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The Swiss reject key climate change measures

bbc.com

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Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#61

Post by smnrchrds »

PKop wrote: post #34
davedx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Now do Swiss voters on migrants, refugees, and participation in science programmes of the EU. What you’ll find is that the Swiss are an insular myopic bunch.

Good for them. Ultimately they view their positions on these issues as best for the well being of their nation and its people. Who are you to say otherwise, should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners? Why would they want refugees and migrants to come into their country? How would it benefit them?

> Who are you to say otherwise, should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners?

One should be able to criticize policies that directly affect them, for example those on climate change, whose effects go well beyond a country's borders.

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#62

Post by samatman »

adamt wrote: post #37
ratsforhorses wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see how much pollution is "externalised"... besides public transport and living density is a lot higher than most of the US, AUS or Canada... also how much pollution is caused by corporations from Switzerland...

Switzerland is not that densely populated. It’s 219 per square km. For context Florida is about 150 and California about 100. Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territori... https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/switzerland-p...

Tangent, but there has to be a better way to measure population density than taking total area as the denominator and headcount as the numerator.

Something like 'median density': sort citizens by local density, find the median, and report that. My guess is that California would have a higher number than Florida by that measure. I don't know about Switzerland vs. California, but that's the question I'd like to answer here!

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#63

Post by jollybean »

dblock wrote: post #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.

"They voted against the costs. "

First, it's hard to know that and second, meeting Paris Accord targets will have 'costs'. So if you're voting against costs necessary to meet a specified objective, well it's effectively the same thing as meeting the objective.

After all, it's almost always about money.

The editorial framing is fair.

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#64

Post by Glavnokoman »

alkonaut wrote: post #42
version_five wrote: post #19

The 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 c…

> The 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. Which is a very succinct description of why “direct democracy” (or overuse of referendums) is, simply put, not a good idea. A vote on tax X versus tax Y? Fine. But voting yes…

How is direct democracy worse than the non-direct one in this respect? By enabling the politicians to not hold to the promises that got them elected?

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#65

Post by usrusr »

Google234 wrote: post #10

We need more referendums in the US. It would nice to see the people rebuke the far left and right more often.

Initial gut reaction is "but would they?". But you might be right, it could be a place for positions outside the two-party polarization to thrive.

My personal experience however (very limited, it's based on a single referendum) suggests that the opposite might happen: back when the public smoking bans happened my local legislation was iterating through some moderately extreme approaches until eventually closing in on some rather reasonable compromise. But because the smoking fronts ran pretty much orthogonal to the usual party alignments they feared backlash from their followers and ducked out, handing over responsibility to a referendum. In this referendum, two groups were providing options, and it should come to no one's surprise that those groups where from the very far ends of the spectrum. It was basically a vote between two evils of you happened to be even the tiniest bit moderate. The vote was incredibly close, which means that both sides were quite successful at pushing their agenda: if your goal is on an extreme end, you'd want to compromise exactly as much as you need to reach 50%+1, and not the tiniest bit more.

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#67

Post by Rochus »

A thirty-page law was rejected by the people because it apparently contained highly contentious parts. That is all that can be concluded from it. The Federal Council and parliament will now draft a new law that is less contentious. Journalists should first take a closer look at how the political system in Switzerland works before jumping to conclusions. The Swiss didn't reject climage change measures, just a contentious law. There are already a lot of measures in force besides this law.

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#68

Post by version_five »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #14
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #5

It 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.

I agree with you (in principle) and I've thought about this before. It's a challenge of democracy that those with a conflict of interest get just as much say as those that have to directly bear the long term consequences of something. With the particular example of older people, demographic changes mean that the balance of power is becoming more concentrated amongst the aged.

Realistically, I see no fair way to start disenfranchising people. The best we can hope for is to think about what constitutional controls we have to protect people generally from a tyranny of the majority, and consider if there are additional ones needed to account for demographic majorities. Getting anything passed is another story...

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#69

Post by rocknor »

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #7

* Swiss CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita): 4.17 * US CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita): 15.5 Switzerland is already among the lowest polluters in the EU and much lower than Australia/Canada/US. Just for context.

Nope. Look at the consumption CO2 emissions:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

Re: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

#70

Post by axiosgunnar »

StavrosK wrote: post #35
ratsforhorses wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 49% voted for it...of course elsewhere is "more broken" ..however it doesn't take away that often change is held back because of ...1-2%...

> however it doesn't take away that often change is held back because of ...1-2%... Don't you mean "because of 52%"?

The poster you are replying to doesn‘t care about the 49,99% that get the hard end of democracy when they lose a vote if they're the „bad guys“.

So he only cares about the 1-2% that „lamentably“ made his side lose.

Basically he thinks like a dictator, that just needs to get those 51% in his favor and then can absolutely crush the other side.

He completely misses that the goal of a democracy should always be consensus, mutual understanding and a sense of belonging, and that a 51/49 vote is the absolute worst case for a democracy, as it shows a complete divide, no matter which side won.

The goal to fix that should not be to compaign for a few weeks to get the last 1-2% to flip to „his“ side, but rather take a few steps back and think about how his country could achieve a 90+% consensus, perhaps by finding other solutions than increasing taxes for the middle class even more…

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