AMSTERDAM: CBS, a Dutch government agency that gathers statistical information, reported this Tuesday that greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands were almost 5% lower in 2014 than they were in 2013. Meanwhile, the Dutch economy was growing at a rate of 0.9%, according to the same agency. That’s the kind of news we like to see: increasing our current prosperity while decreasing the negative impact this prosperity will have on the planet and our wellbeing in the future!
For one part, this decline of emissions is a direct result of our (still way too small) effort as humans to decrease our carbon footprint. Of course there is much work left to do, but cars are getting cleaner and cleaner, which caused the amount of motor fuels sold to go down. This accounted for 2 billion kilograms of Dutch CO2 being withheld from getting into our air.
The remaining part of the emission decrease can be attributed to a phenomenon that is a result of the emissions themselves: climate change! The year 2014 was an extremely hot one. It was not just the warmest year since 1706 in the Netherlands, but also globally the warmest in modern record. Therefore much less energy was needed to heath houses and other buildings, saving another 6 billon kilograms of CO2 from being emitted.
Dutch greenhouse gas emissions are coming down. The trend is there: current emissions are 15% below their 1990 level. This is not just because of higher temperatures or the event of an economic crises, which definitely played their role in lowering greenhouse gas output as well. It is partly because of serious human effort to use energy more efficiently and to produce energy in a more eco-friendly way. In the future, Dutch emissions will go up and down every time it is abnormally cold or hot, but in the end they will decrease.
In order to get there, we need to put in much more effort than we do now, though, as a judge recently ruled. Although the Dutch government announced today that it will appeal against this ruling, the transition is inevitable. It will just take some more time before the government will completely accept that this is the only way to go. Hopefully it will not take too long.
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