WINDMILLS AND WEATHER: THE NETHERLANDS


"Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills." - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

“He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be... Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat.  But, what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.” – character of Justin Playfair (played by George C. Scott), with respect to Don Quixote, They Might be Giants

Your tiny, lake-filled nation has become wealthy from trade with regions far away. You conclude that you need more land. You could invade a neighboring country, but then you’d have to deal with the neighbors. And that whole military thing might not work out too well for you. Or, you could find a way to make land out of those lakes. But it’s the 1600s and there’s no heavy-duty equipment available to you. So what do you do?

You drain the lakes.

Yep, you build rings of dikes around the lakes, then dig canals on the outside of the dikes. Then you construct windmills to pump the water out of the lakes into the canals. Then, on what used to be the bottom of the lakes, you now have fertile farmland. You also have strong dikes on which to build roads and a system of canals on which to move about the country by boat.

You do now have about one-fourth of your country below sea level. But it’s been well over 300 years, and it has all worked out pretty well for you so far. So well, in fact, that now you’ve taken to draining ocean areas, desalinating the land, and building on that area as well.  You don’t use windmills anymore for pumping—that’s all done through computerized central stations. But you still pump. And you still have windmills—lots and lots of windmills—but now they’re tall, white structures that are used to generate electricity.

However, it is now the 21st century, where increasingly rapid changes in the climate mean you have historic firsts. Like, for the first time since weather has been recorded you have a draught. So, a nation that has spent much of its history figuring out how to get rid of water is now faced with introducing irrigation.

In fact, on this trip so far, we have seen two historic extremes in weather. In the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Greenland and Iceland, the early summer brought historically high levels of precipitation. Britain, Ireland and continental Europe are seeing unusually high temperatures and extended periods without rain. Amsterdam has not seen rain in 9 weeks; Dublin has gone without for 14 weeks. All are experiencing severe water restrictions, and once-green areas are now brown.

1600s-style windmill, once used for
pumping water from the lake to the canal

Modern windmills, used for power generation



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