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Swiss narrowly reject tax hike to fight climate change
- mherrmann 5y agoWe are doomed - unless someone finds a technological (not social or political) solution to climate change.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoTechnology alone is not enough. As long as cutting corners on environmental responsibility and outsourcing pollution and waste to poorer countries is cheaper, then that's what businesses will continue to do in the west. Just recently a huge shipment of e-waste from Germany labeled as "for recycling" was seized at the Romanian border as it was in no way recyclable and would have just been landfilled here. From the German perspective it's mission accomplished as they can lable this trash as recycled and tick more boxes on environmental responsibility, while the truth is they just outsourced their trash to some unscrupulous business from a poor and corrupt country and can feign ignorance when being questioned by the press about knowing the truth, same as how sports-wear companies pretend to be shocked that their manufacturing partners use child labour in Asian sweatshops. The solution is political, but fat chance getting western corporations and consumers to pay more for environmental responsibility.
- beforeolives 5y agoTechnology could be enough if we have had clean solutions that are cheaper than the alternatives.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoTechnology isn't magic, you can't expect to throw technology at something and hope it solves the problem. Some things like e-waste just can't be recycled economically as it costs more to separate and recycle than you'd get back from the raw materials so who's gonna pay for that?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fighterpilot 5y agoA political solution would be easier if the proposal was a revenue neutral carbon tax. The economic left and environment left are so tightly coupled that voting for representatives that are serious about climate change is invariably a vote for higher overall taxes. This proposal by Sweden for example seems to be of that category. A brand new tax with no offsets elsewhere. If there were equivalent offsets might it have been voted in easily?
- pc86 5y agoYou say that as if businesses in China and India are paragons of environmental stewardship, and not 100x worse than anything coming out of Europe or the US.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoIs this eco-whataboutism? Surely the presentation of "we shouldn't bother because there are worse than us" type arguments are prevalent enough to deserve their own name?
- pc86 5y agoNot at all. I was replying to "and that's what businesses will continue to do in the west." This is a completely fine distinction to make if businesses "in the east" do anything differently, but they don't. It's just not a meaningful distinction in any way.
- beefield 5y ago> Technology alone is not enough.....The solution is political Sorry, but all the evidence so far suggests you are wrong. Different kind of political solutions have been tried for decades without any practical result so far. Meanwhile the renewables[1] have been chugging on with relatively steady state towards being an actual solution. Once the technical/economical solution has crashed fossil fuel consumption, there will be a really flashy political agreement and huge amount of self-patting on the back from politicians about their magnificient political solution to the problem. \cynical rant [1] Hopefully, hopefully with nuclear helping there as well in the end.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoI think you're a bit confused, the parent was talking about a political solution to the climate change problem of which there is barely hints of so far. You're talking about the solution to the political problem of appearing to care, which is what we've seen a lot of and that, almost by construction, don't actually do much to arrest climate change.
- bserge 5y agoYeah, most people couldn't care less, they just want to live comfortably (though I'd call modern western middle class life "luxurious"). Guess we'll just YOLO this generation and leave it to the kids to deal with the mess, one way or another. Because that's exactly what's going to happen.
- mastrsushi 5y agoYOLO? lol, are you that out of touch?
- globular-toast 5y agoTechnological solutions just lead to lifestyle inflation rather than footprint reduction. Look at cars for example. Modern internal combustion engines and materials are a wonder compared to the cars of 50 years ago. But did people reduce their footprint? No. They got bigger cars with more power output, air conditioning, heated seats etc.
- xwolfi 5y agoBut if you zoom out dont you think coal gave rise to gasoline that gave rise to mass adoption of transport that gave rise to the profitable electric engine that will give in maybe 100 years a possibly sustainable, fast and inflated individual transport system? Cause we could adopt your attitude and stay on horses, or we can gamble it and progress.
- globular-toast 5y agoMy "attitude" is merely that sustainability needs to be a primary concern and a prerequisite for any advancements. It's so easy to sit back and say technology will solve the problem in 100 years, long after you're dead. Bicycles are an example of sustainable individual transport that improves on horses. But they've been driven off the roads by increasingly fast and heavy cars. That's what happens if you just let the market decide. The market is blind to sustainability.
- Nimitz14 5y agoThere is and has been a solution for decades but the greens are against it.
- timeon 5y agoOther sources of energy are not going to replace environmentally unfriendly ones. They will add new demand. Like with roads widening that will eventually get clogged again. Just the technology is not going to save us (nor nuclear mantra bad-mouthing environmental movements).
- jeltz 5y agoWhy? Sweden produces almost no electricity from fossil fuels. Virtually all is hydro or nuclear. No infinite demand showed up when we built our nuclear plants, instead we just shut down our coal and oil plants.
- adrianN 5y agoSomebody still needs to pay for it.
- premium-komodo 5y ago> We are doomed Please consider the possibility that you've just been taken in by an apocalyptic cult. Suppose that you just had to go by the various metrics of human well-being, stuff like poverty, literacy, infant mortality, on and on like that. Would it look like we were doomed? No. It would look like the opposite of doomed. Suppose you just had a chart of earth's history of global average temperature and CO2 ppm, and somebody told you that over a hundred years, CO2 ppm had gone up by 100. From the chart, would that look like an impending disaster? No. First, CO2 ppm and temperature don't seem to have much if any correlation over long time periods. Second, earth spent almost all of its history at much higher CO2 ppm.
- dagw 5y agoWe are doomed The problem is that literally 'we' are probably OK. Our grand kids or their kids on the other hand might very well be doomed, but humans are bad and dealing with those sort of time frames.
- adrianN 5y agoIf you're younger than forty, it's likely that you'll live to see pretty bad effects of climate change.
- dagw 5y agoLive to see them, most likely. Live to personally experience them become so bad your quality of life even begins to approach something close to "doom", probably not. Assuming you are reasonably middle class or above and living in a G7ish nation of course.
- h0nd 5y agoInterestingly, at the same time humans are said to have the capability of knowing the consequences of their actions as a very prominent distinction from animals.
- dagw 5y agoWe're even better at rationalizing away the consequences of our actions.
- mrfusion 5y agoSolar power? Wind power? Falling costs of batteries? Or even nuclear power mixed in.
- mavhc 5y agoForcing polluters to pay to clean up their pollution will make non polluting solutions cheaper, and make cleaning up pollution cheaper
- xwolfi 5y agoWe are doomed as we are, but cant we change and adapt rather than try to reverse entropy? I think it's fine to struggle on this: we have to go beyond the crisis, either with luck if a phenomenon we didnt predict counter balance it, or if we fail miserably and lose 80% of the life population or if we reverse natural course and somehow work against our nature, or even invent a miraculous carbon sink or whatever. If the goal is terraformation in space, it s fine if we try and fail and another species rise in our stead. We literally have billions of years, on Earth, to find a way. Our own survival doesnt matter if extinction provides a solution / evolution that becomes superior. Who's crying for the billions of species who tried and failed before us.
- piokoch 5y agoThere is technology, proven, tested and old. It is nuclear energy. For some reason people prefer spending time and money on less reliable technologies like wind or solar, which require either flexible backup from traditional energy sources (what is expensive) or energy storage technology that we don't have. All those attempts to fight climate change are so full of ideology and emotions that I am not surprised we still don't have any working solution. If Germany spent on nuclear energy power plants all the money they've spent on wind and solar power plants they would be almost at zero level CO2 emission (except cars). I can understand Germany, they are putting pressure on other countries, making their economies less competitive while they have a deal with Russia to buy huge amounts of gas (which, for some strange reason is considered to be "green"). This is good for German economy, but for sure will not help environment. Not a big surprise that Swiss people hasn't bought that bullshit.
- Shadonototro 5y agowe are not doomed we just have to stop taxing everything in order to "make a change" change should come without the feeling of being taxed empowering civilization shouldn't come with more taxes fuck taxes
- h0nd 5y agoHumans and other species adapted to deal with climate change in the course of thousands if not millions of years. If we seriously managed to change this within a century, I am fine with us being doomed.
- Glavnokoman 5y agoI know one - condoms!
- nix23 5y agoI (Swiss citizen) being really disgusted at the whole poll, not just the CO2, and the anti insecticide and the pro-clean drink-water was rejected, but especially the "anti-terror" was accepted (means the police don't have to ask a judge when long-term restricting your freedom, even when you haven't done anything against the law, just a potential "terrorist" down to 12 yo...without having to ask a judge...it's disgusting, a bit like a internal Guantanamo-bay)
- refurb 5y agoPeople didn’t vote for a “pro-clean water” law? Are they anti-clean water or is your summary not all that accurate of a description?
- jstanley 5y agoFor example, they might think the water is clean enough already and they don't want to be taxed any more to make it any cleaner.
- nix23 5y agoThe opposite, we (well the government) pay/supports farmers who make "high-performance" farming, with that law they have to produce more in line with nature if they still want to be supported.
- nix23 5y agoIt was restricting antibiotic, without pesticides and not more animals than you can produce food for them, with than less nitrates/pesticides and antibiotics flows into the water. Copy/Paste Translation: Initial situation Farmers receive direct payments from the federal government. However, they only receive the money if they comply with certain rules. These include, for example, the protection of biodiversity, rules on fertilizing and animal husbandry. An initiative has been submitted to introduce additional rules for direct payments. That is why we are now voting on it. What would change? If the initiative is accepted, there will be additional rules for direct payments. Farmers will only receive direct payments if they: set aside a certain amount of their land for the protection of biodiversity; produce pesticide-free. refrain from preventive or regular use of antibiotics on their animals. keep only as many animals as they can feed with the feed they grow themselves. This reduces the amount of fertilizer used. Agricultural research, consulting, investment aid and training are also geared to these goals. https://www.easyvote.ch/de/abstimmungen/13-juni/trinkwasserinitiative https://www.easyvote.ch/de/abstimmungen/13-juni/trinkwasseri...
- amelius 5y agoBut Switzerland as a country should become carbon neutral at some point, according to the Paris agreement?
- sschueller 5y agoYes and there will be another vote as soon as the government makes a new proposal. Sadly even if Switzerland passed the strictest CO2 laws it would have little effect since it is so small of a country.
- thenoblesunfish 5y agoThere would obviously be little direct effect, but then again a) this is a country which exports a lot of technology and I'm sure people here see opportunities in the sorts of R+D this sort of law would encourage. b) plenty of planes go through Zurich airport - this sort of thing gives political and economic cover to meaningfully tax carbon from air travel.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoThey also have a lot of money that doubtlessly pay for CO_2 generation outside their borders. It's hard image that the 22 billion CHF the Swiss have in China won't be using substantial amounts of coal power for instance.
- h0nd 5y agoYes. This proposal was more a way to redistribute wealth than fighting climate change.
- adrianN 5y agoAlmost nobody is on track for the 1.5 degree goal: https://climateactiontracker.org/ https://climateactiontracker.org/
- globular-toast 5y agoWhat is the point if the US is critically insufficient? All we're going to do is make them even richer.
- globular-toast 5y agoPeople are still confident that this won't be a problem until after they are dead, so they'll continue to extract as much as they possibly can from the earth while they are still here. Nobody voluntarily downgrades their lifestyle.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoIt would've been interesting if someone could choose the date of the referendum, imagine holding it after a summer heatwave with news reports of fish dying because the water in their habitat got too hot...
- lasftew 5y agoOur last parliamentary election in Fall 2019 led to a sweeping victory of green parties [1], as the summer 2019 was extremely dry and hot. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-election-idUSKBN1WY0PV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-election-idUSKBN1WY...
- Rochus 5y agoAlready discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496422
- idownvoted 5y agoNon-Swiss here: From what I can read from swiss media, its rejection was due because the hike would have served more government jobs than it would have made any dent in the global climate: Swiss CO2 emissions are equal to 5% to those of Germany, or 0.3% of China. As a matter of fact China increased its CO2 emissions in 2019 alone by five Switzerlands [1]. Plus it would have increased housing costs dramatically for a nation that consists largely of renters. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?tab=chart&country=CHE~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...