Fussy

It was on a Wednesday, I remember that. In February 1986. A TV set had been put on a table in B Building (today’s Koopmans Building) and a small group of people were watching skating shadows: the Eleven Cities Tour (Elfstedentocht) was underway. The second one in as many years. The first one we’d experienced as a special event, but this one was regarded as a matter of course, and I found myself being heckled left, right, and center: Could I maybe stop being fussy? You see, just prior, during Carnival, I had written a fairly cynical ditty about the growing hole in the ozone layer, the subsequent warming up of the planet, and the global rise of sea levels. The thrust of the song was that science would sound the alarm, people across the globe would revolt, but at the end of the day the powers that be would do little more than raise some dykes – not resolutely tackle the actual problem, but merely treat a few symptoms.

That was then. Thirty-eight years and all of one more Eleven Cities Tour down the line, parallels can be drawn. True, the issue is no longer an ozone hole, but temperatures continue to climb, science keeps on signaling, and we still don’t do enough. The world’s population hasn’t revolted to the extent that I had predicted. Before, the danger had been clear and present, but today’s threat we’re collectively treating as a workaday nuisance we just have to put up with. The other day, during Carnival, I heard a song lampooning Greta Thunberg and her movement, and when I spoke up about it, I once again found myself at the receiving end of invective: Could I please stop making such a fuss? I can’t help but wonder whether today’s hecklers will still feel that way another thirty-eight years and precisely zero Eleven Cities Tours down the line ... 

Date of publication: 21 February 2024