IC w10 The water comes

A few weeks ago there was a call in the newspaper where you could order a book for free. This book was an open letter written to all Dutch by Rutger Bregman and not much bigger than my hand, 45 pages.

Although now it suddenly feels a long time ago because of everything that happens around us, and does not happen around Corona, yesterday an uncle of mine died from the virus, deserves not to be forgotten.

It is precisely that which is forgotten and not believed is what the book is about. It tells the story of an engineer Johan van Veen who is almost unknown despite the fact that he designed the Delta Plan. He named himself Dr. Kassandra after the Greek princess who knew that Troy would fall, but was not taken seriously by anyone. He would like to panic with the prediction that the Netherlands could flood. For 20 years he warned about the danger and in 1953 he was proven right.

And it could have been much worse if the mayor of Niewerkerk, Jaap Vogelaar, had not demanded from the skipper Arie Evegroen that he sacrifice his boat to close the hole in the dike there with his boat. Because in that case almost half of the Netherlands would have been flooded. Now 100,000 people had to flee and 1836 died on the night the dikes broke.

This is how this open letter begins to all Dutch people to contribute to the realization that the ernsitg has been made and that we must all help to reverse it. We are heading for a new flood due to the climate changes.

How people cannot take a situation seriously, we experience from the situation around Corona. this morning I found 5 cars with at least 15 people in a parking lot. A "party" with helium balloons and loud music. There is nothing wrong with the music, (although not of my liking) but the 1.5 meter distance that we have all been asked to observe was certainly not maintained. Isn't it serious enough that 1651 people have now died of corona?

That means that in about 2 days we will equal the number of deaths from the flood disaster. Before that, the whole of the Netherlands was turned upside down.

The total CO2 emissions are currently quite lower than normal. People work from home as much as possible. The result is unfortunately negligible in the whole. But I can certainly hope that something good will come out? That companies find out that certain actions can be done from home and that we can work more remotely. Because despite the fact that what we personally do on a scale of a day or even a few months is negligible, a change in behavior for the large group is certainly possible in the long term. "a better environment starts with yourself" is the slogan that was used in campaigns by the Dutch government in the 1990s.

Oh well, because of corona, the fact that we are almost nowhere to drive 130 km / h on the highways during the day has not been a news item at all due to this virus: who would have thought that.

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Source:

BREGMAN, Rutger. 2020. Het water komt. Een brief aan alle Nederlanders. Amsterdam. De correspondent.