Netherlands

Power of Politics


The politic sector has a lot of power in the Netherlands, this is due to the fact that they are democratically voted for and therefore they basically can decide what happen in the country.A big difference there is with for example the USA is that in the Netherlands, all parties decide together, and so it does not depend on the leader which decisions we make as a country

Although the political parties do have a lot of power, the Dutch citizens have a lot of power as well, you could say that in some way political parties are driven by their supporters, in the Netherland we even have a party in which the supporters can chose what they are going to vote.

On the problem we are trying to solve with Erasmus+, 2/3 of the parties in the Netherlands want to make a change and so improve the climate a future perspective, although 1/3 of the parties do not agree with this. They think that changing this fast will bring too much costs with it and so isn’t practical. This basically is the first barrier we are facing in the Netherlands in making a change

Future Plans

When there will be too much CO2 in the air, the temperature on earth will rise and for example the sea level will rise as well. The Dutch government has made plans to fight against climate change and so prevent the changing of the ecosystem. To fight climate change The Dutch government tries to work with their European connections in order to really have impact and make a change. The sectors in Which the government would like to see change in the future are:

  • Technologie
  • Air-traffic
  • Alternative fuels



Barriers

The biggest barrier the dutch government faces are the costs that go with the change to a sustainable environment. To achieve the goals the Netherlands has set for 2050, which is to reduce the CO2 by 95% all households won’t be able to use gas, to achieve this they will have to adjust their houses, also houses should get better isolated. All the changes that will have to be made, will cost every household around the 50.000 and 80.000 euros. Also in order to produce enough energy for all household, the whole dutch landscap will have to be full of windmills and solar panels, with in addition to the other costs with cost another 140 billion euros. Although these of course are fair arguments, in my opinion when we keep using gasses and other fuels until 2050, this as well will cost a lot and so we should indeed use sustainable energy.

Comparision

The Dutch government is most importantly really trying to improve the situation although what I recognise is that the Netherlands really follows other leading and bigger countries. If I have to compare the Netherlands with another country I’d say at the moment we look the most like Spain, we are trying to make changes although we haven’t changed that much yet. The Netherlands is really different from Poland due to the fact the Dutch government does want to change things, and does want to create a better environment. If we’d have to compare to Norway, I’d say Norway is like our goal for ten year, so basically Norway is 10 years ahead of us.