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Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

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Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#61

Post by soco »

bschne wrote: post #5

I 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…

A Swiss citizen is only entitled to complain at ECHR about the effects of its government. So only about whatever consequences of the Swiss pollution can be traced to the actions of the Swiss government. As other commenters already pointed out, the problem is less about air quality in Switzerland and more about the dirty trade happening in Switzerland. Unfortunately the case is rather about the first point so there's not very much to expect from it.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#62

Post by Rochus »

fsflover wrote: post #57
Rochus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you buy stocks in a biochemistry or medicine company without a single biochemist or physician on the board?

A biochemistry or medicine company must do something novel to be relevant. In this case it's not necessary.

Then you haven't understood that direct democracy works by convincing fellow citicens to vote for a new idea or direction. People are critical, especially if the new idea or direction restricts their comfort. So you can't just claim anything, you have to win trust with authority and evidence. But it seems that this committee would rather go to court than convince fellow citizens of the validity of their arguments.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#63

Post by belorn »

Y-bar wrote: post #11
bschne wrote: post #5

I 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…

Another way to look at it is that if everyone was like Switzerland the CO2 (equiv.) emissions per capita would still rise and continue to cause climate change and injury. Also, Switzerland has increased their consumption-based emissions by over 38% since 1990 while in the same time frame countries like France has reduced by 15%, Germany reduced by 30%, UK reduced by 23%, EU27 reduced by 20%.

If everyone was like Switzerland the CO2 (equiv.) emissions would go significantly down. Their electricity grid is made of hydro and nuclear, and fossil fuels in the energy grid are the single highest source of emissions by a factor of 2. Consumption-based emissions would also go down since since energy use is a large aspect in production of products. Transportation would likely rise given how much mountains there are, but at the same time, their location in Europe is fairly central making transportation routes a bit shorter. At the same time they lack oceans, and ocean based transportation has both great and terrible emissions based on how one chooses to look at it.

Naturally one can not make every country to be identical to every other. Geographical differences, population differences, cultural and historical differences all play a major role in defining what a country is and how that effects statistics around emissions. Per capita emissions in particular is very much influenced by things like historical wars and genocides, borders and maps, trade, agriculture, and much more. Per capital calculations are one of multiple mathematical data points where if we normalize and apply additional data points we can find some indication of possible places where savings in emissions might occur. It can not be applied universally to all countries as if all countries could be made equivalent.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#64

Post by Rochus »

hnbad wrote: post #48
constantcrying wrote: post #9

This 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 h…

> 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. Well, no. Switzerland is not an anarchic commune, it's a representational democracy, just one that makes heavy use of referendums. But just like elections, referendums don't establish consent, they…

> it's a representational democracy

Switzerland is a direct democracy, not just a representative (i.e. indirect) democracy. In the present case the ECHR is obviously misused with very dubious arguments. The fact that the ECHR does not put a stop to such abuse will not exactly improve its acceptance among the Swiss voters.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#65

Post by cynicalsecurity »

derelicta wrote: post #51
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #15

Next: Europe loses the fight and submits to the coalition of authoritarian regimes. Those swiss baboushkas will be writing complaints from their gulag cells in broken Russian or Chinese. Nice job. When conquered by the authoritarian regimes, we are going to lose the environment much quicker while losing our freedom, democracy and human rights too.

Ur so right sweety its so totalitarian! People should simply mimick the Greatest Republic mankind has ever known aka America and do jack-shit while megacorps dump ungodly amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and microplastics in our rivers for it is Real Freedom™!

How to limit Russia's and China's e/environment impact?

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#66

Post by yareal »

Rochus wrote: post #53
yareal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Would you buy stocks in a biochemistry or medicine company without a single biochemist or physician on the board?

Apples and oranges. The people aren't attempting to do climate science in this case.

Would I buy stock in a company that uses biochemistry products, but did not have a biochemist? Yes, of course.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#67

Post by Rochus »

yareal wrote: post #66
Rochus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you buy stocks in a biochemistry or medicine company without a single biochemist or physician on the board?

Apples and oranges. The people aren't attempting to do climate science in this case. Would I buy stock in a company that uses biochemistry products, but did not have a biochemist? Yes, of course.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39979272

And they obviously didn't convince Swiss voters, but made them angry instead and more sceptical towards European institutions.

See e.g. https://www.20min.ch/story/schweiz-verurteilt-klimaseniorinn... which includes a poll where 80% of currently ~15k people regard Swiss climate measures as sufficient and the interference of foreign judges as an impertinence.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#68

Post by yareal »

Rochus wrote: post #62
fsflover wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A biochemistry or medicine company must do something novel to be relevant. In this case it's not necessary.

Then you haven't understood that direct democracy works by convincing fellow citicens to vote for a new idea or direction. People are critical, especially if the new idea or direction restricts their comfort. So you can't just claim anything, you have to win trust with authority and evidence. But it seems that this committee would rather go to court than convince fellow citizens of the validity of their arguments.

Democracy is also vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority, apathy, disenfranchisement, and multiple concerns that compete for head space. It's also slow, and the legal system exists specifically to address concerns like this.

If a cop is busting heads, you don't wait to elect a new sheriff, you bring a lawsuit to fix the acute problem. If a department is systematically harming a group, you can try to elect someone who will make this their project, or you can get an intervention to prevent further harm via the legal system.

Using the legal system to prevent acute harm is both correct and reasonable, even in a democracy.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#69

Post by seydor »

So what must the swiss government do if it wishes to comply? they control a lot of the world's financial system so they can threaten to cut off funding lines of poor polluting countries. But that would cause great unrest in those poor countries and undoubtedly would worsen the lives of many many more, in order to improve the quality of life of these 4 swiss ladies.

Can citizens from every country bring similar cases to the court? Then they will have no option but to produce hundreds of mutually-contradictory rulings. I wonder if they have set an interesting precedent for themselves

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#70

Post by Y-bar »

belorn wrote: post #63
Y-bar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that if everyone was like Switzerland the CO2 (equiv.) emissions per capita would still rise and continue to cause climate change and injury. Also, Switzerland has increased their consumption-based emissions by over 38% since 1990 while in the same time frame countries like France has reduced by 15%, Germany reduced by 30%, UK reduced by 23%, EU27 reduced by 20%.

If everyone was like Switzerland the CO2 (equiv.) emissions would go significantly down. Their electricity grid is made of hydro and nuclear, and fossil fuels in the energy grid are the single highest source of emissions by a factor of 2. Consumption-based emissions would also go down since since energy use is a large aspect in production of products. Transportation would likely rise given how much mountains there ar…

As per the source given by GP (bschne). I bet the number you are seeing when you say "emissions would go significantly down" is excluding emissions produced externally because you would be correct if only domestically produced emissions were counted.

Domestic _energy_ production is just a fraction of the emissions footprint: Switzerland _literally_ has a 236% per capita CO2 equivalent consumption-based emissions when including trade and it is slowly rising.

It is larger than France (36%)

It is larger than Germany (22%)

It is larger than UK (48%)

It is larger than Namibia (146%)

It is larger than USA (11%)

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