Long Live The Hermitage

Last June President Medvedev of Russia visited the Netherlands. During that visit he opened, together with Queen Beatrix and Prime Minister Balkenende of the Netherlands, a Dutch branch in Amsterdam of the famous Russian museum The Hermitage. On the website of The Hermitage Amsterdam is written that the museum has special attention for the cultural education of children. In fact, this museum will have the largest space dedicated to educational programmes in a museum in the Netherlands.

While President Medvedev visited Amsterdam, prime Minister Balkenende of the Netherlands lobbied for a more intensive Russian-Dutch cooperation for the winning of natural gas in the East of Russia. Nearly a week after Medvedev’s visit, Gazprom, the Russian gas-company, put Royal Dutch Shell on a shortlist of companies that can take part in a liquefied natural gas project at the Peninsula of Yamal in Russia. Royal Dutch Shell already agreed with Russia that it gets delivered 1.000.000 tons of natural gas for the European market.

Now here’s the irony. These 1.000.000 tons of natural gas that Shell gets each year from just this single project causes about 2.400.000 tons of Co2-emissions. Co2 is a green house gas that has an impact on worldwide climate-systems. Following the warnings of the UN International Panel on Climate Change we have to reduce the emissions of green house gasses drastically to avoid great dangers for future generations. These dangers include famine, flooding, a rising sea-level and a large amount of climate fugitives. It is predicted that especially the already poor areas in the world will be affected by climate change problems. And in the end, children in these areas will be affected most.

So, thank you President Medvedev and Prime Minister Balkenende for opening a museum with the largest space dedicated to educational programmes for children in the Netherlands. But have you considered that the business-deals you made afterwards will have a life-threatening impact on thousands of children elsewhere in this world? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate when Medvedev and Balkenende opened an exhibition in Amsterdam, a city which is already a few meters below sea-level, that teaches children to live energy-efficient and stimulates children to think creatively about new forms of renewable energy? That would have really completed this Russian-Dutch package-deal.