12 ms·

The Swiss reject key climate change measures

54 points by ratsforhorses 5y ago

ratsforhorses 5y ago
It's a sad but apocryphal reality that direct democracy is often the rule of the minority...
- version_five 5y ago
  I don't understand the use of apocryphal in this context
  - ratsforhorses 5y ago
    I was being ironic...
    - evanrich 5y ago
      I don’t understand the irony
- cbmuser 5y ago
  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/Berichte/2020/Monitoringbericht_Energie2020.pdf;jsessionid=2BB18CA6F03AF776C21D5CE46B0F040B?__blob=publicationFile&v=8 https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Mediathek/Berich... (p. 66).
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of voting by age. Environmental destruction has a much greater impact to the young.
- denimnerd42 5y ago
  That may be true but would the transition imposed by the extreme measures required end up wrecking the current young? Telling the young they can't fly anymore when they're older as I've heard on here a million times is probably not going to get you votes. But that's just a stupid simple example, I can't really fathom how more complex laws will change the world.
- monk_e_boy 5y ago
  Votes need change from INT to FLOAT, so old people get 0.75 of a vote and young people get 1.5 ... because <lots of reasons> [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.
  - bitL 5y ago
    Why not the opposite? "Hey, I've seen everything!" vs "Hey, that's what I was told on TV!"
  - gshixman 5y ago
    It's downvoted because it is obviously ageist... Depersoning people by age is no different than depersoning by race or gender.
    - tzs 5y ago
      > Depersoning people by age is no different than depersoning by race or gender. Those aren't really comparable. If I have a "no black people" rule or a "no men" rule, some people are permanently excluded and some people are permanently included. Those rules each filter everybody into two permanent classes each that they can never leave. A "no people under age X" or "no people over age X" rule does not do this. Yes, it does filter everyone in to one of two classes, but any given individual starts in one class and then after a set time switches to the other class.
IdiocyInAction 5y ago
* 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.
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  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...
  - adamt 5y ago
    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_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territori... https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/switzerland-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/switzerland-p...
    - samatman 5y ago
      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!
      - aerostable_slug 5y ago
        Another approach might be to start by subtracting land not available for most human uses for whatever reason, e.g. up on the Eiger, or in a large national park, or on a military reservation (places like Pendleton and Hunter Liggett immediately come to mind in California).
Causality1 5y ago
Smart, in my opinion. Industrial producers are engaged in a massive and well-funded propaganda campaign aimed at distracting people from the fact the overwhelming majority of carbon emissions are from industrial and commercial sources. Even in a car-happy country like the US, personal vehicle use including commuting only makes up 16 percent of carbon emissions.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  Industrial and commercial needs for what, exactly. Just the car industry relies on so many things (for happy car owners) that you can categorize as industrial and commercial. Reduce the need for cars and everything decrease quasi proportionally.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    That doesn't stop the fuel tax from being regressive. If you want to stop carbon emissions then tax carbon emissions.
Google234 5y ago
We need more referendums in the US. It would nice to see the people rebuke the far left and right more often.
- ISL 5y ago
  One might want to study the impacts of initiative voting in the western US. There are times when bypassing the legislative process is perhaps essential (term-limits for legislators?), but mostly it bypasses the compromises often made in representative democracies. Initiatives can impose new law without handling externalities well. It is possible to vote for "no new taxes" and "properly fund schools!" without balancing the tension between the two. It is my feeling that initiatives are good, at least in theory, but the requirement for passage ought to be greater than 50%.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    Note that the Swiss constitution was inspired by California’s, and improved on its broken referendum model in several ways.
    - ratsforhorses 5y ago
      Curious, you have a source ? from the wiki "with a constitution promulgated on 12 September 1848. This constitution provided for the cantons' sovereignty, as long as this did not impinge on the Federal Constitution. The creation of a bicameral assembly was consciously inspired by the United States Constitution, the National Council and Council of States corresponding to the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively "
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        We replaced it in 1999 [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution
        5y ago
pyuser583 5y ago
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 …
- jrsj 5y ago
  It may be difficult to predict exactly what that scenario entails. Sure we have models etc but it’s still uncharted territory. Plus it’s not like there’s 1 magic threshold we can pass and then it doesn’t matter anymore — the main means of mitigation long term would still be the same as what is already being advocated for. Regarding something like trying to do something to reduce the average global temperature…the risks of getting something wrong attempting that likely outweigh the benefits.
- fencepost 5y ago
  If you have or are planning to have a family, you should likely be thinking about just this already on a personal and family level. Do what you can to reduce your footprint, but also do your long-term planning based on expectations of climate change. Among other things, don't buy property within anything considered 100-year or possibly even 500-year flood zones - climate change may mean that 100-year zones start getting flooded every 10 years or less, and that's not only going to impact you directly but the economics of recovery because you and all your never-expected-to-flood neighbors will be trying to recover. Also consider how the climate is expected to change over the next 50 years where you're considering settling - and what impact it'll have if it changes faster than that.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    Meh. I mean I have my family. We’ve bought property. I think the important thing is how careful the local government is about resiliency.
    - fencepost 5y ago
      Likely - you can probably get a decent idea of how vulnerable to climate change or other disasters just by looking at insurance costs both for homeowners and possibly for mortgages. Higher risk areas should already be showing signs of increased cost, because risk doesn't change overnight. A hundred year flood isn't one that happens every hundred years - it's one that should have a 1% chance of happening in any given year. The biggest issue with that is whether the flood maps (https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps) used for pricing are based only on historical data or if they account for climate change.
mustafa_pasi 5y ago
"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.
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  I think if you can afford to show by example , you should... any penalty you incur makes you better prepared and more competitive for later...
  - nexuist 5y ago
    Alternatively, investing in renewable energy is not a penalty at all. Whoever wins this technological race is eventually going to list every other country as a customer, because there will be no other choice when oil runs out. Behind the moral do-good-ness of corporate and state-backed environmental activism is a race to become the next Aramco.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  On an individual level, people make choices about climate change. For example solar panels or electric vehicle when not doing so would simply be easier or cheaper. Municipalities are looking at how to switch away from gas-based heating in houses, for example using district heat. Regional governments also play a role, though I don't remember by heart which were the kinds of things they decide on. Pretty sure it involved land use, for example where to place wind turbines, but I could be wrong. Until we have "global agreements involving the biggest players", I really don't think we should avoid making climate-impacting decisions on a national level. If we need to first get the whole planet to agree on a course of action, we'll start getting to net-zero right around the time that Elon leaves for Mars.
- soco 5y ago
  If there only was some international treaty for everybody to bind, maybe if we signed it in Paris...
dblock 5y ago
(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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  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%...
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    > however it doesn't take away that often change is held back because of ...1-2%... Don't you mean "because of 52%"?
    - axiosgunnar 5y ago
      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…
      - ratsforhorses 5y ago
        Not quite, I do care about consensus , I find it ironic that often these referendums end up with such a pithy divide yet there is little discussion about how to find a consensus from such a half/half vote ..for those not Swiss it might come as a surprise that often a big difference is between the Swiss french and the Swiss german part as well as more conventionally, between the rural and urban... Btw, what was the proportion of voters voting..? also why not bring in the said measures in the cantons that voted for them..or on a voluntary basis.. I am also curious how much the opposing sides spent on media.. Edit to answer my own question..60% of those who could, voted...so to add to my suggestions why not make it count when say 80-90% have voted...maybe thereby giving people a taste of "every voice matters" Here is a link to some maps...(in French) https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12258425-les-cartes-des-resultats-des-votations-federales-commune-par-commune.html https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12258425-les-cartes-des-resul...
idownvoted 5y ago
Switzerland, a beacon of common sense!
Kenji 5y ago
Psh, 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.
shafyy 5y ago
The 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).
version_five 5y ago
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 captured by framing it as them having rejected climate change measures.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- davedx 5y ago
  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.
  - PKop 5y ago
    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?
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      > should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners? To some extent I think it’s absolutely fair to expect that, yes. Especially in the richer countries of the world.
      - PKop 5y ago
        This is not how politics works. Nations are definitionally a group of people with shared interests. No one else is going to vote in the interest of the Swiss, only they will for themselves. It is absurd to equate well run, successful, wealthy nations with an obligation to harm themselves by adopting bad policies that hurt their own people. Anyone advocating for that should be ignored.
pietrod 5y ago
the states just found a new way, summary: "oh no, you wont give us money? you hate our planet!"
thysultan 5y ago
>car fuel levy, tax on air tickets. Non of which would have done anything but raise prices for the aforementioned, it was just a swiss politicians hustle to try and tax citizens masqueraded as "climate measures".
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >Non of which would have done anything but raise prices for the aforementioned .. which is the entire point? The increase in prices internalizes the cost of pollution. Putting a price on carbon is the most straightforward and economically sensible way to incentivize reducing emissions.
  - lasftew 5y ago
    There are ways to implement such a scheme in a way that does not increase the overall tax quota, by either reducing other taxes (VAT, income tax) or directly giving back to the people (tax credits). One key argument of opponents of the proposed law was indeed that it would have resulted in an overall tax increase, with a lot of money being channelled into a dedicated "green innovation fund", outside of regular parliamentary control. Unsurprising, many MPs on the pro side were affiliated with the "clean tech" and construction industries, who would have received most of that money.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  Taxing airlines tickets could reduce the demand for flying (especially in Europe), unless people have infinite money. How can this not help curb climate change?
  - noxer 5y ago
    You mean slow down by an probably insignificant amount? Like back to a few year ago levels. All while the combined rest of the world increases pollution? No one can seriously thinks this would make a change. China's additional pollution in the last years is more than what the entire west has reduces in the same time. And we will not go back in time and stop flying and stop being mobile. The only way forward is trough superior tech which if it actually is superiors will also be cheaper and replace the old tech on its own. No artificial incentives needed. Instead we should pour that money into funding research because researching while being profitable simply takes way way longer to achieve the same.
Rochus 5y ago
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.
T-A 5y ago
21 cantons (out of 26) voted against. Looking at the geographic distribution [1] it's evident support was narrowly concentrated to cities like Geneva, Zürich and Basel. Conclusion: people who need their car on a daily basis think that gasoline is expensive enough at 6.492 USD/gallon [2] (as of June 7, when US drivers paid 3.399 USD/gallon according to the same site). [1] https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/schweiz/so-stimmt-deine-gemeinde-uebers-co2-gesetz-ab-751191.html https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/schweiz/so-stimmt-deine-gemei... [2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Switzerland/gasoline_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Switzerland/gasoline_pric...
- soco 5y ago
  When asked to choose between a slightly emptier wallet today and a desertified country in a few decades, the choice is incredibly obvious to make: leave my wallet alone!
  - noxer 5y ago
    >desertified country You should probably look up Switzerland on a map. Its where central Europe fresh water comes from.
robocat 5y ago
The reference point for the Swiss national height network is 373.6 metres. So they can somewhat ignore rising sea levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metres_above_the_Sea_(Switzerland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metres_above_the_Sea_(Switzerl...
qalmakka 5y ago
This isn't that weird. People will always prefer avoiding short-term money losses than a danger they perceive as being "in the future". No one will ever win a referendum about levying taxes, no matter how important or just those are. That's why countries like Italy explicitly forbid referenda on economic matters.
- noxer 5y ago
  This directly contradicts the fact that they voted against an additional mandatory week of holidays back in 2012. The consensus was that people did not want the short term benefit of more holidays for log term harm to small business who cant afford to give people more paid holidays. I think you are grossly underestimating the voting population. They are supposed to vote for whats best for the country not for themself. The main problem the Swiss system has is dis/misinformation not people being selfish. Every other political system has this problem too but the Swiss system depends more on a well informed populace than other systems.
  - wdroz 5y ago
    > This directly contradicts the fact that they voted against an additional mandatory week of holidays back in 2012 I agree with the argument, but to nitpick: That was two additional weeks (from 4 to 6 weeks). I'm sure only 1 additional week would have succeed as a lot of employers are already giving 5 weeks.
  - qalmakka 5y ago
    It's not about people being selfish, at all. It's about basic human behaviour. People don't like when something is taken from them, while they do not feel the same amount of pain when they are forced give up on something they never had. It's much more pleasant to learn you can save 20 Euros on your bills than finding 20 Euros on the ground, because we value losing what we already have more. That's the reason why the idea of taxing wealth always stirs more chaos than taxing income. Income is money you didn't have before, while wealth is stuff you own already. Giving up something you never had for "the greater good" is much easier than giving up privileges or wealth you already possess.

54 points by ratsforhorses 5y ago

ratsforhorses 5y ago

It's a sad but apocryphal reality that direct democracy is often the rule of the minority...

version_five 5y ago
I don't understand the use of apocryphal in this context
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  I was being ironic...
  - evanrich 5y ago
    I don’t understand the irony
cbmuser 5y ago
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/Berichte/2020/Monitoringbericht_Energie2020.pdf;jsessionid=2BB18CA6F03AF776C21D5CE46B0F040B?__blob=publicationFile&v=8 https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Mediathek/Berich... (p. 66).

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of voting by age. Environmental destruction has a much greater impact to the young.

denimnerd42 5y ago
That may be true but would the transition imposed by the extreme measures required end up wrecking the current young? Telling the young they can't fly anymore when they're older as I've heard on here a million times is probably not going to get you votes. But that's just a stupid simple example, I can't really fathom how more complex laws will change the world.
monk_e_boy 5y ago
Votes need change from INT to FLOAT, so old people get 0.75 of a vote and young people get 1.5 ... because <lots of reasons> [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.
- bitL 5y ago
  Why not the opposite? "Hey, I've seen everything!" vs "Hey, that's what I was told on TV!"
- gshixman 5y ago
  It's downvoted because it is obviously ageist... Depersoning people by age is no different than depersoning by race or gender.
  - tzs 5y ago
    > Depersoning people by age is no different than depersoning by race or gender. Those aren't really comparable. If I have a "no black people" rule or a "no men" rule, some people are permanently excluded and some people are permanently included. Those rules each filter everybody into two permanent classes each that they can never leave. A "no people under age X" or "no people over age X" rule does not do this. Yes, it does filter everyone in to one of two classes, but any given individual starts in one class and then after a set time switches to the other class.

IdiocyInAction 5y ago

* 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.

ratsforhorses 5y ago
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...
- adamt 5y ago
  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_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territori... https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/switzerland-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/switzerland-p...
  - samatman 5y ago
    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!
    - aerostable_slug 5y ago
      Another approach might be to start by subtracting land not available for most human uses for whatever reason, e.g. up on the Eiger, or in a large national park, or on a military reservation (places like Pendleton and Hunter Liggett immediately come to mind in California).

Causality1 5y ago

Smart, in my opinion. Industrial producers are engaged in a massive and well-funded propaganda campaign aimed at distracting people from the fact the overwhelming majority of carbon emissions are from industrial and commercial sources. Even in a car-happy country like the US, personal vehicle use including commuting only makes up 16 percent of carbon emissions.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
Industrial and commercial needs for what, exactly. Just the car industry relies on so many things (for happy car owners) that you can categorize as industrial and commercial. Reduce the need for cars and everything decrease quasi proportionally.
- Causality1 5y ago
  That doesn't stop the fuel tax from being regressive. If you want to stop carbon emissions then tax carbon emissions.

Google234 5y ago

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

ISL 5y ago
One might want to study the impacts of initiative voting in the western US. There are times when bypassing the legislative process is perhaps essential (term-limits for legislators?), but mostly it bypasses the compromises often made in representative democracies. Initiatives can impose new law without handling externalities well. It is possible to vote for "no new taxes" and "properly fund schools!" without balancing the tension between the two. It is my feeling that initiatives are good, at least in theory, but the requirement for passage ought to be greater than 50%.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  Note that the Swiss constitution was inspired by California’s, and improved on its broken referendum model in several ways.
  - ratsforhorses 5y ago
    Curious, you have a source ? from the wiki "with a constitution promulgated on 12 September 1848. This constitution provided for the cantons' sovereignty, as long as this did not impinge on the Federal Constitution. The creation of a bicameral assembly was consciously inspired by the United States Constitution, the National Council and Council of States corresponding to the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively "
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      We replaced it in 1999 [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution
      - 5y ago

pyuser583 5y ago

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 …

jrsj 5y ago
It may be difficult to predict exactly what that scenario entails. Sure we have models etc but it’s still uncharted territory. Plus it’s not like there’s 1 magic threshold we can pass and then it doesn’t matter anymore — the main means of mitigation long term would still be the same as what is already being advocated for. Regarding something like trying to do something to reduce the average global temperature…the risks of getting something wrong attempting that likely outweigh the benefits.
fencepost 5y ago
If you have or are planning to have a family, you should likely be thinking about just this already on a personal and family level. Do what you can to reduce your footprint, but also do your long-term planning based on expectations of climate change. Among other things, don't buy property within anything considered 100-year or possibly even 500-year flood zones - climate change may mean that 100-year zones start getting flooded every 10 years or less, and that's not only going to impact you directly but the economics of recovery because you and all your never-expected-to-flood neighbors will be trying to recover. Also consider how the climate is expected to change over the next 50 years where you're considering settling - and what impact it'll have if it changes faster than that.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Meh. I mean I have my family. We’ve bought property. I think the important thing is how careful the local government is about resiliency.
  - fencepost 5y ago
    Likely - you can probably get a decent idea of how vulnerable to climate change or other disasters just by looking at insurance costs both for homeowners and possibly for mortgages. Higher risk areas should already be showing signs of increased cost, because risk doesn't change overnight. A hundred year flood isn't one that happens every hundred years - it's one that should have a 1% chance of happening in any given year. The biggest issue with that is whether the flood maps (https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps) used for pricing are based only on historical data or if they account for climate change.

mustafa_pasi 5y ago

"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.

ratsforhorses 5y ago
I think if you can afford to show by example , you should... any penalty you incur makes you better prepared and more competitive for later...
- nexuist 5y ago
  Alternatively, investing in renewable energy is not a penalty at all. Whoever wins this technological race is eventually going to list every other country as a customer, because there will be no other choice when oil runs out. Behind the moral do-good-ness of corporate and state-backed environmental activism is a race to become the next Aramco.
lucb1e 5y ago
On an individual level, people make choices about climate change. For example solar panels or electric vehicle when not doing so would simply be easier or cheaper. Municipalities are looking at how to switch away from gas-based heating in houses, for example using district heat. Regional governments also play a role, though I don't remember by heart which were the kinds of things they decide on. Pretty sure it involved land use, for example where to place wind turbines, but I could be wrong. Until we have "global agreements involving the biggest players", I really don't think we should avoid making climate-impacting decisions on a national level. If we need to first get the whole planet to agree on a course of action, we'll start getting to net-zero right around the time that Elon leaves for Mars.
soco 5y ago
If there only was some international treaty for everybody to bind, maybe if we signed it in Paris...

dblock 5y ago

(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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ratsforhorses 5y ago
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%...
- StavrosK 5y ago
  > however it doesn't take away that often change is held back because of ...1-2%... Don't you mean "because of 52%"?
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    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…
    - ratsforhorses 5y ago
      Not quite, I do care about consensus , I find it ironic that often these referendums end up with such a pithy divide yet there is little discussion about how to find a consensus from such a half/half vote ..for those not Swiss it might come as a surprise that often a big difference is between the Swiss french and the Swiss german part as well as more conventionally, between the rural and urban... Btw, what was the proportion of voters voting..? also why not bring in the said measures in the cantons that voted for them..or on a voluntary basis.. I am also curious how much the opposing sides spent on media.. Edit to answer my own question..60% of those who could, voted...so to add to my suggestions why not make it count when say 80-90% have voted...maybe thereby giving people a taste of "every voice matters" Here is a link to some maps...(in French) https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12258425-les-cartes-des-resultats-des-votations-federales-commune-par-commune.html https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12258425-les-cartes-des-resul...

idownvoted 5y ago

Switzerland, a beacon of common sense!

Kenji 5y ago

Psh, 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.

shafyy 5y ago

The 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).

version_five 5y ago

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 captured by framing it as them having rejected climate change measures.

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davedx 5y ago
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.
- PKop 5y ago
  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?
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    > should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners? To some extent I think it’s absolutely fair to expect that, yes. Especially in the richer countries of the world.
    - PKop 5y ago
      This is not how politics works. Nations are definitionally a group of people with shared interests. No one else is going to vote in the interest of the Swiss, only they will for themselves. It is absurd to equate well run, successful, wealthy nations with an obligation to harm themselves by adopting bad policies that hurt their own people. Anyone advocating for that should be ignored.

pietrod 5y ago

the states just found a new way, summary: "oh no, you wont give us money? you hate our planet!"

thysultan 5y ago

>car fuel levy, tax on air tickets. Non of which would have done anything but raise prices for the aforementioned, it was just a swiss politicians hustle to try and tax citizens masqueraded as "climate measures".

Barrin92 5y ago
>Non of which would have done anything but raise prices for the aforementioned .. which is the entire point? The increase in prices internalizes the cost of pollution. Putting a price on carbon is the most straightforward and economically sensible way to incentivize reducing emissions.
- lasftew 5y ago
  There are ways to implement such a scheme in a way that does not increase the overall tax quota, by either reducing other taxes (VAT, income tax) or directly giving back to the people (tax credits). One key argument of opponents of the proposed law was indeed that it would have resulted in an overall tax increase, with a lot of money being channelled into a dedicated "green innovation fund", outside of regular parliamentary control. Unsurprising, many MPs on the pro side were affiliated with the "clean tech" and construction industries, who would have received most of that money.
rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
Taxing airlines tickets could reduce the demand for flying (especially in Europe), unless people have infinite money. How can this not help curb climate change?
- noxer 5y ago
  You mean slow down by an probably insignificant amount? Like back to a few year ago levels. All while the combined rest of the world increases pollution? No one can seriously thinks this would make a change. China's additional pollution in the last years is more than what the entire west has reduces in the same time. And we will not go back in time and stop flying and stop being mobile. The only way forward is trough superior tech which if it actually is superiors will also be cheaper and replace the old tech on its own. No artificial incentives needed. Instead we should pour that money into funding research because researching while being profitable simply takes way way longer to achieve the same.

Rochus 5y ago

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.

T-A 5y ago

21 cantons (out of 26) voted against. Looking at the geographic distribution [1] it's evident support was narrowly concentrated to cities like Geneva, Zürich and Basel. Conclusion: people who need their car on a daily basis think that gasoline is expensive enough at 6.492 USD/gallon [2] (as of June 7, when US drivers paid 3.399 USD/gallon according to the same site). [1] https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/schweiz/so-stimmt-deine-gemeinde-uebers-co2-gesetz-ab-751191.html https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/schweiz/so-stimmt-deine-gemei... [2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Switzerland/gasoline_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Switzerland/gasoline_pric...

soco 5y ago
When asked to choose between a slightly emptier wallet today and a desertified country in a few decades, the choice is incredibly obvious to make: leave my wallet alone!
- noxer 5y ago
  >desertified country You should probably look up Switzerland on a map. Its where central Europe fresh water comes from.

robocat 5y ago

The reference point for the Swiss national height network is 373.6 metres. So they can somewhat ignore rising sea levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metres_above_the_Sea_(Switzerland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metres_above_the_Sea_(Switzerl...

qalmakka 5y ago

This isn't that weird. People will always prefer avoiding short-term money losses than a danger they perceive as being "in the future". No one will ever win a referendum about levying taxes, no matter how important or just those are. That's why countries like Italy explicitly forbid referenda on economic matters.

noxer 5y ago
This directly contradicts the fact that they voted against an additional mandatory week of holidays back in 2012. The consensus was that people did not want the short term benefit of more holidays for log term harm to small business who cant afford to give people more paid holidays. I think you are grossly underestimating the voting population. They are supposed to vote for whats best for the country not for themself. The main problem the Swiss system has is dis/misinformation not people being selfish. Every other political system has this problem too but the Swiss system depends more on a well informed populace than other systems.
- wdroz 5y ago
  > This directly contradicts the fact that they voted against an additional mandatory week of holidays back in 2012 I agree with the argument, but to nitpick: That was two additional weeks (from 4 to 6 weeks). I'm sure only 1 additional week would have succeed as a lot of employers are already giving 5 weeks.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  It's not about people being selfish, at all. It's about basic human behaviour. People don't like when something is taken from them, while they do not feel the same amount of pain when they are forced give up on something they never had. It's much more pleasant to learn you can save 20 Euros on your bills than finding 20 Euros on the ground, because we value losing what we already have more. That's the reason why the idea of taxing wealth always stirs more chaos than taxing income. Income is money you didn't have before, while wealth is stuff you own already. Giving up something you never had for "the greater good" is much easier than giving up privileges or wealth you already possess.