THE CLIMATE OF MAN--III.

The Climate of Man-I

The Climate of Man-II

Elizabeth Kolbert discusses climate change

In February, 2003, a series of ads on the theme of inundation began appearing on Dutch TV. The ads were sponsored by the Netherlands' Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management, and they featured a celebrity weatherman named Peter Timofeeff. In one commercial, Timofeeff, who looks a bit like Albert Brooks and a bit like Gene Shalit, sat relaxing on the shore in a folding chair. "Sea level is rising," he announced, as waves started creeping up the beach. He continued to sit and talk even as a boy who had been building a sandcastle abandoned it in panic. At the end of the ad, Timofeeff, still seated, was immersed in water up to his waist.

In another commercial, Timofeeff was shown wearing a business suit and standing by a bathtub. "These are our rivers," he explained, climbing into the tub and turning on the shower full blast. "The climate is changing. It will rain more often, and more heavily." Water filled the tub and spilled over the sides. It dripped through the floorboards, onto the head of his screeching wife, below. "We should give the water more space and widen the rivers," he advised, reaching for a towel.

Both the beach-chair and the shower ads were part of a public-service campaign that also included radio spots, newspaper announcements, and free tote bags. Notwithstanding their comic tone--other commercials showed Timofeeff trying to start a motorboat in a cow pasture and digging a duck pond in his back yard--their message was sombre.

A quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level, much of it on land wrested from either the North Sea or the Rhine or the River Meuse. Another quarter, while slightly higher, is still low enough that, in the natural course of events, it would regularly be flooded. What makes the country habitable is the world's most sophisticated water-management system, which comprises more than ten thousand miles of dikes, dams, weirs, flood barriers, and artificial dunes, not to mention countless pumps, holding ponds, and windmills. (People in Holland like to joke, "God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands.")