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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'

by bschne 3y ago

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 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 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions

thegrim000 3y ago
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.
- api 3y ago
  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.
  - js8 3y ago
    Last year, China built roughly 4 times more renewables than coal. They argue that they build coal because renewables are unreliable, but surprisingly it was hydro what was unreliable (thanks to droughts brought by climate change), not solar and wind, as people are led to believe. Personally, I think China still building coal is organizational inertia more than anything. Anyway, there was an article here that also claimed 80% energy investments in the U.S. are renewables. Isn't this 4:1 ratio interesting? Doesn't this tell you that (despite the noise), both China and US are on a very similar path?
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > Russia is in full scale climate denial There is a big tragedy in the west - we have no understanding of other countries. Despite having millions of immigrants from those other countries. Could we maybe interview some of them to find out what’s going on? For example - we’ve been in Afghanistan for 20 years. Britain has thousands of refugees from Afghanistan. When the time came to evacuate people from Afghanistan, the British team that was in charge of planning, selecting and prioritising evacuees had zero people from Afghanistan, zero people who’ve been to Afghanistan and zero knowledge of how things work there! Report spells it out: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmdfence/725/report.html https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmdfen... In case of Russia on climate change, it’s a laggard-follower of European technology and practices. Vodka is produced and bottled with Italian machinery, artillery for war in ukraine is still produced on German CNC machines, Russian tanks had French thermal scopes, and cool dudes drive a BMW. When all European countries go renewable, after a few years lag, Russia will do the same. The cool dude will buy an electric BMW when all BMWs are electric, etc. Given that Russia has massive resources and farmland locked away in permafrost, they have been dealt a good hand if climate change is not addressed. So they have no urgency to act, but they are not a malicious actor on this specific issue.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  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.
  - hagbard_c 3y ago
    China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds [1] China continues coal spree despite climate goals [2] Two "progressive" outlets report on how China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week. No matter how much you may want to root for China's right to grow its economy this does not seem like a "giant success" when seen through a "climate" lens. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-plants-climate-goals-carbon https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-pla...
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      These are not really contradicting positions. You can improve the efficiency of your infrastructure when building coal plants and the improved efficiency of your infrastructure will still be a step in the right direction. Also, China doing some things right is not the same as China being the best, let's not look at the world in black & white.
      - leereeves 3y ago
        Sure, China can improve "efficiency" by building more green energy plants at the same time as coal plants, if the proportion of new coal plants is lower than existing plants. But that still increases total emissions.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  This finger pointing is absolutely ridiculous! China has installed more renewables than the rest of the world combined. They will have zero emissions grid before US or even Western European countries like Britain. Most nuclear reactors in the world are being built in China as well. What will we do when China produces all the world’s batteries, solar panels and electric cars? Will we slide into irrelevance? Why am I asking, we already know what we will do! EU has moved to introduce tariffs on Chinese electric cars because they are too cheap! Our course of action is economically suicidal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/eu-moves-toward-hitting-china-with-tariffs-on-electric-vehicles https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/eu-moves-...
  - Rinzler89 3y ago
    >What will we do when China produces all the world’s batteries, solar panels and electric cars? Will we slide into irrelevance? We'll just be selling wealthy Chinese our real estate and tourist packages to visit our 500 year old buildings, because those will be the only profitable industries left in Europe.
Y-bar 3y ago
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%.
- bschne 3y ago
  Sure, again, I think we should do better! I am merely wondering about the legal viewpoint on this because of causal connections between Swiss actions and the outcome for Swiss citizens, which are a lot more murky here than if e.g. our government would randomly imprison dissenters or something like that.
- misja111 3y ago
  Following your analogy, could some inhabitant of Switzerland then be sued for adding an airco to his house or using a coal heater to warm it? Sure, just looking at this one person, it doesn't have much effect on Switzerland's emissions as a whole. But think what would happen if everyone was like him .. I find this court ruling strange. Sure you could argue that Switzerland should have done more. But does its lack of action make Switzerland liable for the discomfort that these women are experiencing because of global climate change?
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    > But does its lack of action make Switzerland liable for the discomfort that these women are experiencing because of global climate change? Yes, you can read the judge's ruling to see the reasoning of a legal expert.
  - Y-bar 3y ago
    > the discomfort that these women are experiencing Is "discomfort" really how you frame the scientific consensus that climate change cause harm, and disproportionately so to elderly people or just a factor of transdiction?
- 3y ago
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
You are thinking around it the wrong way round If you lead on climate change, you export solutions to other countries - for example how china is exporting Solar panels. We could have been exporting power grid planning expertise, wind turbine tech, etc. unfortunately now that ship has sailed as China has invested billions and were chose to dither and delay. That’s the price of fucking about
- bschne 3y ago
  Again, I think it would be great if we were doing more in terms of innovation and expertise too! But in other human rights law issues, this line of argument wouldn't fly either, I don't think you could e.g. sue Switzerland for not making a stronger diplomatic effort to prevent some human rights abuse committed by another government, or anything like that.
- badpun 3y ago
  China leads in solar panel production, not neccessarily in "climate change". Production of their panels emits vastly larger amounts of CO2 (because so many things are coal-powered in China) than panels produced in say Europe.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    They are doing exactly the right thing. A solar panel is still carbon negative no matter how it’s produced. A typical solar panel will save over 900kg of CO2 per year that results in a carbon payback period of ~ 1.6 years and expected life of 25 years It is more important to produce huge quantity of panels for the future and than it is to ensure impossible standard of perfection today.
Rinzler89 3y ago
>despite being a relatively small country without too much direct global impact Sorry but Switzerland is hosting some of the largest coal mining and sale intermediaries in the world (Vitol, Glencore, etc), where a lot of wealth is made from fossil fuel mining and sales, even if it's not a direct consumer or producer, along with Nestle and other major Swiss conglomerates being directly responsible for environmental damage around the world. Just like with banking Nazi gold and illicitly obtained wealth of criminal dictators and war profiteering, when it comes to the environment, Switzerland's hands are in no way clean, despite posturing as a small, cute, green, innocent country that supposedly has no impact on the global environment.
- bschne 3y ago
  I was talking about GHG emissions, directly and embedded in consumption, as that seems to mostly have been the thing at issue in this case.
soco 3y ago
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.

by bschne 3y ago

thegrim000 3y ago

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.

api 3y ago
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.
- js8 3y ago
  Last year, China built roughly 4 times more renewables than coal. They argue that they build coal because renewables are unreliable, but surprisingly it was hydro what was unreliable (thanks to droughts brought by climate change), not solar and wind, as people are led to believe. Personally, I think China still building coal is organizational inertia more than anything. Anyway, there was an article here that also claimed 80% energy investments in the U.S. are renewables. Isn't this 4:1 ratio interesting? Doesn't this tell you that (despite the noise), both China and US are on a very similar path?
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > Russia is in full scale climate denial There is a big tragedy in the west - we have no understanding of other countries. Despite having millions of immigrants from those other countries. Could we maybe interview some of them to find out what’s going on? For example - we’ve been in Afghanistan for 20 years. Britain has thousands of refugees from Afghanistan. When the time came to evacuate people from Afghanistan, the British team that was in charge of planning, selecting and prioritising evacuees had zero people from Afghanistan, zero people who’ve been to Afghanistan and zero knowledge of how things work there! Report spells it out: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmdfence/725/report.html https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmdfen... In case of Russia on climate change, it’s a laggard-follower of European technology and practices. Vodka is produced and bottled with Italian machinery, artillery for war in ukraine is still produced on German CNC machines, Russian tanks had French thermal scopes, and cool dudes drive a BMW. When all European countries go renewable, after a few years lag, Russia will do the same. The cool dude will buy an electric BMW when all BMWs are electric, etc. Given that Russia has massive resources and farmland locked away in permafrost, they have been dealt a good hand if climate change is not addressed. So they have no urgency to act, but they are not a malicious actor on this specific issue.
mrtksn 3y ago
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.
- hagbard_c 3y ago
  China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds [1] China continues coal spree despite climate goals [2] Two "progressive" outlets report on how China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week. No matter how much you may want to root for China's right to grow its economy this does not seem like a "giant success" when seen through a "climate" lens. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-plants-climate-goals-carbon https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-pla...
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    These are not really contradicting positions. You can improve the efficiency of your infrastructure when building coal plants and the improved efficiency of your infrastructure will still be a step in the right direction. Also, China doing some things right is not the same as China being the best, let's not look at the world in black & white.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      Sure, China can improve "efficiency" by building more green energy plants at the same time as coal plants, if the proportion of new coal plants is lower than existing plants. But that still increases total emissions.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
This finger pointing is absolutely ridiculous! China has installed more renewables than the rest of the world combined. They will have zero emissions grid before US or even Western European countries like Britain. Most nuclear reactors in the world are being built in China as well. What will we do when China produces all the world’s batteries, solar panels and electric cars? Will we slide into irrelevance? Why am I asking, we already know what we will do! EU has moved to introduce tariffs on Chinese electric cars because they are too cheap! Our course of action is economically suicidal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/eu-moves-toward-hitting-china-with-tariffs-on-electric-vehicles https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/eu-moves-...
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  >What will we do when China produces all the world’s batteries, solar panels and electric cars? Will we slide into irrelevance? We'll just be selling wealthy Chinese our real estate and tourist packages to visit our 500 year old buildings, because those will be the only profitable industries left in Europe.

Y-bar 3y ago

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%.

bschne 3y ago
Sure, again, I think we should do better! I am merely wondering about the legal viewpoint on this because of causal connections between Swiss actions and the outcome for Swiss citizens, which are a lot more murky here than if e.g. our government would randomly imprison dissenters or something like that.
misja111 3y ago
Following your analogy, could some inhabitant of Switzerland then be sued for adding an airco to his house or using a coal heater to warm it? Sure, just looking at this one person, it doesn't have much effect on Switzerland's emissions as a whole. But think what would happen if everyone was like him .. I find this court ruling strange. Sure you could argue that Switzerland should have done more. But does its lack of action make Switzerland liable for the discomfort that these women are experiencing because of global climate change?
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  > But does its lack of action make Switzerland liable for the discomfort that these women are experiencing because of global climate change? Yes, you can read the judge's ruling to see the reasoning of a legal expert.
- Y-bar 3y ago
  > the discomfort that these women are experiencing Is "discomfort" really how you frame the scientific consensus that climate change cause harm, and disproportionately so to elderly people or just a factor of transdiction?
3y ago

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

You are thinking around it the wrong way round If you lead on climate change, you export solutions to other countries - for example how china is exporting Solar panels. We could have been exporting power grid planning expertise, wind turbine tech, etc. unfortunately now that ship has sailed as China has invested billions and were chose to dither and delay. That’s the price of fucking about

bschne 3y ago
Again, I think it would be great if we were doing more in terms of innovation and expertise too! But in other human rights law issues, this line of argument wouldn't fly either, I don't think you could e.g. sue Switzerland for not making a stronger diplomatic effort to prevent some human rights abuse committed by another government, or anything like that.
badpun 3y ago
China leads in solar panel production, not neccessarily in "climate change". Production of their panels emits vastly larger amounts of CO2 (because so many things are coal-powered in China) than panels produced in say Europe.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  They are doing exactly the right thing. A solar panel is still carbon negative no matter how it’s produced. A typical solar panel will save over 900kg of CO2 per year that results in a carbon payback period of ~ 1.6 years and expected life of 25 years It is more important to produce huge quantity of panels for the future and than it is to ensure impossible standard of perfection today.

Rinzler89 3y ago

>despite being a relatively small country without too much direct global impact Sorry but Switzerland is hosting some of the largest coal mining and sale intermediaries in the world (Vitol, Glencore, etc), where a lot of wealth is made from fossil fuel mining and sales, even if it's not a direct consumer or producer, along with Nestle and other major Swiss conglomerates being directly responsible for environmental damage around the world. Just like with banking Nazi gold and illicitly obtained wealth of criminal dictators and war profiteering, when it comes to the environment, Switzerland's hands are in no way clean, despite posturing as a small, cute, green, innocent country that supposedly has no impact on the global environment.

bschne 3y ago
I was talking about GHG emissions, directly and embedded in consumption, as that seems to mostly have been the thing at issue in this case.

soco 3y ago

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.