I request a moratorium on meetings.

Truly remarkable: Poland used to be a climate laggard. Today, wind and solar are increasingly replacing coal in the Polish electricity mix with almost 30% of all electricity generated to date this year from wind and solar. In 2000 coal provided 95% of Polish electricity. Today it is at 51%.

Random brag: one of the biggest successes of my academic career so far has been the one (full) paragraph on my first PhD paper in Hanley/Shogren/White's Introduction to Environmental Economics.

Next week in the EU-Parliament (11.11.2025, 13:30-15), we will discuss the future of sustainable farming in Europe and the alignment or non-alignment of the CAP with sustainability criteria, based on @agtransect.bsky.social and #CAP4GI.

The under-acknowledgement crisis

I feel like we're not acknowledging enough in the acknowledgement sections of our papers.

Der @zeit.de -Verlag hat @imsieber.bsky.social von der @unikassel.bsky.social für das Fellowship-Programm „Zia – Visible Women in Science“ ausgewählt. Glückwunsch! Sie forscht zu nachhaltiger Entwicklung und Mensch-Umwelt-Beziehungen. @kasselinstitute.bsky.social www.uni-kassel.de/uni/aktuelle...

We need a culture and systematic infrastructures to encourage raw data publication (not only in soil ecology).

In the context of the 🇩🇪 biodiversity assessment (Faktencheck Artenvielfalt) my soil ecology colleagues analyzed ~1250 time series datasets on var soil organisms. Only 100 (sic!) of them were derived from the literature. All the rest were unpublished datasets uncovered from desk drawers and archives.

In case you didn't know: in soil ecology, earthworms count as "macrofauna", while moles are "megafauna"🤓

I've had retreats in less attractive places. Meet Stolberg in the Harz mountains.

Nienawidzę poniedziałków

Vor dem Parlament in Belgrad. Gerade sind Menschen gerannt, Böller wurden geworfen, Rauch stieg auf, die Polizei machte einen Zufahrtweg zu. Die Demonstrierenden stehen davor und brüllen "Gotov Je" - Er ist am Ende. Stimmung sehr angespannt.

One of the things I hate about not (yet?) having tenure is the need for self-marketing – something I'm not really good at, and that I'm certainly not comfortable doing.

'Pesticide-free production systems: opportunities, hurdles and policy options' Join us 27 November, 17:15–18:45. ETH Zurich, CHN F46 The event will feature presentations by Per Kudsk, Niklas Möhring, Ilaria Pertot and Eileen Ziehmann, followed by a panel discussion @ethzwfsc.bsky.social

Neues aus Serbien! Genau ein Jahr ist es her, dass der Einsturz eines Vordachs am Bahnhof von Novi Sad 16 Menschen das Leben kostete. Seitdem bewegt eine anhaltende Protestwelle das Land. Am Samstag strömten Zehntausende zur Gedenkveranstaltung nach Novi Sad. @krstorevic.bsky.social war vor Ort.

Fraud is no longer a series of isolated ethical lapses but a business model that exploits vulnerable points in the research economy. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Farmers play far more than just a food-producing role—they shape landscapes, cultures, and communities. A new study in 'Agriculture and Human Values' explores how farmers see their future roles in balancing social, economic, and environmental goals. bit.ly/47LQlpT @bartoszbartk.com #farmsky

I love being ripped out of my cozy Eurocentrism from time to time.

From the Elsevier website: "Authors can share their accepted manuscript: Immediately: [...] By updating a preprint in arXiv or RePEc with the accepted manuscript (and updating the license to a CC BY-NC-ND license)" www.elsevier.com/about/polici... #RePEc #EconSky #arxiv

My new favourite cinematic dialogue (from Suits, S9E7):

Pro being 1.90+ m: * orienting myself in crowds * reaching stuff Contra: * hotel beds and blankets * beds and blankets outside home in general * seats in trains and busses * back problems since my youth

Aktuelle Lektüre; ein Buch über die Schicksale und Entscheidungen von Jud:innen in Polen nach dem Krieg. Deprimierend. Das Maß an Antisemitismus in Polen war erschreckend (und ist es auch heute noch).

Guter Anlass. Genauso habe ich es vor ein paar Monaten auch gemacht – Ubuntu statt Windows 11 auf dem Dienst-Laptop (privat nutze ich Ubuntu schon seit Jahren). Wäre entspannter, wenn Andere das auch tun würden – so gibt's hier und da kleine Kompatibilitätsprobleme (wenn auch nix unüberwindbares).

In a new article, we test different behavioral interventions (and combinations) in four EU countries. Null results on "light green" eco-schemes. doi.org/10.1093/erae...

Yes it is.... Is academic research becoming too competitive? Nature examines the data www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Wem die individuelle Hauswirtschaft innerhalb des Systems der #LPG in der DDR nicht bekannt ist: 👇 Tatsächlich sehr spannend, da es in signifikantem Maße mit zur (Nah-)Versorgung der Bevölkerung gesorgt hat, wenn auch tw. von Absurditäten begleitet. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pers%C3...

Done. Ironically, and as I only realized by chance afterwards, on Kołakowski's birthday, which is today. Good book. Recommended if one wants to get an idea of what Marxism has been over the years and according to different thinkers (from Marx through Gramsci to Habermas).

"Sie ist die bisher größte in Deutschland: Eine neue Reycling-Anlage in Oberbayern soll aus #Klärschlamm #Phosphor gewinnen für möglichst nachhaltigen #Dünger. Das ist nicht nur aus ökologischen Gründen sinnvoll." 👍

Thrilled to share a new paper in the Journal of Agricultural Economics! With SRUC & iDiv, we use a labelled DCE to assess how farmer identities shape institutional preferences for privately financed grassland AECM. doi.org/10.1111/1477...

Should statistical software that estimates causal effects also tell you the causal assumptions under which that estimate can be interpreted as causal? I don't know but my PhD student Maurice Korf has some thoughts (and software) to get the conversation going: academic.oup.com/ije/article/...

I just learned a new concept in environmental economics (while grading an exam): the PQ tax. I'll leave it to you to guess what was (most likely) meant.

“When crops are burned for fuel, new land can be needed to grow new crops for food or fuel. This can lead to indirect land clearance and deforestation. Staggeringly, biofuels globally therefore today emit 16% more CO₂ emissions than the fossil fuels they replace.”

That's a lot... Way more than I had on the other platform (with fewer interactions than there, though).

A reminder.

Quite some news

One of my favorite moments from Nobel Prize history: The Nobel Committee couldn’t reach Stanford professor Paul Milgrom to let him know that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, so his fellow winner, Robert Wilson, went over to his house in the middle of the night to wake him up!

Spannende Erfahrung, kann ich empfehlen.

Zwischen diesen drei Aushängen sind es vielleicht je 2 m... Die anderen beiden Türen in diesem Waggon sind ebenfalls defekt. Die Züge auf dieser Strecke (Kopenhagen–Hamburg) sind wirklich eine Katastrophe.

It's time to say Farvel today. I've had a great time at the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen. I'll miss the colleagues, the cycling infrastructure, the green spaces. Still, I'm really looking forward to seeing my family again. 5+ weeks is a lot.

Fun activity during my goodbye-cake break at IFRO: trying to "carbon-date" this map of Europe. We narrowed it down to probably early 60's, using mainly non-European hints (Egypt is called "United Arab Republic", Algeria is independent, Gaza is still controlled by Egypt).

Es ist wirklich absurd. Nicht nur, dass das #EU Parlament mehrheitlich dafür stimmt, Fleischersatz nicht mehr #Burger, #Schnitzel und #Wurst nennen zu dürfen. Wiedereinmal formiert sich eine Mehrheit aus Konservativen und Rechtsaußen-Fraktionen. #vegan #veggi

I feel like too often administrations/bureaucracies (not only, but especially) act like "Oh, shit, there is one way how X can be misused, let's make X impossible", while ignoring that "X can be helpful in 1000 other cases" also holds true. It drives me mad.

Can’t decide what to buy on Prime Day? Try: absolutely nothing, and then go support indie bookstores instead 📚

Visited the Department of Environmental Science of @au.dk in Roskilde/Risø to give not one, but two talks🤓 Learned something extremely important there:

What I like most about Copenhagen (next to its amazing cycling infrastructure) is the density and quality of public spaces: parks, cemeteries (used as parks around here), playgrounds, open-air sports facilities small and large... I don't think I've seen anything like that anywhere else.

My own form of escapism from Trump, Babiš, Gaza, Ukraine and random drones. (I originally started reading this book some 17 years ago, re-started it a few times and really got going in June this year; no idea why, but I derive a lot of satisfaction from reading it)