Corals victim of appeal

Last June history was written when a Dutch judge ruled in favour of Urgenda in the “Klimaatzaak” (Climate case). The Dutch government was forced by the court to make her climate policies much more ambitious and to drive back the emission of greenhouse gases by at least 25% in 2020. Despite heavy pressure from our society, the government filed for an appeal against this ruling. The Kabinet appeals because of both constitutional as well as substantive considerations. This was said by undersecretary W. Mansveld (Infrastructuur en Milieu, PvdA) and minister H. Kamp (Economische Zaken, VVD) in a plenary debate on the 24th of September.

According to some politicians, the Kabinet delays implementation of the courts’ ruling, and therefore E. Ouwehand filed a “motie van treurnis” (motion of sadness/disappointment) on the governments current attitude. Ouwehand: “the Kabinet puts all of our futures at risk. It is a Chutzpah for the Kabinet to keep saying they have an “ambitious” climate policy while the judge ruled that the government needs to take more care of our climate by taking extra steps forward. The judge says the government is acting unlawful otherwise.”

Six Degrees - Mark Lynas
Thousands of scientists agree climate change has some antropogenic causes and that we need to do all in our power to reduce our emissions of CO2. If we don’t, the consequences will be severe. If you want to learn more, try the book “Six degrees” by Mark Lynas. He compared many scientific studies and ordered scenario’s based on the temperature change the earth might experience. The sights aren’t pretty…

We like to make fools out of Republicans in the US for denying climate change, but our Dutch politicians are equally good at denying.
Our politicians seem to believe they understand the matter better than all those scientists:
Undersecretary Mansveld questioned the causal relation between CO2-emissions in the Netherlands and worldwide climate change.
Minister Kamp added it was not scientifically determined a reduction of at least 25% was needed
Dijkstra called the ruling “strange” and had some substantive considerations against it.

Come on politicians, climate change is obviously already happening. We experience more and heavier storms, more droughts. At the moment more and more people come to seek refuge in Europe because of the unstable situation in the Middle East. We are also already having discussions about that. According to climate scientists the number of refugees will increase. Even the Dutch are nominated to become refugees! Our land slowly sinks while the sea level keeps rising!

We can solve many issues in a simple way. It does not even have to cost us a lot of money. In fact, if we solve some issues, we can earn a lot more. But we don’t seem to want that! We want “business as usual”. We know what we have and we don’t know what we will get if we work towards a sustainable society. Stop the unnecessary lawsuits and stop climate change for the benefit of humans AND corals world wide.