Is there a certain point where we say “it’s going to be worse case climate scenario, let’s prepare?”
I’m asking for a friend from a different planet …
The Swiss reject key climate change measures
11–20 of 116 posts
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#12"Fighting" climate change on a national level like this is disingenuous. It is not going to accomplish anything.
There needs to be global agreements involving the biggest players. Else it is just a self inflicted penalty that accomplishes nothing.
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#13(I’m Swiss)
This was a question of money. The Swiss were asked to be taxed (even more than they already are). They voted against the costs.
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#14It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of voting by age. Environmental destruction has a much greater impact to the young.
Votes need change from INT to FLOAT, so old people get 0.75 of a vote and young people get 1.5 ... because
[edit] downvotes! Why? Is it a crazy idea that young people should have more of a say about their future than old people? Where I live the old generation are fucking over the young generation in a big way.
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#15Switzerland, a beacon of common sense!
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#16Psh, that was the least interesting vote of all of them. Even if it was passed, it's a rounding error in global climate. Talk about the insane police law and the Covid law that were accepted. Now there's a catastrophe for our children.
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#17The proposed measures were not going far enough. Not by a long shot. For example, all (larger) companies were excluded from paying for CO2 emissions. Also, there were no measures targetting agriculture and food systems in general.
A big chunk of the revenues would have been used for a "climate fund" which is supposed to invest in tech climate solutions (whatever that means), and another chunk invested into health insurance. Another part would have been invested in renewables directly (which is great).
While one could argue that this would have been better than nothing, I hope that this rejection leads to a better proposal in the future which targets big polluters (although I don't think it will, one can still hope).
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#18It's a sad but apocryphal reality that direct democracy is often the rule of the minority...
There is no point in introducing a CO2 tax unless the government provides actual alternatives that consumers can switch to.
And, no, wind and solar and battery-electric vehicles are not viable alternatives. Solar and wind require backup plants and EVs have inadequate practical use and cause much more CO2 emissions during production.
If you want to effectively decarbonise as an industrial nation, the first path to be taken must be nuclear.
Thanks to nuclear, the emissions in the French energy sector are just 1/7 of Germany’s despite the latter having 50% solar and wind.
Moreover, the nuclear phase out causes Germany to build new natural gas plants: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Mediathek/Berich... (p. 66).
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#19The Swiss rejected some taxes.
I think this is an important distinction compared to "climate change measures". The (very slim) majority may feel that such taxes are not the best way to deal with climate change, and support other ideas instead. There are a lot of politicians presenting the false choice of wealth redistribution or climate change apathy. There are other ways of looking at this, which I don't think are captured by framing it as them having rejected climate change measures.
Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures
#20(I’m Swiss) This was a question of money. The Swiss were asked to be taxed (even more than they already are). They voted against the costs.
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