#Netherlands news

[oldtvandcomics]

HEY GUYS!!

GUYS!!!

FRANCE HAS REACHED THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF SIGNATURES ON THE CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY IN THE EU!!

ONE COUNTRY DOWN, SIX TO GO!!

We also need still quite a few signatures in order to reach the one million required.

As to date, the six other countries with the most signatures are:

Spain - 38.72%

Finland - 30.31%

Ireland - 24.86%

Netherlands - 24.15%

Germany - 23.54%

Belgium - 23.09%

So yeah, still a long way to go, but we ARE slowly getting closer. Don't stop now! Don't let this stay within the community, either, if you have any friends or family who are open to queer rights, get them to sign, too!

[reasonsforhope]

"Amsterdam’s roofs have just been converted into a giant sponge that will make the city more climate resilient.

The Dutch have always been famous for their ability to control water, born out of the necessity of their homeland, much of which is below sea level.

Now, their expert water management skills are transforming the city skyline in the capital city of Amsterdam from one of terracotta tile, concrete, and shingles into green grass and brown earth.

It’s part of a new climate-resiliency trend in architecture and civic planning known as the ‘sponge city concept,’ in which a garden of water-loving plants, mosses, and soil absorbs excess rainwater before feeding it into the building for use in flushing toilets or watering plants on the ground.

If heavy rains are predicted, a smart valve system empties the stored rainwater into the municipal storm drains and sewers in advance of the weather, allowing the roof to soak up water and reduce flooding in the city.

In this way, the rooftops of buildings can be wrung out and filled up just like a sponge.

In Amsterdam, 45,000 square meters, or 11 acres of flat metropolitan rooftops have already been fitted with these systems, and the contracting firms behind the technology say they make sense in dry climates like Spain just as much as in wet climates like Amsterdam...

A 4-year project of different firms and organizations called Resilio, the resilient network for smart climate adaptive rooftops, rolled out thousands of square meters of sponge city technology into new buildings. As with many climate technologies, the costs are high upfront but tend to result in savings from several expenditures like water utilities and water damage, over a long-enough time horizon...

All together, Amsterdam’s sponge capacity is over 120,000 gallons.

“We think the concept is applicable to many urban areas around the world,” Kasper Spaan from Waternet, Amsterdam’s public water management organization, told Wired Magazine. “In the south of Europe–Italy and Spain–where there are really drought-stressed areas, there’s new attention for rainwater catchment.”

Indeed the sponge city concept comes into a different shade when installed in drought-prone regions. Waters absorbed by rooftops during heavy rains can be used for municipal purposes to reduce pressure on underground aquifers or rivers, or be sweated out under the Sun’s rays which cools the interior of the building naturally.

Additionally, if solar panels were added on top of the rooftop garden, the evaporation would keep the panels cooler, which has been shown in other projects to improve their energy generation.

“Our philosophy in the end is not that on every roof, everything is possible,” says Spaan, “but that on every roof, something is possible.”

Matt Simon, reporting on the Resilio project for Wired, said succinctly that perhaps science fiction authors have missed the mark when it came to envisioning the city of the future, and that rather than being a glittering metropolis of glass, metal, and marble as smooth as a pannacotta, it will look an awful lot more like an enormous sculpture garden."

-via Good News Network, May 15, 2024

[sayruq]

[SOURCE]

[hetalianhistorian]

New Halloween illustrations for 2024 by Himaruya!

Source links: 1 2

Edit: Updated the tags for the characters here. Turns out the character between England and Spain is NOT Prussia, but Netherlands! If you look closer on his forehead, you can see his scar. Apologies about that!

[mysharona1987]

[emily84]

European Elections - Exit polls show gains for the far right in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Italy.

[escmemesandstuff]

Randomised sims be like

[scaredforboomboom]

[ketaundkrawall]

Starboy Interlude (I’m obsessed with these!!)

[scavengedluxury]

North Sea coast, Netherlands, 1985. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

[reality-detective]

Netherlands: Massive wind turbine crashes to the ground as a result of, you guessed it... the wind. 🤡

Wind turbines: Completely useless when the wind isn't blowing, and apparently even more useless when the wind is blowing. 💨

And to think we're closing down all our coal mines and power plants—which provided cheap and abundant energy—and replacing them with these expensive, inefficient and intermittent monstrosities, while China and India build coal plants like there's no tomorrow. 🤔

[starlightshadowsworld]

We need to put pressure on our governments to change their stances and aid Palestine.

Daily clicks for Palestine.

Operation Olivebranch spreadsheet.

eSIMs for Gaza

Crisps campaign eSIMs for Gaza

Find you're local MP's.

Find you're state representives.

Contact them.

Be it through email, telephone or through the post.

Tell them their needs be a ceasefire in Gaza.

Tell them that what Israel is violating the Geneva convention.

The government may be the ones incharge but they do not speak for us.

We are the people, we have a voice and the power to change minds.

And we owe the Palestinians to at least try.

Here is a google document of templates you can use for the UK, US, France, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal.

And if you live in another country you can amend them to fit.

[reasonsforhope]

"Tuesday’s [April 9, 2024] definition-shifting court ruling means nearly 50 governments must now contend with a new era of climate litigation.

Governments be warned: You must protect your citizens from climate change — it’s their human right.

The prescient message was laced throughout a dense ruling Tuesday from Europe’s top human rights court. The court’s conclusion? Humans have a right to safety from climate catastrophes that is rooted in their right to life, privacy and family.

The definition-shifting decision from the European Court of Human Rights means nearly 50 governments representing almost 700 million people will now have to contend with a new era of litigation from climate-stricken communities alleging inaction. 

While the judgment itself doesn’t include any penalties — the case featured several women accusing Switzerland of failing to shield them from climate dangers — it does establish a potent precedent that people can use to sue governments in national courts.

The verdict will serve “as a blueprint for how to successfully sue your own government over climate failures,” said Ruth Delbaere, a legal specialist at Avaaz, a U.S.-based nonprofit that promotes climate activism...

Courting the courts on climate

The European Court of Human Rights was established in the decade following World War II but has grown in importance over the last generation. As the judicial arm of the Council of Europe, an international human rights organization, the court’s rulings are binding on the council’s 46 members, spanning all of Europe and numerous countries on its borders.

As a result, Tuesday’s [April 9, 2024] ruling will help elevate climate litigation from a country-by-country battle to one that stretches across continents.

Previously, climate activists had mostly found success in suing individual countries to force climate action. 

A 2019 Dutch Supreme Court verdict forced the Netherlands to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent, while in 2021 a French court ruled the government was responsible for environmental damage after it failed to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals. That same year, Germany’s Constitutional Court issued a sweeping judgment that the country’s 2019 climate law was partly “unconstitutional” because it put too much of the emissions-cutting burden on future generations.

Even in the U.S., young environmental activists won a local case last year against state agencies after arguing that the continued use of fossil fuels violated their right to a "clean and healthful environment."

But 2024 is shaping up to be a turning point for climate litigation, redefining who has a right to sue over climate issues, what arguments they can use, and whom they can target. 

To start, experts overwhelmingly expect that Tuesday’s ruling will reverberate across future lawsuits — both in Europe and globally. The judgment even includes specifics about what steps governments must take to comply with their new climate-related human rights obligations. The list includes things like a concrete deadline to reach climate neutrality, a pathway to getting there, and evidence the country is actually on that path...

Concretely, the verdict could also affect the outcomes of six other high-profile climate lawsuits pending before the human rights court, including a Greenpeace-backed suit questioning whether Norway's decision to grant new oil and gas licenses complies with its carbon-cutting strategy.

An emerging legal strategy

In the coming months, other international bodies are also expected to issue their own rulings on the same thorny legal issues, which could further solidify the evolving trend. 

The International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights all have similar cases working through the system.

"All these cases together will clarify the legal obligations of states to protect rights in the context of climate change — and will set the stage for decades to come," said Chowdhury, from the environmental law center."

-via Politico, April 9, 2024

[sayruq]

[hetalianhistorian]

New official Gangsta reference sheet for Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Bulgaria, and Romania!!

Source link: https://twitter.com/hima_kaz/status/1793476681803743601

From Himaruya's post: "This is the design drawing of today's member. The tattoos on their faces are from the traditional folk costumes of Bulgaria and Romania, and each motif seems to have various meanings (Himaruya)."

[mysharona1987]