As a retired Green Grandma with some travel resources, I was privileged to take a cruise with my husband in late May on the Rhine River in Europe. I had two major takeaways from my travels. First, older people from Switzerland to France, Germany to The Netherlands, still feel World War history in their bones and see it in their surroundings. Second, all around are signs, small and large, of the necessity of Climate Action adaptation.
Old Castles Near Adaptation of Modern Wind Turbines
The featured photo for this blog post displays one of the beautiful renovated castles we saw on our trip, with a wind farm in the background. As Wikipedia explains, “The upper half of the Middle Rhine (Rhine Gorge) from Bingen (Rhine-kilometer 526) to Koblenz (Rhine-kilometer 593) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a striking cultural landscape with more than 40 castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages, unique terraced vineyards, and many wine-villages.” I was impressed to see the juxtaposition of centuries of these historical structures with modern environmental adaptation.
No Plastic Cutlery – Small but Significant Climate Action
One small but not insignificant example is the throw-away cutlery you pick up at cafes. In the USA, it is almost always made of plastic. But in these countries in Western Europe, I saw only either washable metal cutlery or toss-away tools made of a renewable resource – wood. I took the photo here the airport in Amsterdam while awaiting our flight to Basel, Switzerland. But on our way along the Rhine, we saw a consistency in this simple climate solution.
Public Transit Abounds
Once in Basel, we had our first encounter with the prevalence of public transit. I shot this photo of the main train (“tram”) inside the city while on a walking tour. Basel’s transportation infrastructure, features “sustainable mobility.” Trams and buses run frequently, and people use car-sharing when necessary. Pedestrians have the right of way, and bicycle riders are pervasive. One result of these systems is that fewer than one in three residents of Basel owns a car. This leads to cleaner air and greater fitness than in communities dependent on motor vehicles.
Waterways & Cable Cars
On the Viking Freya cruise ship that carried us quietly from place to place, solar panels along the sides helped power the ship. I shot this photo of our cruiser from a cable car in the German city of Koblenz that takes you from the dock to a 19th century fortress above. An infrastructure and economy that relies on waterways and cable cars serves local residents as well as tourists.
At the same time, the unpredictable nature of weather in an era of dramatic climate change can seriously affect the daily lives and economies of Europe, as it does throughout the world. Just a few days before we arrived for our river cruise, heavy rainstorms caused the rivers along our course to swell. In Germany, fields of white asparagus were flooded, jeopardizing the harvest of the crop. The adjacent Alsace canal, with its system of locks, made it feasible for our ship to stick to its schedule, but other river cruisers had some interruptions when one of the locks needed repair. Britannica describes this structure: “Grand Canal d’Alsace, waterway along the Rhine River, in eastern France, designed in 1922. The first section, at Kembs, opened in 1932, and three more pairs of locks were built between 1952 and 1959. The canal is now 50 km (30 miles) long and permits navigation between Basel, Switzerland, and Breisach, Germany.”
Bicycles, Bicycles, & More Bicycles
In Strasbourg, set in the Alsace-Lorraine region, now part of France, the city is essentially an island, surrounded by river waters. To protect against the impact of traffic and pollution, Strasbourg does not allow cars and trucks onto the island between the hours of 11 am and 7 pm. Can you imagine any city in the USA doing the same? To join our walking tour, our French guide walked with us across a bridge, and took us on the Strasbourg tramway. She told us that, other than walking, she gets around entirely by bicycle, with her young children in tow as needed. This photo of bikes at a stand outside an elementary school is typical throughout the city.
Lowland Water Management
Further north on our trip, we visited the Dutch village and UNESCO site of Kinderdijk, where we learned from our tour guide how the historic windmills and dikes served to keep The Netherlands, or lowlands, dry for centuries. Despite being below sea level, this ingenious infrastructure and a culture built upon recycling can teach us a great deal about surviving against the odds of climate change. In fact, experts from Holland have helped New Orleans protect its city after Hurricane Katrina. I took this photo of a historic windmill alongside modern wind turbines.
The UNESCO website for Kinderdijk explains how the Dutch developed cooperative water management through centuries of disaster: “Anyone who has ever tried to dig a hole on the beach is familiar with the problem: the deeper you dig, the more water flows into the hole. In a sense, the western part of the Netherlands is like such a hole. Much of the land here lies below sea level, so we needed ditches, windmills, sluices, and weirs to pump the water out. Right from square one, draining our land has always been a struggle, because the water will always try to find its way back to the lowest point. In a rainy country like the Netherlands, where rivers determine the lay of the land, flooding is an ever-present threat. Heavy rainfall is not the only problem, however. Subsidence of the soil, dike collapse, and mismanagement have each caused their fair share of disasters here.”
Cultural Imperatives: Renewable Resources & Recyling
Water management was not the only purpose of windmills in Holland’s history. As Holland.com explains, “In the Netherlands, windmills are generally divided into two categories: polder mills, used for pumping water to drain the land, and industrial mills, used for various purposes including grinding grain, sawing wood, making pigments for paint and making paper.” In contrast, today’s wind turbines are used to generate energy using wind as a renewable resource.
From Kinderdijk, we continued to the Dutch city of Amsterdam, where our tour guide warned us about “killer bicycles” that outnumber people and rule street traffic. Eternal vigilance is necessary for residents and tourists when walking in this fast-paced city. As in Strasbourg, walking and bicycles are primary means of transportation, along with the public tramway system. Look closely at this photo, and you can see two children under the cover of the mother’s bicycle cart, protecting them from rain showers.
The USA Can Do Better Than We Do Now
Given the history of Europe, plagued for centuries by wars, crowded cities, and the natural consequences of disease when water is polluted by human and animal waste, the population and its governing bodies had to learn the hard way about stewardship of natural resources. European nations have developed some solutions that, given the investment and willpower, could greatly benefit American communities.
