Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
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Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#2> https://www.klimaseniorinnen.ch/uber-uns/
Apparently not a single physicist or medical doctor on the board, but many politicians and lawyers.
EDIT: this is an easily verifiable fact, but apparently there are people here for whom even that is too much.
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#3> https://www.klimaseniorinnen.ch/uber-uns/ Apparently not a single physicist or medical doctor on the board, but many politicians and lawyers. EDIT: this is an easily verifiable fact, but apparently there are people here for whom even that is too much.
Why is that a relevant take-away? Are you saying that not a singe physicist agrees that "[…] the current climate targets and measures are not sufficient to limit global warming to a safe level."?
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#4> https://www.klimaseniorinnen.ch/uber-uns/ Apparently not a single physicist or medical doctor on the board, but many politicians and lawyers. EDIT: this is an easily verifiable fact, but apparently there are people here for whom even that is too much.
Doesn’t seem relevant. A different set of skills needed to promote a policy.
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#5I am Swiss, and I think we should contribute as much as we possibly can, despite being a relatively small country without too much direct global impact.
But I'm curious about the legal technicalities here (because IANAL): You can surely argue for a country having to better protect its own citizens through e.g. adaptations, but no matter how you look at it I don't think Swiss emissions can reasonably be viewed as a proximal cause of any substantial climate-related harm to Swiss citizens. Comparing consumption-based emissions from OWID [1] shows CH is responsible for 118.68 million / 37.15 billion ≈ 0.3% of global emissions, so even going net-zero instantly would hardly make a dent. Under this perspective, even the most ambitious climate policy we implement would hardly protect our citizens from adverse impacts by a meaningful amount?
Does anyone who understands human rights law better than me have thoughts on this?
1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#6> https://www.klimaseniorinnen.ch/uber-uns/ Apparently not a single physicist or medical doctor on the board, but many politicians and lawyers. EDIT: this is an easily verifiable fact, but apparently there are people here for whom even that is too much.
Why is that a relevant take-away? Are you saying that not a singe physicist agrees that "[…] the current climate targets and measures are not sufficient to limit global warming to a safe level."?
That would be a pretty far-fetched interpretation. Let's stick to the obvious.
One should be able to expect that a board of an association that is committed to a cause should have at least a few people on it who have formal training in that cause and appropriate professional experience.
Otherwise, you could ask yourself with good reason why they can't find any experts to officially represent their cause.
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#7> https://www.klimaseniorinnen.ch/uber-uns/ Apparently not a single physicist or medical doctor on the board, but many politicians and lawyers. EDIT: this is an easily verifiable fact, but apparently there are people here for whom even that is too much.
They have more than 2500 Members, you know every single one of them? Impressive.
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that a relevant take-away? Are you saying that not a singe physicist agrees that "[…] the current climate targets and measures are not sufficient to limit global warming to a safe level."?
That would be a pretty far-fetched interpretation. Let's stick to the obvious. One should be able to expect that a board of an association that is committed to a cause should have at least a few people on it who have formal training in that cause and appropriate professional experience. Otherwise, you could ask yourself with good reason why they can't find any experts to officially represent their cause.
Are they doing science? Or are they litigating to influence their government based on the science. I'd argue that, contextually, they do have people with formal training on the cause - influencing governmental change.
Those folks can hire experts to interpret white papers if needed, but they aren't participating in science, they are consuming it.
(I don't need to be an excellent musician to advocate for the belief that Spotify doesn't equitably pay musicians. If I wanted to legislatively address that, I'd need lawyers and politicians, not musicians. And I could build a data driven case without many musicians at all.)
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#9This is legitimately insane. You have a court, which was created in an attempt to give legal options to victims of crimes committed by nation state and which could not be heard elsewhere.
And people are suing over whatever a tiny European state doesn't do to stop environmental harm. Which may or may not even effect the people who are suing at all.
And these people are from the country on earth where the population has the greatest control over their government. Switzerland isn't some rogue state, the population has legal means to force the government to do essentially whatever they want. So the human rights violation is essentially being committed by the population themselves.
If Switzerland is commiting a human rights violation by doing this, what monumental human rights violation is committed by India. A country which uses the oceans to distribute it's waste globally? How about China, burning endless coal?
It really must be dismaying to see how little anyone actually cares about the environment on a global challenge, for someone who cares about the environment. Instead we have people arguing literal nonsense in a court.
Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling
#10I am Swiss, and I think we should contribute as much as we possibly can, despite being a relatively small country without too much direct global impact. But I'm curious about the legal technicalities here (because IANAL): You can surely argue for a country having to better protect its own citizens through e.g. adaptations, but no matter how you look at it I don't think Swiss emissions can reasonably be viewed as a pr…
I'm curious if countries like China, India, and Russia, have similar lawsuits and similar initiatives to reduce their emissions. I can't recall ever seeing a single story.