The problem we don't dare to solve

For fifteen years Europe has been running a migration debate that goes in circles. Pro and contra. Open or closed. Strict or lenient. Percentage points in polls. Barbed wire at the Polish border and fences at the Mediterranean. What the debate never does: offer a third option. A way out that benefits both sides.

At the same time Europe is stuck in another problem it also refuses to solve. The ethanol factories we need for the Carbon-Alert route will not end up in the right place on their own. Cellulose feedstocks grow fastest in the tropics. The sun stands highest longest. The rain falls more often. Growing seasons run year-round. An ethanol cluster in Mozambique, Brazil, or Indonesia produces two to three times as much per hectare as a Dutch or German maize installation — and builds a village around it.

Lay three thoughts together. Open three locked problems. One way forward.

The coachman on the box sees the road. He also sees who can help steer. Not as a burden. Not as a number. But as a person who is being asked for something.

Whoever waits here, can lead there

In the UK, the Netherlands, and across Europe, a group of people is caught in a bind. They have arrived here. They want to work. They want to build something. They want to move forward. But our system keeps them in a waiting room — sometimes for five years, sometimes longer. No residence permit, no work permit, no prospects. For those who would like to stay here, that is already painful. For those who never really wanted to stay — who never even got to choose where they fled to — it is outright cruel.

Imagine: those same people receive a different offer. Not "go back". Not "we will sort it out". But: come and build with us. We have work that fits where you come from and what you want to become. A two-year training in pellet production, distillation operation, SOFC maintenance, agricultural logistics. Then a three-year contract in a partner country in the tropics. Your own house. Your own salary. Your own prospects. And, if they choose, citizenship in that country afterwards — or back to Europe with a trade.

The numbers behind this proposal are simple. Carbon-Alert at 50 GW European rollout requires 350,000 direct jobs in the chain. A third of those — roughly 120,000 jobs — sit in tropical feedstock production. That is 120,000 people needed in places where they are welcome, with salaries that are good in a European context and excellent in a local context, with a role that concretely contributes to the world.

Why this isn't naïve

Anyone reading this for the first time thinks: this will never work. Too complicated. Too politically sensitive. Infrastructure too expensive. Too much diplomacy. Too many risks. Three counter-arguments are predictable — three answers too.

"The receiving countries don't want this." Wrong. Mozambique, Tanzania, Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana, Senegal, Colombia, Peru, Vietnam — each of these countries has a national industrialisation agenda. Not one says no to €500 million in infrastructure in exchange for a fifty-year feedstock agreement. The question is not whether they want it. The question is whether we have the courage.

"People don't want to leave Europe." Some don't. Many will — if the offer is good. Villages full of houses, schools with internet, salaries that are generous in a local context and reasonable in a European one, five years of work for ownership. Compare that with five years of waiting in an asylum procedure with no right to work. The choice does not need to be imposed on anyone — it only needs to be offered.

"This is colonialism under a different label." The opposite. Colonialism took people and raw materials from a country without giving anything back and without local ownership. This proposal builds cities where the residents are the owners. Fifty per cent local workers, fifty per cent migrants. The factory passes into the ownership of a local cooperative after fifteen years. The European contribution is capital and technology for an agreed period — not ownership for ever.

What this means for the UK, the Netherlands and Europe

The UK has 1.4 million unemployed. The Netherlands 380,000. Spain 2.6 million. Italy 2.0 million. France 2.4 million. Germany 2.8 million. Some of those — people who have never been able to put down roots here — get a fair chance at something new. That directly relieves the pressure on housing, on healthcare, on social security. But more importantly: it gives people a future they could not find here. And it gives Europe a feedstock chain through which we gain independence rather than import dependency.

Every government is standing there empty-handed. No one knows what to do. A European programme that builds 20 ethanol cities in a partner country in the tropics costs less than one year of unemployment benefit across these countries combined. And it solves two problems at once.

We must move forward. Not stand still.

Think outside the box. Stop debating in the same circle.

The coachman sits on the box or on the luggage rack. The cities in the tropics will be built by us — or by China. That is the choice no one says out loud, but which is sitting right on the table.

Whoever believes in this, believes in people

This proposal rests on one single assumption. That people, given a fair chance, want to take their future into their own hands. That an Eritrean boy who has now been waiting three years in a British or Dutch reception centre would rather live in a tropical city with good work and a house of his own than wait endlessly in uncertainty. That a Syrian teacher who is not allowed to stand in front of a class here would rather teach English in a new library in Mozambique than pack shopping bags in a supermarket.

Whoever refuses to make this assumption does not believe in people. Whoever does make it sees a way out of two locked debates at once.

The coachman on the box looks forward. Not only at the road. Also at who can ride along, help steer, help build what comes next. That is not idealism. That is simply the courage to think further than the waiting room we are both sitting in.