Some news just cannot be missed, I noticed on twitter. This week some major events happened. One of them was the climatecase in which Urgenda filed a law suit against the Dutch state for not taking sufficient action to limit climate change. And they won! The Dutch state should take more action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in our country.
Still, it made me think. I must say, reading all the twitter messages and see how this law suit was in the headlines of the big papers, I felt proud. Proud of the Dutch innovative way to make a statement. Proud of the ‘bottom-up’ way of addressing something that is so urgent and important.
When seeing an interview with Daan Roosegaarde last week (rerun of a television show), he said something that also made sense: “Some things we cannot do alone, we need each other to discover new things”. He talked about the example of tickling, if you tickle yourself it doesn’t work. Only if somebody else does it, it tickles.
Regarding this interview and the Urgenda case, I think we have to be careful not to fight over this or blame each other. But reach out, get together and solve the problems. The wise thing to do for the Dutch government is to ‘rest the case’, take it as a warning and start making plans, together with organisations like Urgenda. I know studio Roosegaarde does it already, work together with the Dutch state. And I am convinced that this is the only way to make the world a little better…