"Wim has decided never to get on a plane again. He is very, very concerned about the future of the earth. He feels an oppressive responsibility for the state of the world he is leaving his children and grandchildren in."

My mother looks at me inquiringly. Wim is her oldest brother in a family of 5. They are 13 months apart and represent the baby boomer generation with verve.

I come from a travel-loving family. Part of it lives abroad. Uncle Wim's decision to stop flying means, among other things, that he will no longer visit his family.

The family ties are close. So Wim is really making a sacrifice. He doesn't just see it that way. He sees it as the smallest thing he can do for his relatives, as his responsibility as a resident of our earth.

Uncle Wim's decision chafes. Flying has an enormous impact on the environment. We simply can't ignore that anymore. Everyone knows it. But now that the borders are open again, we fly out en masse: a week in Crete, Portugal, Ibiza, Malaga, Valencia; a small selection of the social media posts that I see passing by during these autumn vacations.

Not to mention the friends who recently bought a vacation home in southern Portugal. We all think we're entitled to it. Worked hard for it and all.

We'll park that about the environment for a while, you have to be able to live and relax too!

"And you guys need to do something about it!!!" says my combative mother. She thinks my generation is too passive, too low on action. It is meant as encouragement, but as often happens, when we get to this subject, I fly (nice imagery) into defense mode. It's on my tongue to say it's rather easy to expect me to go on the barricades, to rebel against the abuses her blooded generation has caused....

I don't say it. It could be seen as lack of action. But it's not just that. I resist the temptation to blame each other. It distracts from our real mission; to change our behavior. And that's complicated enough.

But this week NRC Handelsblad published an interesting and hopeful article, right up my mother's alley, and I too, as a Generation X-er, was touched by it.

The title; "Not striking for money, but for ideals". In it, it describes how the boardrooms of big (tech) guys like Netflix, Facebook, Google and Amazon are increasingly kept on edge by their employees. Regularly there are so-called "walk-outs" of employees, public demonstrations as a way to put pressure on the top of the company, to take positions on important social issues such as racism and climate change. And that as a board you had better listen then, became painfully clear. One example is the software company Basecamp, where top executive Jason Fried was so tired of all the political discussions of and with staff that in April of this year he banned all political discussions on the work floor. That he made a dramatic mistake in doing so became clear when Basecamp ran out of steam. One-third of the staff resigned and moved on to another tech company. Talk about making an impact.

Many of our clients are tech companies. Not yet of the caliber of Google, Netflix, Basecamp. But many certainly have the potential and ambition to make a serious impact. With them, we don't see walk outs. That has nothing to do with a lack of willingness to take action, but as colleague Susanne soberly remarked: 'it's just a logical consequence of standards, values and listening to your people'.

That's what we see them doing. And often we can contribute to that from our expertise, which we are very happy to do.

The big difference in the readiness for action between this generation and my mother's is the issue they are fighting for: ideals versus money. But as I said, we're not going to talk about that any further. Ideals change. And we must continue the good works. My uncle Wim is a shining example. I dedicate this column to him and to all of us. We can do more than we think.