Floods in England, earthquakes in the Netherlands: sustainable energy - Hoofdinhoud
Floods in England and earthquakes in the Netherlands reflect an unpleasant reality. Human behaviour often has effects on the earth which we discover, in hindsight, to be much more severe than we could have imagined. We must take much greater care of our natural world, otherwise unpredictable consequences will come back to haunt us. More than anything else, we must work together closely as partners across Europe in developing sustainable energy.
Thousands of British citizens in the United Kingdom have been forced to leave their homes. They are devastated. Food, drink and a roof over your head ensure survival, and if those basic needs are not met, people fall into a panic. The alarm among British citizens can be compared to those Dutch people who had to leave their homes following recent earthquakes. It is the kind of turmoil that occurs when people no longer feel safe in their own homes.
In 1959, when natural gas was discovered in Slochteren, nobody could have predicted that earthquakes would occur in the Netherlands measuring 5.0 on the Richter Scale, as a result of drilling for natural gas. In England, attention has justifiably been focused on the reason for flooding which was put in motion long ago: climate change. In an article in the Financial Times, publisher Robin Harding drew the conclusion that we will pay a high price if we do not start taking the risks associated with climate change seriously soon. He compares the situation to the financial crisis: the odds of things going wrong appear negligible, but if disaster does occur, the consequences are so serious that we will no longer be able to avoid labelling them unacceptable.
Humans only appear willing to adjust their own behaviour in cases of enormous catastrophe. This applies most especially to changes set into motion by humans themselves; processes that have taken place over a period of decades or centuries. Add to that the fact that it is extremely difficult for us to accept that those generators of great prosperity - our wealth of fossil fuels - have such disastrous effects on our very existence. And most especially if our prosperity is the result of technological advances based on our own innovations.
The steam engine introduced an entirely new age in the mid-18th century in England, namely, the age of mechanical energy. Mankind could never have imagined it in the prior ten thousand years of its existence. The industrial revolution that James Watt and his peers ushered in 250 years ago in England, arrived in the Netherlands 100 years later. My grandmother - the daughter of a boatman - spent her youth walking along the canals of our country wearing a harness, together with the rest of her family. The harness unfailingly drew forth the barge - a sailing ship - using nothing more than manpower.
The age in which we live is characterized by success, progress and prosperity. Our population levels, which stayed the same for a long time, exploded in an exponential curve. Our wealth increased so quickly that generations born after 1850 could only look back at their young years in amazement. Without exception, they note that the austerity of their youth has disappeared. Electricity, the automobile, computers and airplanes would not have happened without James Watt. They determine our existence so thoroughly; it is unthinkable that all of these things did not exist 100 years ago - during the lifetime of our grandparents.
We are living in a revolutionary time, and the driving force of this age is energy; mechanical energy from the steam engine. The steam engine used to run on coal, which proved to have certain side effects 150 years later. The CO2 which is released when coal burns, heats up our atmosphere. This warming is a threat to our newly achieved prosperity, our progress, and our success.
The unexpected consequences of CO2 are not unique to the post-industrial revolution world. Following the unique prosperity brought on by the mechanisation and industrialisation of our society, human beings have been able to free their thinking power, which resulted in new and unprecedented technological inventions, with similar dramatic results.
The most compelling example is the project led by Oppenheimer in the USA during and just after World War Two. The invention of the atomic bomb marked the first instance in which humankind became capable of destroying itself. In hindsight this might seem like a dramatic exaggeration, but for those who lived during the Cold War, it was a scenario that was undeniable, culminating in the bizarre Cuban Missile Crisis under President Kennedy. Another, less dramatic, but just as realistic, example of how we almost destroyed our own world was the massive emission of CFCs that made a hole in our atmosphere. Now that we have banned CFCs with the Montreal Protocol, and the ozone hole appears to be closing, scientists are telling us the very existence of the earth balanced on the edge of a precipice.
The belief in progress of the industrial revolution and the many political movements that have developed since then, including social democrats, does have an unacknowledged flip side. A flip side that often only becomes visible when the processes we humans have put into motion have become rooted to such an extent, that it has become very difficult for us to see them as unacceptable or unknowable. This applies to nuclear fission, CFCs, and to gas drilling in the Netherlands. This also applies to coal burning.
Increasingly we will be forced to avoid the use of fossil fuels, coal most especially, but eventually also oil and natural gas. Europe is investing in making its energy supplies more sustainable. In some countries, such as Norway, great strides have already been made. In that country, 65% of all energy, and almost 100% of all electricity, is generated sustainably. In the Netherlands and England we have a long way to go. Our countries only produce 4% of energy from renewable resources. We have a long path to follow, one which will cost a great deal of money and labour, but with the knowledge we have now, we must also accept that we have no other option. For that reason, it is remarkable that when eight countries (Germany, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, France, Ireland and Austria) recently asked the European Committee for firm targets for renewable energy, the governments of England and the Netherlands were absent.
We have a lesson to learn from the earthquakes in the Netherlands and the floods in England. The devastating effects of fossil fuels are too great. Land subsidence, earthquakes, global warming: denied for far too long, too abstract to ascertain on time, but too substantial to ignore any longer. 250 years after the invention of the steam engine, our energy provisions have entered a new phase. Our future lies with sustainable energy.