For forty years they have been concerned about the state of the planet, three friends who once studied environmental science together and have been walking together every year since then. Often they are “just walking”. But in 2015 they walked along to the climate summit in Paris and now they are standing in front of the station in Gouda to walk a stage of the Climate Miles, a hike to Glasgow, where COP26, the 26th United Nations climate summit, will be held at the end of October. “I’ve been worried for so long that I’m sick of it,” says a cheerful Arien Scholtens (59).
They belong to a growing group of walkers who are waiting in front of the station until they walk to Rotterdam. The environmental organization Urgenda expects about four or five hundred participants today. With about sixty people they started on 6 October in the Eemshaven in Groningen. Next Monday, about as many Dutch walkers will board the train to Edinburgh to walk from the Scottish capital to Glasgow in four days.
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At half past nine the procession starts moving. Livy Justice (13) walks next to her mother. It was her idea, but Livy wanted to come along. She remembers seeing forests burning in Australia and California as an eight-year-old on the Youth News and understood that there was a link to global warming. “I just think it’s stupid that people don’t see how bad it is.” It’s not her fault, she knows that, “but I fly less and eat almost no meat.”
Many participants look like seasoned hikers look: in hiking pants, on sturdy mountain boots. For others, it’s literally a crusade in jeans — and in sneakers. Such as for Piet Hermus (55), an arable farmer from Zevenbergschenhoek. On October 4, he harvested the last potatoes. The sugar beet harvest starts in November. So in between he had some time to walk to Glasgow.
dead rat
A farmer who joins a climate march, it’s rare, but he doesn’t think it’s weird. “The majority of farmers experience climate change firsthand. I have seen since 1998 that it is raining more and more often and harder. Holland drowns. And at the same time, the soil is becoming drier.”
Hermus was probably the first farmer to come to Amsterdam with a tractor in 2019, in protest against climate change. His message is not for everyone. He received death threats and a dry, dead rat. “But if they intimidate me, I go up a gear.” Among the climate walkers he also hears a lot of “nonsense” these weeks, he says. “but we share the same concerns.”
Hermus thinks it’s a nice budget trip, this ‘vegan food cruise’. Urgenda has asked all hotels if they want to cook vegan meals for the walkers. And along the way there are interesting speakers and visits to innovative companies and climate projects.
Lowest point in the Netherlands
For example, you can receive private lectures this Saturday from professors Leon Lamers and Fons Smolders of Radboud University, who provide the peat meadow area near Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel, the lowest point in the Netherlands, with text and explanation while walking. “We are walking through a fossil fuel landscape,” says Smolders. “The peat thrives when it is wet, but due to subsidence and dehydration, two million passenger cars are emitted in the Netherlands every year.2 in the air.”
Getting wet, raising the water level, is a difficult message, they notice. And not just for farmers. Pastures with cows are typically Dutch. It is cultural heritage that people do not like to exchange for cattails and peat moss.
Along the winding route through the lowlands, here and there someone is watching the colorful procession. They see ‘Grandparents for the Climate’ passing by, a barefoot walker, people with jackets from GroenLinks or De Feest voor de Dieren or Milieudefensie. Many people in their forties, but also young people and a man with a walker. Two elderly ladies at the bus stop think it’s “wonderful”. A woman with a poodle thinks it is “important”, although she is not quite sure why. None of the bystanders expressed skepticism about the walkers.
‘Many more positive reactions’
Marjan Minnesma, forewoman of environmental organization Urgenda, is lagging behind today. She has noticed that many more people react positively along the way than six years ago, when she walked to Paris, where the last major climate summit was. “Something has really changed, then I had to explain a lot more.”
You can say that such a walking tour is preaching to your own parish: only sympathizers join in. Minnesma sees that differently. „Most are not climate activists, it is a very mainstream public. Ideas, contacts and knowledge are exchanged. Last time it even resulted in a marriage.”
And what do you achieve with it? “It gives hope to participate in something. But politics has to get on with it now, because frustration builds if nothing is done. Last week I spoke to a girl who doesn’t want children because of global warming. Then your heart breaks, doesn’t it?”
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