Why this sequel — Two files, one political architecture. In the previous article — Honesty makes government possible — I argued that Dutch debt policy is anchored to the wrong denominator. Exactly the same pattern repeats in the climate file: there too policy steers on the wrong denominator, there too a working solution exists that vested interests ignore — and there too the same architecture (confession up front, sunset clauses, dashboard correction, a Truth Commission) could open the political lock.

Why this sequel

Two files, one political architecture

In the previous article — Honesty makes government possible — I argued that Dutch debt policy is anchored to the wrong denominator. GDP as reported by CBS consists for 37% of accounting air: imputed rent, FISIM, R&D capitalisation, redistribution artefacts. On the real productive base (Productive Broad Welfare, PBW) the net honest debt is not 110% but 170%. The rest of that article was an exercise in what you can do with that honesty — an invitation to cooperation, a constitutionally anchored Groningen Fund, differentiated sunsets for recovery measures, and a concrete gas-Markerwaard scenario in which two crises are solved at once.

What has struck me since that publication: exactly the same pattern repeats in the climate file. There too, policy steers on the wrong denominator. There too, dashboard errors lead to political failure. There too, a working solution exists that is ignored by vested interests. And there too the architecture from the debt article — confession up front, sunset clauses, dashboard correction, a Truth Commission — could open the political lock.

The reason the climate file is even more urgent: here it is not about our own bookkeeping, but about the liveability of the earth for our children. And here, more than in the debt file, we have a concrete working alternative on the table. It is proven technology, fully modelled, cost-neutral — and it is ignored because it falls outside the current political frame.

This follow-up article does three things. First, it shows that the EU climate dashboard — the 90% reduction target for 2040 that Brussels and The Hague steer by — makes the same structural error as EMU debt: it measures something other than what it claims to measure. Next, it presents the World Belt/BiCRS route as a concrete solution that can capture 21 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year and generate 840,000 new European jobs, at a proven cost. And finally, it diagnoses why that solution is being blocked: by laws from the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’90s that still steer policy today — while China revises its regulations every five years, and the United States has built sunset clauses into about 40% of its federal laws since 1976.

“Human laws do not know the future — nature does. When we refuse to replace our laws as soon as their context changes, we steer with instruments that measure the problem of forty years ago, not the problem of today.”

Part 0 — The concealed CO₂ denominator

Why “90% reduction by 2040” does not mean 90% reduction

The European Climate Law establishes that the EU must have reduced its net greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 relative to 1990. The Dutch Scientific Climate Council even advises 90-95%. The Jetten cabinet has adopted this target in the Climate Plan 2025-2035. All parties therefore steer by one figure: 90% net CO₂ reduction between 1990 and 2040.

Exactly as with the 44% EMU debt: the figure is statistically correct, but it does not measure what it claims to measure. There is a climate dashboard error that is just as structural as the PBW error on GDP:

Four categories the dashboard does not see

• Import emissions. When the Netherlands winds down its own industry and imports more chemicals, steel, aluminium and cement from China, India or Turkey, those emissions are booked in the exporting country — not in the Netherlands. The Global Carbon Project calculates that EU import emissions are structurally about 40% higher than production emissions. We are thus partly lowering our emissions by exporting industry, not by consuming less.
• Relocated industry. The Jetten cabinet's nitrogen package of June 2026 — €212,795 per kilogram of nitrogen, based on the 1992 Habitats Directive — is pushing the agricultural sector towards Poland, where the same emissions are produced without appearing in Dutch bookkeeping. The same applies to CBAM and ETS: since 1 January 2026 European industry pays €75 per tonne of CO₂, but exporters get no rebate. The result: chemicals, steel and cement relocate outside the EU, and the CO₂ goes with them.
• Deforestation elsewhere. Solar panels on Chinese polysilicon, batteries on Congolese cobalt, biomass on American pellets — the deforestation and fossil auxiliary energy used in the production chain are not counted. When the EU accelerates its “green” transition through imports, global CO₂ accelerates along with it.
• Microplastics and tyre dust. Car tyre dust today is what tobacco was in 1965: ubiquitous, deadly, and officially not recognised as a climate or health issue. Every electric car wears down more tyre rubber than a light petrol car (more weight, more torque). The climate dashboard counts the avoided CO₂ but not the new tyre-wear emissions.

Adding up these four categories, the real Dutch CO₂ footprint in 2040 turns out to be around 60-70% — not 10%. That is a difference of a factor of six between what the dashboard shows and what actually happens. Precisely analogous to the 44% EMU debt that becomes 68% on the PBW: the same pattern, a different file.

What the corrected denominator means for policy

When you take the real CO₂ footprint as the steering indicator instead of the dashboard version, the entire policy story tips over. Electrification proves insufficient — it displaces emissions abroad. Hydrogen imports raise global CO₂ before the first molecule is even green (fossil production of blue hydrogen, energy loss in liquefaction and transport, deforestation from biomass input elsewhere). Heat pumps on grey electricity produce a net CO₂ increase.

Only technologies that are net-negative within our own dashboard while also not producing more CO₂ elsewhere genuinely work. That list is shorter than Brussels would have you think: BiCRS (bio-CCS), Europe's own ethanol from rapeseed and sunflower, biochar and soil carbon storage, and tropical Juncao corridors with carbon capture. That is precisely what the World Belt route is about.

“When a minister says ‘we are on track for 90% reduction by 2040’, that is statistically correct. But on the real footprint that same reduction is 32% — exactly what the corrected dashboard shows. Decisions on the wrong denominator are not decisions; they are wishful thinking with a civil servant's signature.”

Part I — The working solution

21 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year, 840,000 jobs, cost-neutral

A concrete working solution to the climate problem exists, and it has been fully modelled in an Excel model of 425 corridor segments worldwide. It combines three proven technologies:

• Juncao. A Pennisetum hybrid grass developed in the 1980s by Chinese scientist Lin Zhanxi. In tropical zones Juncao produces up to 425 tonnes of biomass per hectare per year — compared to about 15 tonnes for miscanthus and 10 tonnes for European hay meadow. Proven technology, in production in China, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda and South Africa.
• BiCRS (Biomass with Carbon Removal and Storage). The biomass is burned or fermented into ethanol or biogas; the released CO₂ is captured and stored underground (in depleted gas fields, salt caverns or basalt formations). Net result: negative emissions — more CO₂ is removed from the atmosphere than the chain produces. This is the only industrial technology that is net-negative today without political dependency.
• Corridor cultivation. Instead of fragmented land-use projects, continuous “belts” 100 km wide are laid out through tropical zones — Sahara Coast-to-Coast, Andes-Amazon, Northern Australia and European Greenery. Corridor structure brings economies of scale in machine building, harvest logistics and carbon verification. And the biomass throughput per machine (100 m³/hour, 24/7) delivers an LCOE of €14.91 per tonne of CO₂ — an eighth of what Climeworks charges for Direct Air Capture.

The figures, in plain language

At a market price of €40 per tonne of CO₂ (roughly the current ETS level), 290 of the 425 corridor segments are profitable. Together they deliver 21.10 gigatonnes of CO₂ capture per year — more than half of the current global CO₂ emissions of 37 Gt/year. Net profit for the operators: €529 billion per year.

At a market price of €80 per tonne of CO₂ (close to what industry in Europe already pays via CBAM and ETS), 387 segments become profitable, yielding 23.15 gigatonnes of CO₂/year and generating €1.373 trillion in annual net profit worldwide. Of that total, €1,008 billion comes from the tropics (southern Sahara fringe, South America, Northern Australia) and €365 billion from European Greenery.

The jobs — and where they land

Unlike the wind-turbine-and-solar-panel industry, where 80% of production takes place in China, the World Belt industry remains predominantly European. Machine building (180,000 FTE), electronics and AI control (120,000), components and manufacturing (150,000), service and maintenance (130,000), R&D (60,000), logistics (100,000), and construction-and-cultivation in Africa and South America (100,000). Total: 840,000 new jobs, structural over 30+ years.

The construction-and-cultivation jobs in Nouakchott, Djibouti, Mali and Peru are not development aid — they are a future perspective for returning asylum seekers. A job with meaning, in their own language, their own region, a career path. Precisely what our democracy denies them, the corridor offers. That is not sending-away; that is moving-forward. And it is one of the few climate proposals that makes migration part of the solution rather than the problem.

“2.4 trillion dollars on wind turbines and solar panels — and global CO₂ keeps rising. There is a grass-like plant that produces 425 tonnes of biomass per hectare, for 1/8 of what Climeworks charges. Every component is proven. What is missing is political will.”

Part II — Why it is being blocked

The paper world that undermines decision-making

The question everyone should be asking: if this technology is fully modelled, cost-neutral and industrially proven, why is it not being scaled up? Why does the cabinet spend €450 million on hydrogen storage at Zuidwending/HyStock — for a molecule seventeen times more expensive than the best alternative — while not a single euro goes to corridor cultivation? Why does the Netherlands pay €235 million to Brussels for non-recycled plastic, when that same stream, stored in German lignite mines, could have generated €99 million in carbon credits?

The answer is not cynical: no one is deliberately against it. The blockage is institutional. It lies in the structure of how our legislation works. And the core of the problem is that we still steer by laws and directives written for a world that no longer exists.

The archaeology of Dutch climate policy

When you look under the hood of current climate policy, you see an archaeological dig. Four layers of legislation, each from a different era, each still steering policy:

• Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC from 1992. 34 years old. Steering nitrogen policy, based on habitat measurements from the late 1980s that took no account of climate change, ammonia deposition from agriculture, or modern ecological insight. The result: the Jetten cabinet uses this directive to impose €212,795 per kilogram of nitrogen on farmers — for habitats that will not survive anyway without climate adaptation.
• Birds Directive 79/409/EEC from 1979. 47 years old. Still the legal basis for Natura 2000 areas. Ecological data from the 1970s steer spatial-planning decisions in 2026.
• Nuclear Energy Act 1963. 63 years old. Written when nuclear power was a political symbol of “atomic peace”, not a climate instrument. Extended to 2033 since Fukushima. Since then the physics has remained unchanged, but the legislation has not kept pace with SMR technology, LFTR reactors, gen-IV safety.
• Spatial planning: the Wro (2008), but at its core still the logic of the 1965 Spatial Planning Act. Set up more than 60 years ago as scarcity management for post-war Netherlands — scarcity of land, of housing, of purchasing power. Today we have abundance of some things (capital) and shortages of others (building land), but the law is still geared to the first economy.

And this is before you even add the European layer: CBAM and ETS, which tax industry but take no account of genuinely negative technology; RED III, which favours hydrogen imports over European bio-ethanol; SDE++ and ETS registers, which only grant credits for Western reduction, not for African corridor capture.

The international mirror

Compare this with how other countries treat legislation:

• China. An integral revision of fundamental laws every five years via the Five-Year Plan mechanism. Laws that no longer fit the new reality are rewritten or withdrawn. Average age of active fundamental laws: about 8 years. That does not automatically make China better governed — but it does make the system agile. It can adapt to technological and climatic change.
• United States. Since the Regulatory Reform Act of 1976, about 40% of federal laws contain sunset clauses. Congress must vote explicitly every five to ten years to continue a programme or subsidy. That forces periodic revision. American energy policy is chaotic, but it is able to change course completely within two years (as with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022).
• United Kingdom. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 gives ministers the power to replace outdated regulation without full parliamentary process. After Brexit, the UK has used this power to scrap or rewrite more than 4,000 EU rules.
• Netherlands. On an OECD basis, the Netherlands has 4 sunset clauses across more than 100 active fundamental laws. Our political culture is partial replacement through amending laws, not structural revision. The 1992 Habitats Directive still steers policy in 2026; no one can formally replace that law without European consensus.

“We are a country that uses laws from the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’90s to make decisions about 2050. That is not conservative. That is paralysed.”

Part III — Sunset as constitution

From temporary exception to temporary law

In the debt article I introduced the sunset principle as a constitutional safeguard for temporary priority arrangements: recovery is temporary, equality is permanent. Groningen residents get seven years of priority on the first South Groningen homes in the core area; three years in the surrounding area. After that the priority automatically lapses and equal treatment applies.

This principle should not apply only to recovery measures. It belongs to all legislation that codifies the context of a specific time. Every law based on the scientific insight, technological assumptions, economic structures or ecological understanding of its era should automatically lapse after a term — and be actively reconfirmed if it is to be extended. Otherwise we steer the system with an archive instead of a dashboard.

Three categories of sunsets for climate and environment

• Scientifically dated laws: 10-year sunset. Laws based on specifically named scientific insights — habitat classifications, emission thresholds, health standards — automatically lapse after 10 years and must be reconfirmed against current science. The 1992 Habitats Directive should already have been revised three times under this rule. Instead it steers 2026 nitrogen policy with data from the 1980s.
• Technologically dated laws: 15-year sunset. Laws that presuppose specific technologies — energy carriers, storage modalities, industrial processes — lapse after 15 years. RED III is built on the assumption that imported hydrogen becomes cheaper than European bio-ethanol. When that assumption fails to materialise (as is now shown: Dutch pump hydrogen is 17 times more expensive than the best alternative), the law should automatically lapse and be revised.
• Structurally dated laws: 25-year sunset. Laws that codify an economic or social structure — spatial planning, taxation, social security — lapse after 25 years and must be thoroughly revised. The Wro has already reached its age; the 1963 Nuclear Energy Act should long since have undergone three revisions.

From arbitrariness to system

The political objection to sunset is that it creates uncertainty. That is a misunderstanding. Sunset actually creates certainty — the certainty that periodic revision will happen based on current facts rather than historical roots. Dutch citizens then know that every nitrogen, environmental or energy file has a structural agreement on when the scale will be recalibrated.

The real uncertainty lies with the current system, where arbitrary legal procedures determine when a law that no longer fits is eventually adjusted. Farmers, entrepreneurs and citizens do not know whether their activity will still be legal in five years, because a judge, ruling on the basis of a 1992 Habitats Directive, can hand down a decision that then keeps politics busy for ten years trying to fix it. Sunset turns this arbitrariness into a system.

The link with the Government Accounting Truth Commission

In the debt article I proposed a Government Accounting Truth Commission that would officially recognise the four layers of debt and the PBW denominator. That same commission can extend its mandate to two major tasks:

• Fiscal dashboard correction. Alongside EMU debt, also implicit ageing commitments, net honest debt and the PBW as fixed elements of the budget cycle. Every cabinet gets its financial statement presented on both dashboards.
• Climate dashboard correction. Alongside the EU's 90% reduction target, also the real consumption-based CO₂ footprint, relocated-industry emissions, import emissions and deforestation-elsewhere emissions. Every minister must be able to defend their policy on both dashboards.

Combine this with a generic sunset law that makes the three categories above binding, and within ten years the Netherlands has a system that can move with technological and climatic reality. Not because we want to become Chinese — but because we can no longer exist with a dashboard from 1992 and a system from 1965.

“China renews every five years. America every ten. We never do. The result: China steers by today, America by yesterday, and the Netherlands by the day before yesterday. We are not behind for lack of vision — we are behind for lack of sunset.”

Conclusion — Two files, one movement

Why these two articles together form a single political invitation

When you place “Honesty makes government possible” and “Deciding without view” side by side, you see that they are not two separate articles — it is one political architecture, applied to two files. Both start from the same diagnosis:

• We steer by the wrong denominator. For debt: 44% EMU on official GDP is in reality 68% on the PBW. For climate: 90% reduction on the EU target is in reality 32% actual reduction after correcting for imports, relocation, deforestation and microplastics.
• The working solution is blocked by institutional reflexes. For debt: confession is politically impossible for French, Italian and Belgian officials, so the four-layer analysis is ignored. For climate: recognising BiCRS and World Belt corridors undermines the political coalitions around hydrogen and electrification, so the €529 billion/year is set aside.
• The Netherlands is uniquely placed to speak first. For debt: our €1,750 billion pension pot makes us the only country with a load-bearing buffer. For climate: the Port of Rotterdam, Wageningen, the chemical industry, rapeseed acreage and the pension pot as patient capital make us the only country with a complete production-and-financing chain for the World Belt.
• The architecture of the solution is identical. Confession up front (dashboard correction via the Truth Commission), sunset clauses on all legislation that codifies the context of a specific time, differentiated timelines for recovery, and constitutional anchoring of the fundamental mechanisms — so the next coalition cannot tamper with it.

What we bring to the table

To Dutch farmers and industry: a way out of the nitrogen, energy and climate impasse. The rapeseed corridor in the Netherlands and the combined German-Polish CAP plan from the Europe Edition offer farmer income four to eight times higher than today — for less than half a percent of the CAP budget. The BiCRS industry at Chemelot and Rotterdam makes the chemical sector competitive again.

To European partners: a climate route that works without import dependency, without relocating industry, and without us producing €2.4 trillion worth of wind turbines and solar panels while global CO₂ keeps rising. A route that can remove 21 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year without a single cent of subsidy above the current ETS level.

To returning asylum seekers: no sending away, no keeping in — a third option. Work in Nouakchott, Djibouti, Mali, Peru. Building corridors in their own region and language. A career path that our democracy does not offer them and that corridor cultivation has in abundance.

To the next generation: a climate policy that works, legislation that can move with the times, and a political architecture that does not inherit the mistakes of the previous generation. Sunset clauses ensure that laws from 2026 are not still steering policy in 2076 — unlike the 1992 Habitats Directive that dictates our nitrogen policy today.

What we ask

We are not asking for subsidy. The BiCRS/World Belt route is profitable at €40/tCO₂ — exactly the ETS price that already exists. We ask for three institutional steps:

• Expansion of the Government Accounting Truth Commission with a climate-dashboard mandate: binding publication of both the EU target and the consumption-based footprint.
• A generic sunset law that categorises all fundamental legislation into 10-, 15- or 25-year sunsets, with automatic lapse if not reconfirmed.
• Recognition of corridor capture within the ETS — Dutch and European companies that invest in African or South American Juncao corridors should be able to receive formal CO₂ credits for it, with certification (blockchain registration, UNFCCC linkage). Without this recognition, €529 billion/year in global capture remains worthless in European bookkeeping.

Appendix — Full World Belt corridor figures

425 segments, broken down per corridor — source data Carbon-Alert Excel model, July 2026

Corridor	Length	Segments	Profitable @€40	Profit @€80 (bn/yr)
Sahara Coast-to-Coast	8,000 km	80	80	€326
Andes-Amazon	6,600 km	66	66	€527
Northern Australia	2,400 km	24	24	€155
Subtotal World Belt	17,000 km	170	170	€1,008
European Greenery	25,600 km	255	120	€365
TOTAL worldwide	42,600 km	425	290	€1,373

Source data: Carbon-Alert Excel model of 425 corridor segments, modelled with Juncao (tropical) and the European Pennisetum variant. Weighted average cost €14.91/tCO₂. Profit calculation: (market price − LCOE) × CO₂ volume captured.

Key findings

• At €40/tCO₂ (current ETS level): 290 segments profitable, 21.10 Gt CO₂ captured per year, €529 billion global annual profit.
• At €80/tCO₂ (current CBAM levy): 387 segments profitable, 23.15 Gt CO₂ captured per year, €1,373 billion global annual profit. Only 38 segments (9%) remain irretrievably unprofitable — all in the driest European Greenery zones.
• Climate neutrality: With full rollout at standard corridor width (100 km), climate neutrality is achievable by 2040. With double corridor width plus CRISPR-improved Juncao (RIPE Illinois, Wageningen): 2032 possible — eight years ahead of the EU target.
• Net-negative window: From around 2038, World Belt capture (21 Gt/yr) removes more CO₂ from the atmosphere than the then-remaining global emissions. From 2038 to 2050 atmospheric CO₂ concentration could fall — the first period in human history in which that is possible.
• Cumulative 2025-2050: Under Scenario 2 (100 km width), the World Belt captures 372 Gt CO₂ — about 32.8% of the current atmospheric surplus relative to pre-industrial levels.

Appendix sources: All figures from the Carbon-Alert business-plan model, July 2026, modelled with CBS/Eurostat/OECD input variables, Juncao production data from China's Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (Lin Zhanxi programme), and international gas-market and carbon-credit references. Excel model publicly available at openvizier.org/klimaatplan-2040-2050.