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Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

swissinfo.ch

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Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#11

Post by Y-bar »

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%.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#12

Post by api »

thegrim000 wrote: post #10
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…

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.

Russia is in full scale climate denial. China is building a lot of solar, wind, and nuclear but still also building coal. Don’t know about India but it seems the answer is mostly no.

I’ve always argued that if we can’t make non carbon emitting sources cheaper than coal and gas (full load leveled cost) and dispatchable (batteries) we have no hope of cutting emissions and everything else is theater.

Right now it seems that burning fossil fuel is still the cheapest way to generate energy without any regulations, taxes, or subsidies. Yes that includes nuclear.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#13

Post by IAMMidway »

Y-bar wrote: post #3
Rochus wrote: post #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.

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."?

Becaus it shows the ECHR is not a serious institution if PR-tricks like using "seniors" to bring forth your case helps you win.

The ECHR needs to be abolished and Switzerland needs to leave this court.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#14

Post by zmgsabst »

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…

I agree, adding a few thoughts —

Because it’s not about solving a serious challenge facing humanity — it’s about the social credit of virtue signaling:

- Establishing consensus and working with stakeholders would be hard.

- Whining to an unelected, transnational body to force your “benevolence” on your nation is easy.

If people are concerned about the unrest in Europe (farmer protests; collapse of faith in institutions; rise of populists), or more broadly about delivering results on issues challenging humanity, this is counterproductive.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#15

Post by cynicalsecurity »

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.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#16

Post by hubraumhugo »

Switzerland was the most participatory democratic country in the world in 2023[0] and Swiss voters rejected a stricter CO2 law last year[1].

This court ruling seems quite perplexing then, doesn't it?

[0] https://www.v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/switzerland-votes-on-c...

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#17

Post by zmgsabst »

yareal wrote: post #8
Rochus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I don’t take a group that’s all advocacy, zero expertise as a serious attempt to solve a complex challenge facing society.

If you wanted to be taken seriously about “equitable pay for musicians”, then you’d absolutely need people who understand the economics and market dynamics of the music industry. Only having legal expertise makes it seem like you’re merely lobbying your personal feelings — not about a real problem.

> And I could build a data driven case without many musicians at all.

But not without data scientists, economists, and probably music industry insiders to provide data. And that’s not a job for lawyers and lobbyists; which was the original question.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#18

Post by flexie »

The court just ruled and it did indeed find that Switzerland had failed to comply with its duties concerning climate change:

https://www.echr.coe.int/w/grand-chamber-rulings-in-the-clim...

"The Court found that Article 8 of the Convention encompasses a right to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life. However, it held that the four individual applicants did not fulfil the victim-status criteria under Article 34 of the Convention and declared their complaints inadmissible. The applicant association, in contrast, had the right to bring a complaint. The Court held that there had been a violation of the right to respect for private and family life of the Convention and that there had been a violation of the right to access to the court. The Court found that the Swiss Confederation had failed to comply with its duties (“positive obligations”) under the Convention concerning climate change."

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#19

Post by pjmlp »

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.

No need for conquering, I am appaled that in the recent Portuguese elections, my fellow citzens decided that the best way to use their voting rights, was to do a protest vote on the extreme right parties, briging them to the highest number on parliament since the dictorship ended.

Two months away of celebrating the return of freedom to the country, the end of colonial war, and the secret state police doing whatever they felt like.

Re: Switzerland faces landmark climate-human rights ruling

#20

Post by mrtksn »

thegrim000 wrote: post #10
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…

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.

Russia is one thing but China might be on the way to pull one giant success here, despite being one of the worse offenders up until recently. They actually built giant infrastructure projects like high speed rail and become the leading country in automobile electrification(at least we can say that it BYD is the top dog when it comes to electric cars, not Tesla or some established company like VW).

I have never been to China but recently I've been seeing reports on how China has actually leaped ahead in some areas like automation, electrification and environmentalism. I'm really not fan of their style of government but if a change is going to happen, it has to happen with Chine due to their insane population and industrial base. Therefore, it seems like China might be on the right track there.

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