Stop de Kindermoord revisited. Is New Zealand now outperforming the Netherlands ?

Back in 2011 I wrote about the success of the Stop De Kindermoord (Stop Child Murder) campaign in the Netherlands. This presumably had been covered by English language press in the distant past, but by 2011 it had been forgotten about so my blog post got quite a lot of attention at the time and encouraged other people to write their own versions of the same story.

The success of that campaign helped lead to improved safety for all Dutch cyclists, not only children. We would likely not have the excellent go-everywhere grid of cycle-paths that we have now if not for the success of that campaigning. That campaign and the realisation that the most important thing that can be done for cycling is building a grid literally changed the landscape in this country, however we can never be complacent. What has changed once can change again.

People often wonder why it is that the Netherlands succeeded in cycling when other countries did not. Why NL acted to reduce child deaths when other countries did not. I think it was largely a matter of luck. The Netherlands happened to have the right leader at the right time.

Dutch schools are open again. Thanks in large part to the work of politicians 40+ years ago, children are relatively safe from traffic. But thanks to the ineffective leadership of our current politicians they're not being protected against infection with Covid-19 (which is an issue for this reason).

The same thing can be observed now as we face a different health crisis and this time it's in reverse. Covid-19 has caused not just a little more death in the Netherlands than in New Zealand, but literally three orders of magnitude more deaths per capita. This enormous difference is the result of policy. It can't be explained away in a simple manner such as differences in climate, that NZ is an island, the culture etc. While in the 1970s the Netherlands had effective leadership which reversed child deaths, this time it is the Netherlands with an ineffective leader in the shape of Mark Rutte while New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been highly effective. As a result, thousands of lives have been saved in New Zealand relative to the outcome that we have here.

Forty years ago this cycle-path was part of my route to school in New Zealand. It was never a perfect example and while it still exists it won't work as well as it once did because it's been divided into pieces.

While the Stop De Kindermoord protests were taking place in the Netherlands I was a schoolchild in New Zealand. In this blog post I will be comparing the response of both of these countries to two crises. But if you're not from either country, read on because this piece is not only about those two countries. 

My approximate route to school in 1980 (Google
maps doesn't use the cycle-path under the roundabout)
New Zealand's schools keep children safe by closing with
a much lower rate of Covid-19 infection than here in NL.

The fervour for cycling infrastructure and creating liveable communities was not limited to the Netherlands in the 1970s but was also quite significant internationally. I wrote some time ago about a housing development near my old home in the UK, but another example is a cycle-path which ran almost all the way from my home in New Zealand to my secondary school. It wasn't a great cycle-path, giving way to cars at every junction, but it was there. Dutch infrastructure being built around the same time was more sophisticated. But the main thing that made the Dutch cycle-paths worthwhile in the end was that they eventually formed part of a complete go-everywhere grid of routes while what was built elsewhere usually stood alone so was of limited use. In the case of the cycle-path which I used to use, it's obviously less useful now than it used to be because many more homes have been built in the area, with many more roads connecting them, so while motor traffic has increased the cycle-path, which never had priority over side-roads, now gives way even more than it used to. This is just one example of how higher population density does not automatically improve cycling conditions.

It was quite common for young New Zealanders to cycle to school in the 1970s and early 80s, but 50 years of excluding cycling from planning has left cycling at a very low level. When I used to cycle to school in NZ there was cycle parking. These days my old school looks like a big car park, which is rather sad.

1970s politics in New Zealand and the Netherlands
New Zealand's prime minister during the Stop de Kindermoord period was Robert Muldoon. Muldoon became Prime Minister in 1975 as leader of the right wing National party after a campaign which included use of an absurd animated film to imply that the opposition's plans to provide pensions were communism. Other advertisements were criticised for stoking up racism against Polynesians. Muldoon's Wikipedia bio says he was "a bully" and "an enigma" and lists, amongst other things, his promising to "get tough" on immigration, arrests and deportations of Pacific Islanders (including the "Dawn Raids"), pushing of "law & order", causing an opposition leader to resign by accusing him of being homosexual (this lead to a police investigation because homosexuality was illegal), supporting links with Apartheid South Africa, supporting American nuclear weapons in New Zealand's waters against mass opposition, and vastly exaggerating the benefits of his pet "Think Big" projects which over-ran their budgets so much that they resulted in the country running up a large deficit and having to impose a wage freeze. The pension scheme which Muldoon pushed (instead of the one criticized in the animation) also turned out to be extremely expensive, reducing the funds available for other things, such as (my) education. Unfortunately, New Zealanders kept re-electing Muldoon until 1984. He was eventually removed from his position only after he called a snap election while "visibly drunk".

Joop den Uyl, car-free Sunday in 1973

Just before Robert Muldoon took power in New Zealand, Joop den Uyl became Prime Minster of the Netherlands. Den Uyl began with the difficult job of telling the public that "things would never return to how they had been" as he implemented fuel rationing and a ban on Sunday motoring. His cabinet then had to deal with a weak economy, but many progressive social reforms were made. These included increased welfare payments, indexation of benefits, rent rebates and a minimum wage, equal pay for men and women and financial support for companies who employed people with disabilities. A specific piece of legislation provided for people for whom "it is difficult to find employment and who have been in prolonged unemployment", providing worthwhile work and status in the community for people who otherwise find this difficult to achieve. Specific protection was also introduced to help long term unemployed people who had reached 60 years of age, and job protection was introduced for women who were pregnant reaching until 12 weeks after childbirth. Entitlement to orphans' pensions was extended to illegitimate children "whose mothers are dead and who have not been recognised by their fathers", schools were given more freedom to set their own curriculum, the length of compulsory education was increased and the use of Asbestos was restricted.

Den Uyl was succeeded in 1977 by Dries van Agt. Van Agt led a coalition of right wing parties for the next four years but found that spending could not be cut because he had only a slim majority and there was much public protest, so most policies continued as before. Some ministers resigned from his cabinet over not being able to pursue an austerity policy. Another minister resigned on a point of morals because the cabinet did not condemn the US decision to develop the neutron bomb. Van Agt has more recently taken an outspoken stance on the situation in Palestine. Van Agt's Wikipedia page also points out that he is known "for his love for cycling".

I think there's an obvious pattern here. The policies which were pursued by den Uyl's, and later van Agt's, governments were not the same as those which were pursued by Muldoon's government. So far as cycling is concerned, the Netherlands became the world's leading country, while in New Zealand cycling dropped to a very low level.

2020s politics in New Zealand and the Netherlands

New Zealand's minister for women until November 2020,
Julie Genter, cycled to hospital to have her baby.

We now have the opposite situation. With Jacinda Ardern it is New Zealand which has an inclusive and progressive leader. Quite apart from her excellent handling of the Covid crisis (strong control of borders and excellent messaging have helped to keep the total deaths to just 27), her government has also brought in strict gun laws in response to right wing racist terrorism, addressed a housing crisis, child poverty and social inequality, declared a climate emergency ("my generation's nuclear-free moment"), formally apologised for the Dawn Raids, and this government also finally legalized abortion. Same-sex marriage was legalized before Ardern took power, and she supported it. I've not been able to find a photo of Ardern riding a bicycle, but she has supported the idea of (at last) enabling cyclists to cross Auckland Harbour Bridge and she does wear earrings made of old bicycle innertubes. There is a huge contrast between the policies of Muldoon and Ardern.

And now we consider the Netherlands in 2021. Mark Rutte has been Prime Minister since 2010. Rutte leads a right leaning coalition which has repeatedly tried to pursue immunity through infection as a way out of the Covid crisis. This has led to 30000 Covid-19 deaths in this country so far (CBS excess mortality figures), many people suffering from long covid, many businesses being affected adversely. While other outdoor festivals and similar events were completely banned, this car-obsessed government allowed 70000 people to gather to watch Formula One racing a couple of weeks ago and this combined with the frustration caused by how long this whole thing has been allowed to go on has led to a near total breakdown of people actually respecting the few measures which remain in place. Lots of money was made available for support during Covid, but almost all of it was absorbed by large companies such as Schiphol Airport and KLM. Apart from Covid, this government has also presided over the disastrous "toeslagenaffaire" in which tens of thousands of parents, largely from immigrant backgrounds, were falsely accused of fraud by the government and required to pay back the money they had received to live on. This government has also had relatively minor scandals such as a minister forced out after he didn't bother going through the same channels as normal people have to when they renovate a building. The cabinet fell on the 15th of January when we had our elections, but the same people have been limping along as a caretaker government since that date while they try to form a new coalition without any progressive elements.

I don't like Mark Rutte very much, but I have to admit that none of this sounds quite so awful as Robert Muldoon. Mark Rutte does actually ride a bike, but his party is far more interested in cars.

There is again an obvious pattern. New Zealand's extremely good outcome is the result of excellent leadership. The Netherlands failed against Covid because our leader failed to understand what was going on and then tried to take shortcuts. As a result, the Netherlands is amongst the worst performing countries with Covid while New Zealand is amongst the best.

The right politicians at the right time

Good leadership produces good results. I think it's no coincidence that the Netherlands managed to do many good things with social policy and also begin to implement a sensible cycling policy, while it had good progressive leadership. I also think it's no coincidence that New Zealand has managed to do so well in recent years, including with their excellent covid policy. The right leaders can actually make good things happen.

Imagine if things had been reversed. i.e. if New Zealand now had Muldoon while Ardern had been in power in the 1970s, while we had den Uyl now and Rutte's time had been in the 70s. I think there's a fair chance that we would now see New Zealand with the cycling infrastructure and the Netherlands with the good covid result. Neither of these things are inherent to either country.

I don't understand why Dutch people keep voting for Rutte. I also don't understand why New Zealanders kept voting for Muldoon. The same kind of thing can be seen with Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, Donald Trump and others. This kind of leadership, blaming others for failure while trying to boost their own achievements, doesn't actually do anyone any good except perhaps those who they give contracts, grants or covid handouts. Public health is not their interest. We need to take politics more seriously. Poor policy does not lead to good outcomes. Progressive policies (equal pay, health service, education, pensions etc.) benefit us all.

So make sure you vote, and make sure you also campaign for positive change. Unfortunately, while the politics of Ardern and Rutte are quite different, the transport policies of their governments are quite similar: Both are focused on electric cars, responding to the huge motoring lobby. This is a mistake. More cars, of any type, are not going to save us from the multitudinous problems caused by cars. Even in countries where we have progressive representatives we still need to campaign for bicycles because the world's most efficient and most healthy form of transport is genuinely part of the solution to these problems and well worth campaigning for.

October update
I've been criticising the poor response of the Dutch government to the Covid crisis since March 2020. Specifically, I criticized their slow reaction to the threat of this disease which would obviously lead to  a higher number of deaths if it were allowed to spread.

Nineteen months have now passed and we find ourselves in the middle of yet another rapidly growing wave of infections because our government has repeatedly allowed the disease to take control. Restrictions have been given up too early, they never really tried to control the borders, and they insisted on ignoring research about the airborne nature of the virus, playing down the use of masks. They've also kept schools open as much as possible which has led to many infections in un-vaccinated school children (and their teachers, parents etc.).

Yesterday we had the first really good report on the Dutch news about how our politicians have failed us. At last they're also pointing out that everything was done too late and that our government kept openly following a plan to try to build up immunity through infection, not supported by any real scientists, even after even the UK publicly claimed to be doing otherwise. Will we ever see the people responsible for 30000 deaths brought to justice ?

November 11th update
A record was set today. Though everyone sensible could see this coming months ago our government has completely failed us again and we set a new record for the number of covid infections recorded in one day. No fewer than 16364 were recorded today, crushing the previous high which was barely over 13000. We also have a positive testing rate of 17.5%, indicating that most of the infected people have not been tested, and another 26 people have died.

April last year. This is what an "Intelligent Lockdown" looked like.

Our government is still floundering. They still don't understand what is happening, and are still trying to work out they should do next. The ideas they've deliberately leaked are obviously inadequate. But none of this should be a surprise because these clowns have also set a record for the longest time ever taken form a government after winning an election (update: it took 271 days in total before a coalition was formed).

We've known for many weeks now that the disease is spreading most quickly in children. That's why I gave this piece the title that I did when I wrote it two months ago. It is not acceptable to infect children with a deadly disease like covid. Children don't die in huge numbers from covid, but they do become long term ill, and when they take the disease home they infect their parents and grandparents. Hundreds of thousands of children have been traumatised by loss of parents due to covid.

So what has our government come up with ? There are recommendations for "lockdown-like measures" which will last only two weeks. During this time the schools will stay open with unmasked children infecting each other. Libraries and cinemas will close but shops, restaurants and cafes (pubs) will remain open perhaps with slightly more control for entry. This will obviously be a re-run of each time in the past when they have repeatedly failed to get the virus under control. But there is a difference from early last year - schools did actually close temporarily on March 15th 2020 due to public pressure because we'd reached the then alarming level of 176 cases and 8 deaths in one day. Today we have nearly 100x as many infections and over 3x as many deaths but this time schools are planned to stay open.

So who now is interested in stopping the kindermoord ? Not this Dutch government, that's for sure.

January 15 2022 update

Nothing has improved here. For about a month we had a supposed semi-lockdown (described as a "strict lockdown" by the Dutch press) but people were still still free to travel to go on holiday, still free to drive their cars across the border to go shopping or visit restaurants in Germany and Belgium when some shops were shut here. This covered the period over Christmas and New Year when a lot of people met in groups far larger than was supposedly allowed. Fireworks were banned over New Year but the government announced in advance that this law would not be enforced and Dutch people drove across the border to Germany and Belgium to buy ludicrous quantities of fireworks which were let off intermittently over a period of weeks including until 5 am on New Year's Day.

But now we're into January. How's it going ? Let's describe this this last week:

On Sunday it was announced that Sigrid Kaag, the leader of the second biggest party in the new ruling coalition, had covid so she went into isolation. But this didn't stop all the others, including some who had been in meetings with Ms Kaag, from gathering on Monday 10th of January with King Willem Alexander, to officially sign in the new government. Several people who attended that meeting later tested positive for covid but most of those who were in meetings with the infected, including our VVD Prime Minster Rutte and the King, declined to go into isolation.

One of those sworn in on Monday was the new Justice minister, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius. She is the first to hold this position without a background including legal education. On Tuesday she announced that there would be no legal enforcement against shops and restaurants which broke the rules regarding covid.

Also on Monday the schools were re-opened. No investment has been made into making school premises safer, for example by improving their ventilation, and no children aged under 12 will be vaccinated until the end of this month so they'll have several weeks to be infected before they can receive their first vaccination. We found out this week that they couldn't have started sooner because our government ordered only 42000 child doses of the vaccine to cover around a million children. Don't let anyone tell you that this government wants to open school because they are concerned about the mental or physical health of children who would otherwise have to learn online. It's not yet been long enough to know how many infections have been caused by this rash measure.

On Thursday the 13th of January a VVD European Parliamentarian with an interest in environment and climate, Jan Huitema, made a speech about how cars should be be restricted. The VVD has always been a pro-car party.

The record for most covid cases per day has been broken several times this week and yesterday we had more than 35000 new cases with a 34% positive test rate. But this government wants to re-open everything so almost every day this week our compliant media has been publishing stories about to what extent things will be re-opened.

Much of the week had been spent with the government leaking their plans to re-open to the press. Eventually we had a press conference last night in which it was announced that all shops could re-open without any testing, use of apps to show vaccination status, or other measures to prevent spread. Masks will be required. In fact that's the one bright point in the whole thing as finally after two years the Dutch government seems to have realised that an airborne virus can be better addressed by wearing masks than by washing hands.

So on we go...

Quick Sunday 16th update: Yesterday many restaurants and cafes opened illegally, so did museums, cinemas and theatres. Today we've an all-time record so far number of infections (36308) with an all time record high positive testing rate (35.1%). This is made more remarkable because it occurred on a Sunday and our case numbers are usually low on Sundays. What's more, we've not yet waited long enough after opening schools last Monday to know what effect that will have, nor or course do we know the effect of this weekend's legal and illegal shop/cafe/everything else re-openings. Buckle up. Omicron is most certainly here.

The above lists of policies per politician are not complete. For example, Muldoon's attempt to maintain New Zealand's 1935 concept of a welfare state perhaps could be seen to fly in the face of some of his other ideas. Read the wikipedia pages of each, as linked above, for a fully picture.

June 2022 update
Here's a new graph, and it's not good news. Many more countries have decided to try to "live with the virus" and the result is more death everywhere. As the deaths can only ever accumulate, every country is now in a worse position than it was before, but the most shocking examples are what has happened in countries which were previously good examples:

New Zealand's fall from grace is spectacular with a two orders of magnitude worse outcome now in comparison with nine months ago, the total number of deaths recorded having increased from 27 at the start of September last year to 1261 today. This rapid increase in deaths didn't take a whole nine months but actually only two, resulting from Jacinda Ardern deciding to open the country's borders to tourists from April 2022, resulting in rapid spread of Covid. I suspect that Bob Muldoon would now be impressed by Ardern, if he had lived to see this extreme example of putting business ahead of public health. Similar public health policy failures have resulted in similar results in Taiwan which went from 837 deaths to 4280 and South Korea which went from 2327 to 24388 over a similar period.

These countries once had a huge advantage over European and American nations which never bothered to protect their citizens but now it has almost entirely been squandered. China is the only country which now seems to be fully committed to protecting its population from disease, and especially the multitudinous long term consequences for health which are becoming known as long covid.

An endless search for quick fixes results instead in repeated failures

The Netherlands in April during the "intelligent lockdown"
which was actually no lockdown at all.

A new record was set in the Netherlands today. 1560 new cases of Covid-19 were reported today - the highest level of new infections that we've ever had in one day. This is a higher rate of infection by some margin than any day during March and April during the first wave of the disease. The second wave of infections is truly upon us.

How did we get here ? The answer is obvious: without actually eliminating the disease, without actually ever having had a proper lockdown which could perhaps have helped to eliminate the disease, our government re-opened everything. Instead of taking this seriously, as did countries such as Taiwan, New Zealand, South Korea and China (started by trying to cover it up, but have taken effective action since January), our government decided to downplay the risks from the beginning and when they were forced to take action they took minimum action for a minimum period of time.

Dutch people are now travelling to other countries on holiday, drinking in bars, eating in restaurants, going to school and university, commuting to work, and spreading the virus between themselves as if there was nothing at all to avoid. There are still some rudimentary hand washing facilities at shops, but hardly anyone wears a face mask (I do and it leads to odd looks) and people just do not keep the mandated 1.5 m distance from one-another.

What happened in the Netherlands was that instead of taking proper action to fix this issue, our government looked for a shortcut. Rather than a short and sharp lockdown to eliminate the disease locally followed by ensuring that people who visit or return from another country really do go into quarantine, international visitors are merely requested to quarantine themselves while everyone knows that most don't bother. Testing and tracing have been stretched to the breaking point so they are no longer effective.

Failure resulted from taking a shortcut. From looking for a quick fix which it was thought would allow the economy to be minimally damaged. In reality this is far from over and we can expect further damage to the economy as well as further deaths due to an inadequate response. The quick fix was anything but a fix. The countries which took effective action now have the least disruption to their economies and to lives.

The Climate

Of course it's not just on the pandemic that our policies have failed. Our environmental policy is also failing. Another record was set just yesterday: The hottest September day ever in the Netherlands.

 

Already two years old and we have not begun to
respond in an effective way.

Our emissions are not decreasing. We're not even slightly close to doing this. Why ? It's the same story. Instead of taking decisive action to change habits and reduce emissions we are taking a minimum change approach, which can only make a very small difference to emissions.

Instead of tackling the over-consumption which has led to climate change, people are looking for a magic way to continue with their wasteful lifestyles. Many people would rather buy a new car than consider making the changes to their lifestyle required to live car-free. Though the difference in energy usage and emissions between different powered transport modes is not large, it's easier to sell the idea of continuing a wasteful lifestyle including much international travel by switching from flying to some other slightly less polluting mode such as train travel than it is to sell the idea of travelling far less.

Instead of travelling less, we travel more and more each year by every powered mode, so even the slow growth of some slightly less polluting modes doesn't in any way "offset" the more polluting modes because they are growing as well. All this growth, whether from car, airplane, boat, bus and train, simply adds to the total emissions.

The top 10%, those with earnings over $13700 per year,
are the big polluters. We buy and throw away too much.

Unfortunately, people like to buy stuff. Buying a "green" product makes people think they've done something good, even though it is always better for the environment to reduce consumption. Buying less, not replacing goods regularly, not going on holiday, not buying new clothes when the old ones can be repaired and worn again, doesn't impress the neighbours but it does reduce emissions. Every product has a footprint. Using what you have for longer, and using it less if it's a product which consumes energy, is far more powerful than swapping to something new and certainly more effective than buying "offsets" to assuage the guilt of over-consumption.

The quick fix of buying things to try to maintain an unsustainable lifestyle, of trying to continue to live in the exact same wasteful way but with "green" products, isn't a fix at all. To reduce our footprint on the planet, to maintain a liveable climate, we need to change how we live. We need to live with less.

Building cycling infrastructure

This blog is of course mostly about cycling infrastructure. Here too we see the quick fix mentality.

This isn't exceptional, it's the normal standard. Cycle-paths
like this need to go everywhere to enable mass cycling. 

Very few places outside the Netherlands have even tried to build the complete grid of cycling infrastructure which we have known for 40 years is required to enable the majority to cycle. Instead, almost everywhere, there's a piecemeal approach. Small steps are taken. There's no continuity in space or in time. Not only do pieces of infrastructure not join up, but they don't necessarily last long either. An extreme example may well present itself after the covid crisis ends, or perhaps even before it ends, as we can unfortunately expect many temporary pieces of cycling infrastructure which have popped up during this period to be removed. Why ? Because they were never really a sign of genuine policy change.

With the growth in popularity of Dutch ideas around cycling, many countries are putting on a show of attempting to replicate this success but unfortunately it seems rather like cargo cult infrastructure which has a vague resemblance to what has proven to be successful in the Netherlands but with shortfalls which make it far less useful or far less safe. There are cycle-paths built far too narrow to work efficiently which give way at every side-road, and bicycle roads where the level of motor traffic is such that it will dominate and result in nothing more than a differently decorated normal road, big expectations from building a single "Dutch roundabout" in a totally different setting from the Netherlands complete with an expection of a level of safety which could not reasonably be expected if the same thing was built in the Netherlands under similar circumstances, "Dutch" style "protected intersections" in much busier settings but without the single most important aspect of the design, i.e. safety enforced by traffic light designs which totally remove conflict, so that the the same outcome surely cannot be expected, and design guidelines which look like grab-bags of good and bad practice from multiple sources. Short-cuts have been taken. None of this is the successful approach which people have seen in the Netherlands but something far more superficial.

It's also common to see praise heaped upon brand new infrastructure, rather than waiting for a proven track record of safety. That's something that we sadly see here in the Netherlands as well. In reality we can't ever know much about an individual junction's safety until we wait long enough to see what the long term safety record is, though of course immediate problems should be taken as a warning that there is a problem. Official Dutch stats about, for example, roundabout safety are based on observing hundreds of "roundabout years".

Merely swapping one kind of junction design for another won't solve many, if any problems. The Dutch success with cycling (and while this country has failed with Covid, it has done better than anywhere else with cycling) results from taking a comprehensive look at traffic across whole cities, and indeed the country. Motor traffic has been relocated to an extent which almost be comprehended elsewhere and this goes a long way to explain how cycling has been made safe and convenient in the Netherlands (at the same time, driving has never been more popular, but that's another story).

Waiting for a vaccine

While we continue to take shortcuts and opt for quick fixes instead of solving problems properly, we will continue to fail. Waiting for a vaccine can also be a position of putting off doing the needed work now in the hope that something else will remove the need to do that work in the future.

A few inadequate cycle-paths and junctions are not a vaccine which will result in people abandoning their cars en-masse and result in mass cycling. This is not new. It's been known for 40 years that a complete grid of safe go-everywhere infrastructure which keeps motor vehicles away from cyclists is required to begin to achieve that goal (luckily, it doesn't take 40 years to do the same).

Electric cars are not a vaccine for the myriad problems caused by cars just as trains are not a vaccine for the problems caused by aircraft. The best way to reduce the impact of motorized transport is to use it less. Cycling comes for free.

Negative CO2 emissions can't be relied upon to vaccinate us against climate change because this is an unproven technology which has never been scaled up to the extent that would be required. We need to change our lifestyles and reduce our emissions, quickly, leaving fossil fuel under the ground, not rely on future generations using as yet not invented technology to solve problems caused by our selfishness.

There is also as yet no vaccine for Covid-19. Many groups are doing research but until there is a vaccine we can never be sure that there ever will be one. This magic bullet against the virus won't be a quick fix either. Production will take time to ramp up and distribution will be an enormous logistical problem (IATA article: "Just providing a single dose to 7.8 billion people would fill 8,000 747 cargo aircraft").

There is really no alternative to doing a proper job instead of opting for a quick-fix solution. Business as usual can't continue. Not for Covid, not for the climate and not for cycling either. And anyone who promises you that a vaccine will solve everything in a few weeks time is a liar or a fool.

Update

Just after this post went live, five days ago, the main news here in the Netherlands was that both Belgium and Germany, our closest neighbours, had taken measures against travel to and from the most infected parts of the Netherlands. Non-essential travel is forbidden, but it leaves open the question of who defines what is "essential" ? One of the problems that we've had this whole time is that people will continue to travel, continue to spread the virus because far too many people think they are the exception to the rule.

Five days later we now have a new record infection rate. Over 2200 people tested positive for covid 19 over the last 24 hour period. The peak in April was just over 1300 so we're not far off double that now, and as the trend has been steadily higher each day (except Saturday and Sunday when there are fewer tests), this is really not good news.

Perhaps you wonder why I get my figures from "someone on Twitter". The reason is that the Dutch government stopped reporting daily figures back in July and someone voluntarily took their place (read his story here). Actually, our government has really let us down over Covid. With this new peak in infections you may also wonder what action they've taken. The answer is surprisingly little. Last Friday it was announced that bars would have to close at 1 am, resulting in considerable push-back from bar owners, and that some kinds of group events should have no more than 50 people at a time. These measures came into force on Sunday, and mostly apply only to the worst affected areas. Today our prime minister added that the huge crowds, not limited to 50, of football fans at matches should not cheer or sing. I doubt this will be adequate.

Update 29th September

Just a few more days and we've passed a new milestone: more than 3000 infections in just one day. That's well over double the highest number that were seen in the first wave of infections. Our government's response ? Yesterday there was a press conference at which it was suggested that bars and restaurants should shut at 10 PM instead of 1 AM as before and that people might like to wear face masks when shopping. It's not compulsory though. Shops have to make their own decisions about whether to try to enforce this, so they mostly are not.

The response of the Dutch government to this disease is astonishingly inept. Just today, 13 people more are reported as having died of Covid, making a total of nearly 6400 so far. Let us remember that this is optional. Compared with other countries we're doing astonishing badly. Taiwan for instance has a bigger population than ours, with 23.8 million people compared with our 17.4 million, yet their total deaths due to the virus thus far are just seven. Not seventy, seven hundred or seven thousand, the last of which which would make their rate comparable with ours, but just one digit. 7. i.e. relative to the population the virus has killed more than a thousand times as many people here as it has in Taiwan.

People continue to become infected and ill in this country because our government is incapable of acting in the face of a crisis.

A second wave in the Netherlands was not unexpected. Indeed, watching our lacklustre response I've been expecting it for a while. My Dutch class began at the start of this month but I had already opted out in August because it was obvious where we were heading. But it's been obvious for much longer than that. In June I wrote a computer game based around this eventuality. It's a free download. You'll also probably need an emulator for the antique computer that it runs on.

A glimpse of a better future (where are we heading to after the pandemic ?)

Suddenly it seems that nearly everyone can see, hear and smell the benefits of fewer motor vehicles. Stories are appearing from all around the world about clear skies, fresher air and being better able to hear bird song. The corona virus lock-downs have brought us more peaceful streets, fresher air, less noise. Fish are seen to have returned to rivers, insects appear to be more numerous. Tourists no longer dominate historic cities. Stress levels are down (non corona related stress, at least).

Fewer cars

Most people alive now were also alive when there were half as many cars.
Many were alive when there were a quarter as many, or even less.
Your country is almost certainly similar.

Here in the Netherlands, car usage has approximately halved due to the corona crisis. This has made headlines. For the first time in as long as anyone can remember we've had no traffic jams caused by traffic for nearly a month. It's been described as an historic drop, but actually we need only go back about 30 years to find a time when this level of car ownership and use was normal. i.e. what we consider to be a relatively quiet situation now isn't actually extreme at all - this is something that most people alive now took for granted when they were younger. Indeed, it wasn't seen as a benefit back then because we were too busy looking at the problems which existed already due to this level of car usage. People had already started taking to the streets to protest about the effects of excessive motor car usage much longer than 30 years ago. The "historic low" level of traffic which we have now was seen by many as rather an excess when this was "normal", and there are people alive now who protested against the dominance of cars when they were less than a quarter as many cars in use as we think of as "normal" today. i.e. less than half of what we have during this "historic low".

At the time of writing, more than 120000 people have already died due to the corona virus. That's a terrible death toll over the last four months and all of us would of course like to see an end of this virus. However this terrible death toll is nothing in comparison with what is seen as "normal" due to cars. There have been more than a million deaths annually due to car crashes for some years now, and in addition four million or so people die each year die due to air pollution, a good proportion of which is also due to motor vehicles. To solve the problems due to motor vehicles, we need far fewer motor vehicles. Most people in the world already live without cars and it's not difficult to be one of them.

Fewer flights
Another thing which people have commented on extensively is that our skies are now spotless because there are fewer vapour trails due to aircraft flying overhead. Of course there is a difference, but again it's not as extreme as many people imagine. In March 2020 there were about half the number of flights that there were in March 2019. A halving sound quite extreme, but the number of flights doubles approximately every 20 years, so there are actually lots more aircraft in the skies now than there used to be.

I used to know what they all were...

Most people alive today were used to seeing far fewer aircraft than are in the skies now, even during this crisis. When I had a childhood hobby of aircraft spotting there were less than half as many aircraft for me to spot as are flying now during this crisis.

So with aircraft too, this dramatic change has actually meant that we have only returned to a time when the problems with aircraft were already apparent. People were already protesting about noise and pollution from aircraft when there were fewer of them as are flying right now during this crisis.

The current level of air travel, during this crisis, remains far too high. It is not sustainable. And it's not just air travel. Moving from one mode to another mostly just means a similar level of emissions from a different mode. That is not sustainable either. We will survive without holidays this year, without work trips. To solve the problems due to travel we must continue to travel far less.

Reduced oil production
The oil producing nations have agreed to an historic 10% reduction in their production in order to prop up prices. Note that this actually only takes the rate of oil production back to what it was about ten years ago.

People have protested about environmental destruction due to oil companies for decades longer than this and at times when their production was very much lower than is the case now. One particularly high profile case of a protestor who was executed was in 1995 when the rate of oil production was around half of what it was at the beginning of this year.

The oil companies have not reduced their output in order to try to save us from the inevitably destructive environmental effects of their product, they are merely trying to prop up their own profitability. The best way we can fight against this is to try not to buy their product. To solve the problems due to fossil fuels we need to go as far as we can to stop using fossil fuels.

Who really needs greener vehicles ?

Watch this excellent documentary about bullshit jobs

The subject of "bullshit jobs" has been discussed quite a lot over the last few years and some people are right now discovering that their 'important' job is actually either not quite so important after all, or in some cases an utterly pointless waste of time. This crisis has shown us who the real essential workers are. It's also shown us who we don't miss much if they don't go to work.

There is a realisation now that the lower level of car traffic due in large part to cutting back on the bullshit commutes used to travel to bullshit jobs is beneficial for everyone. But another thing that we've seen is that rather than getting in the way of "essential" commuters, some of the other vehicles on the roads (e.g. ambulances, tractors, trucks and vans) actually provide truly essential services such as keeping us healthy and providing us with food and other supplies.

The realisation that we do need food, we do need (some) goods, but we don't actually need nearly so many commuters demonstrates something important: we've not only been placing emphasis on the wrong workers but we've also been putting the majority of our efforts at greening transport into the wrong vehicles. Building electric vehicles is a resource intensive and polluting industry. Instead of using the limited resources available to build so many electric cars, trains and buses as possible to enable people to continue to travel excessively we should all along have been looking to green the essential vehicles (ambulances, tractors, trucks and vans etc.) while we encouraged people not to spend their time travelling regularly back and forth on commutes. Some of us have of course been saying this for a long time now...

Tackling emissions and improving our quality of life fit together and both can far more effectively be achieved by reducing the number of motor vehicles than by merely substituting the latest examples of what the motor industry wants to sell as a slightly greener alternative to the already greatly over-used motor vehicles which already exist.

At present we see that existing road infrastructure has become more welcoming to cyclists because there are fewer cars. While we can design infrastructure to maximise safety around cars (e.g. the safe roundabout design), it's always best to remove the cars. No roundabout or traffic light actually exists for the benefit of cyclists and pedestrians. They all impede cyclists and pedestrians while they attempt to reduce the danger of motor vehicles.

How much more pleasant could our towns be if we went further down the path of giving more space to people by taking it away from unnecessary motor traffic ?

Reducing carbon ?

We need a much more rapid downward slope in emissions than the
side-effect of the corona virus will result in. It's not even close to enough.

A small carbon emission reduction looks likely this year due to the virus. But at best this will be very small and at worst there may be no reduction at all. The likely outcome is that this year's emissions will end up around 3% lower than last year's emissions. We might think this small reduction will help, but over time this will merely look like another year in which we did not act. It is unfortunately not even close to the 18 percent per year steady decrease that we need to keep our planet in a condition where human life is supported.

Meat and travel
It is highly likely that COVID19, like so many other human illnesses including swine influenza and avian influenza, bovine tuberculosis, Ebola, BSE/CJD, and very many other diseases, was transferred from animals to humans due primarily to people raising, killing and eating products derived from those animals for food. The disease was then spread around the world in a very short period of time because people travel so much.

So this world-wide pandemic, like so many previous disease outbreaks and just as we expect for future pandemics, was caused by meat and travel. Meat and travel. Also amongst the biggest contributors to global warming.

For the sake of ourselves, our children, our children's children, if we want to avoid disease or merely keep this planet's climate such that humans can continue to live here we need to limit our consumption of meat and dairy products and reduce the amount we travel.

Keeping up with the Joneses ?
Will people still feel a need to "keep up with the Joneses" if they no longer see the Joneses ? Could the virus trigger a change in thinking and reduction in pointless consumerism ? Will the rich people who now buy far too many clothes, electronic gadgets etc. still feel a need for those things if in the future they go out less ? Over consumption by the richest 10% of the population (this probably includes you, dear reader) is one of the other great drivers of climate change and another of those things which needs to change.

What future shall we choose ?
There is no herd immunity against climate change. There is no immunisation, no easy cure. While we're all talking about COVID19 now, the biggest problem facing us all last year was climate change, it's still the biggest problem this year and it will remain the biggest problem next year and after we have solved the problem of this virus.

There is currently much discussion about an exit strategy from the virus and about how we will "get back to normal", but a return to a "normal" which is similar to that which existed a few months ago would not be any more sustainable now than it was before and will not in all ways be better than the situation which we have now. The death rate from the expected effects of climate change due to "normal" behaviour will be far higher than what we currently have from the virus. We of course need to do what we can to tackle this virus, but let's not jump straight back into a situation in which we return to the smog, noise and road deaths which we had before. A better future world is possible. Our future doesn't have to be a continuation of the past.

The richest 10% of the people on this planet consume wildly
too much relative to the poorer people on this planet. Top
ten percent salaries begin at $13700 per year. If you are
reading this then you are probably one of the elite.

Outside of the direct and unpleasant effects of the virus itself, we also now have before us a glimpse of what a possible better future for all of us could look like. We need to grasp the positives and build upon them, creating high quality and low stress conditions for local transport by bicycle and by foot while encouraging people not to make the longer and more polluting journeys, especially those which lead nowhere except to a high stress but perhaps also completely unnecessary job. We need to change our society so that we do not emphasize the most pointless aspects of that society, for it is the pointless jobs, pointless commutes, pointless vanity and pointless greed which have got us into this mess. We need to consume less and be happy to do so because the alternative to doing so is far more terrible than this virus.

Some of the same solutions work for both the virus and climate change. But not all. We need to go much further in limiting our excessive consumption but while the negative effects of climate change could be far more destructive, they are also in many ways less cruel. For example, the climate places no demands on our social behaviour and we do not need to isolate ourselves from nearby neighbours and friends in order to live in a sustainable way. All we need to do is live within our means, i.e. within what is possible with the resources available on the planet we share. We need to learn to live in a way which is possible for the entire population of this planet, without some people demanding a far bigger slice of the pie, a higher standard of living than is possible for everyone. Let's start now, by consuming less.

Please don't forget about developing nations
At present much of our concern is about our own nations. Many of us are worrying mostly about other relatively prosperous people who are likely to have access to health care and who probably have enough to eat, and who have the luxury of being able to isolate themselves. Not everyone in the world has such an easy life as we do in the developed world and I fear for the effects of the virus in the nations where people are not so well cared for. At this time, if you can, please consider donating to development charities who can help those who are not in the top 10%. They didn't spread this virus but they are likely to be the worst affected by it - another unfortunate parallel with climate change.

Will this be remembered as the summer of "corona blue" skies, a brief moment when the air was clear and we could breath more easily, or will we return to what has been seen as a "normal" level of pollution in the near future ?

Trivia which demonstrates how long effects of health crises last: Because I lived in the UK during the time of the BSE/CJD health crisis of the 1980s/90s I am not allowed to donate blood in the Netherlands. That applies even though I didn't eat meat so I'm a long way from being a high risk donor. People who lived in the Netherlands during that time frame and who did eat meat can give blood in the Netherlands. I could find myself receiving their blood donation even though Dutch people are not allowed to give blood in the USA for the same reason that I can't here and this is true even though the USA had its own cases. Such restrictions often have more to do with national exceptionalism than logic, this being a factor which also contributed to many Western nations including the Netherlands apparently thinking initially that they'd somehow be immune to COVID19, leading to slower responses and much worse outcomes than in several Asian nations where the disease was taken seriously earlier.