thousand-year-old village has to make way for ‘the transition’. Of course there will be ‘compensation’. The cemeteries also have to be cleared, but don’t worry, they are being ‘preserved virtually’, the municipality said. Your loved one’s grave gone, but here is a USB stick.
The funny thing is: that compensation idea dates from the 1990s, we should know that it doesn’t work. At the time we were still naive, the computer was making a breakthrough, we could quantify and copy-paste everything, everything had to be modular, interchangeable and scalable, including nature and education and so on – we thought.
In 1997 a fascinating pamphlet was published entitled Ma$plainby Rem Koolhaas and Eduard Bomhoff. A paean to neoliberalism. The gist: fewer rules for companies, more flexible contracts for employees. Look at Asia! It’s not that difficult there! Let’s build a new Maasvlakte! You can simply compensate for nature, copy-paste! Think Photoshop! (that was a hip program at the time).
Vincent Karremans later said sorry,
but is now in The Hague
Indeed, the Second Maasvlakte was located in a protected nature reserve, which would be ‘compensated’. After a quarter of a century, this has still not happened, and next week the Council of State will rule in a lawsuit filed by nature organizations in this regard.
The plan for a car bridge through that nature reserve right in front of me stems from the same thinking. It is a rash solo action by the VVD councilor. The man had owned an IT company and entered local politics with the Silicon Valley swagger of move fast and break things. Preferably in someone else’s china cupboard.
In short: almost everyone in Rotterdam, from the port to nature lovers to the Marine Corps, wanted a tunnel at this location. The councilor passed the consultation, arranged a pot of car money from a VVD colleague in The Hague, and presented the car bridge as an all-or-nothing issue. He later said sorry, but is now in The Hague. China has now also become acquainted with the rash solo actions of Vincent Karremans – you name it scale up.
The same Karremans commissioned the report that was published last week amid much media interest, the Wennink report. I watched the presentation again. A man in a black 1990s turtleneck sweater, with his fingertips together, exclaimed 1990s neoliberalism the next big thing. Fewer rules for companies. Less tax for large companies. We protect the environment by flying more. Less citizen participation. Less democratization. It’s not that difficult to look more at Asia.
The word ‘innovation’ appears 228 times in the report, but economic thinking was as old as that book about the Maasvlakte. It even included the idea of a new, third Maasvlakte. Only Photoshop had been replaced by AI, the hip thing of today.
I don’t worry much about that car bridge in front of me. No one in town is excited about it. The budget is so tight that you could only make it an Ali Express bridge. It has to be gigantically high and long, a monster bridge, otherwise the ships cannot pass under it. More nuisance, less space for houses, higher costs for citizens, further detours to get onto that bridge at all… The latest news is that the project decision has been postponed to 2029.
I am concerned about the philosophy of life in the Wennink report. That old-fashioned belief in machers. Suspecting and undermining rules, procedures, participation and democracy as obstacles to the transition. This business class populism is more dangerous than that of Wilders: it receives applause from those in power.
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