The ‘largest climate march ever in the Netherlands’ was the headline NRC this week about the crowd of around 85,000 demonstrators this weekend in Amsterdam. This indicated how important the growing awareness is of the need to prevent further temperature increases. And not just in the Netherlands. After all, continuing at the current pace with the consumption of fossil energy, animal food, and unbridled mobility, resulting in general exhaustion and overload of the earth, will lead to permanent climate change.
And that in turn leads to other headlines, which could also be read last week. ‘The Netherlands can cope with up to three meters of sea level rise, but that will certainly not happen automatically.’ The ‘not automatic’ then refers to ‘being able to cope’, not to those three meters. That already appears to be a threatening prospect.
These are strange times. Such a climate march is therefore timely, urgent and very relevant. So that there will soon be no need for dikes 90 meters wide along the coasts. That is why it is so important that such protests take place in a clear framework, remain widely accessible, are open to contradiction and keep the focus on the core of the problem. In fact, that is the relationship between climate and citizen behavior. With the viability of the earth and the survival of the Netherlands river delta at stake.
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Satisfaction after largest demonstration with few incidents (1983)
Previous post-war mass protests concerned similar fundamental issues: the threat of the nuclear arms race, for example. Once part of NATO’s military strategy of assured mutual destruction,’mutually assured destruction’, invented as an ultimate deterrent. A concept so insane and apocalyptic that in 1983 some 550,000 demonstrators responded to the IKV’s call to collectively point their foreheads in The Hague on the Malieveld. Against the stationing of cruise missiles. That message was unison; not diluted, divided or fragmented.
That was not the case this weekend. The coalition that organized the climate march should not oblige demonstrators to also take sides in a war during a climate demonstration. In this way it may become a deterrent example for future protest. Was this even a climate march? To many people’s surprise, speakers from the stage also appeared to embrace the Israel-Gaza war and the fate of the Palestinians as a theme. That, however urgent and serious it may be, is still a different topic. It was also evident during the march itself – many Palestinian flags were visible and the controversial slogan “from the river to the sea”, advocating a free Palestine, was audible.
Now, of course, there are numerous political aspects to the climate issue. In addition to the individual citizen and his behavior, there are also climate contrasts between rich-poor and north-south. Then it is about exploitation, scarce climate space, pollution and distributive justice, imperialism or even colonialism. Wars, including those in Gaza, also have environmental aspects. But does it make sense if the climate movement also embraces the poverty agenda, sides with the Palestinians, possibly supports Kick Out Zwart Piet, etc.? Then ‘climate’ becomes an identitarian movement and player in the ‘culture wars‘, which already divides the US to its core.
The result is simplification and parochialism – much like how earlier in the corona period the reasonable debate about restrictions was overshadowed by conspiracy theorists and doom fantasists. Sea level rise is too important for that.