The Swiss reject key climate change measures
bbc.com
bbc.com
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.
- Tax the behaviour they want to discourage. - Subsidise a behaviour they want to encourage. - Outlaw a behaviour they want to discourage.
It looks like all three were attempted based on the article.
> A proposal to outlaw artificial pesticides, and another to improve drinking water by giving subsidies only to farmers who eschew chemicals were both voted down by 61%.
> There are a lot of politicians presenting the false choice of wealth redistribution or climate change apathy.
Someone is going to suffer with any climate change measure, or else the measure would not be necessary. The only question is how that burden should be spread out, so it's not really a false dichotomy...
And yes, this can be a problem attributed to direct democracy: a majority of people in Switzerland can agree that some measure should be introduced, without being able to obtain a majority for any specific measure. With direct democracy that means that no measure will be introduced.
Some of the pesticides which are allowed in organic farming are quite pernicious. It stands to reason that the opposite is true, and some of the pesticides used by conventional farming are less of an insult to ecosystems and human health than the 'natural' ones.
Banning 'artificial' pesticides, in other words, is a blunt instrument, one which stands a good chance of not accomplishing the actual goal toward which the legislation is intended.
Subsidies aren’t much better either in many cases…
We see this with EVs now where countries and jurisdictions are looking for ways to make up for the lost tax revenue due to ever and ever increasing EV sales.
I would interpret the result as the Swiss people rejected their government's latest stab at enacting Paris. At 51:49 that's a: "Good effort, have another go and get it right this time. Please."
Which is a very succinct description of why “direct democracy” (or overuse of referendums) is, simply put, not a good idea.
A vote on tax X versus tax Y? Fine. But voting yes or no on taxes? Next thing you’ll see a vote on an expense separate from the funding…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_de...
Politicians faced with inconsistent referendum results (not budget neutral) aren’t even able to deliver. If people got a chance to vote for lower taxes and increased government spending, they would. But who will deliver? A party that promises both those things would be considered crazy/populist (hopefully) and lose the election.
And why do you think the same people would vote differently for some crazy idea directly or via the party promoting that same thing?
Again, referendums doesn't magically make politics and politicians disappear. It's a rather terrible instrument for governingf.
> why do you think the same people would vote differently for some crazy idea directly or via the party promoting that same thing?
The crazy idea isn't "Tax X". The idea is that parties create budgets and the budgets must be balanced. That is: you might have one party saying "We'd add tax X and fund program Y" and another party saying "We don't want spending proram Y because we don't want to raise taxes".
The "crazy idea" isn't Tax X or program Y. The crazy idea would be to have the cake and eat it: to have the increased spending and not the increased tax. Now, you can of course solve this in referendums too. You can ask people "Do you want program Y, funded by Tax X" and people can say yes or no. The problem with this is, that it snowballs very quickly. Every expenditure ties into everything else because a state budget is extremely complex. A program might be a useless waste unless another program is also funded. And a tax might not cover an expense unless something else also happens (and so on and so forth). In the end, to get something that is possible (consistent) you would often get one big direct democracy vote: which budget do you want A or B or C? Which is fine! But who would create those options?
The least bad solution to that that i know of is: let people freely suggest these. Let them organize in groups and people can vote for their ideas as consistent sets of ideas such as "budgets".
Direct democracy doesn’t do that so isn’t viable for all decisions. Personally I think it’s useful in so few situations that it’s best left alone.
What you’ll find is that the Swiss are an insular myopic bunch.
One should be able to criticize policies that directly affect them, for example those on climate change, whose effects go well beyond a country's borders.
To some extent I think it’s absolutely fair to expect that, yes. Especially in the richer countries of the world.
The "we think there are better ways" spiel is just that, a spiel, meant to placate the international audience until people stop watching.
And then do nothing.
You have no way of knowing that.
It could be that they simply don't support fighting climate change, or deny that it exists, and could possibly want to claw back other related programs.
"the false choice of wealth redistribution or climate change apathy"
Actually that's a false proposition ... because Taxes are not Wealth Distribution.
If they were taxing to give to the poor, somehow in the name of 'climate change' then maybe. But taxing travel to reduce usage - or - to pay for offsets, or to use to invest in climate programs - that's not 'wealth redistribution'.
"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. "
They voted squarely against measures which were designed to help meet the Paris Accord targets. While there is obviously more nuance to it, the editorial framing is close enough that it's fair.
It is what it is.
* 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.
also how much pollution is caused by corporations from Switzerland...
Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territori... https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/switzerland-p...
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!
The median approach does risk minor artifacts based on the divisions used to calculate density (census tracts in the United States), but since we're looking for a median value, and census tracts are pretty small, it should be reasonably precise.
Europe, not the EU
From a ballpark look, your numbers look to be production-based accounting. If you look at Switzerland with consumption-based accounting[0], it looks pretty bad with higher per-capita emissions, and an upward trend while other comparably rich European countries have a downward trend.
[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/switzerland#consumpti...
As an example, in north of Sweden there is a lot of focus on creating green steel, most which will be exported. With consumption-based accounting, all that investment will have close to zero impact on the Swedish efforts to reduce CO2, as otherwise we would have double accounting.
Consumption-based accounting has it uses but one need to be very careful in interpreting them. A country that has a lot of coal power plants should not be seen as decreasing their pollution if they suddenly start to export most of it. Some blame should be put at the consumer end, but the primary focus must sit on those who actually pollute the environment.
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...
There is simply no political consensus in the US to fulfill these goals, so it's not really a problem at all for most people.
It's been strange how many people just assume that the climate debate is over and that they have convinced the population that serious efforts must be made. Then when this stuff is put to a vote, they are always shocked that people remain unconvinced. That usually results in some sort of tantrum being thrown about the world ending and how humanity will suffer untold grief, when most of the population remains unconvinced and is not willing to spend more than a dollar or so a month on this project. Of course the US isn't going to be carbon neutral by 2050. No country will. That is not even on the table for discussion as there is no support for that type of radical change.
Also the USA have reentered the Paris climate accords. So at least the current government commits to decarbonisation.
I think there will be a significant problem for free trade when some nations put effort into decarbonisation and others do not and continue to use cheap energy. I do not, for instance, think that the EU will simply roll over and let relatively cheap US products flood the market when their own companies are not competitive anymore.
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-gemei...
[2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Switzerland/gasoline_pric...
You should probably look up Switzerland on a map. Its where central Europe fresh water comes from.
This was a question of money. The Swiss were asked to be taxed (even more than they already are). They voted against the costs.
First, it's hard to know that and second, meeting Paris Accord targets will have 'costs'. So if you're voting against costs necessary to meet a specified objective, well it's effectively the same thing as meeting the objective.
After all, it's almost always about money.
The editorial framing is fair.
Don't you mean "because of 52%"?
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…
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-resul...
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).
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.
There's no reason the current Congress couldn't pass a bill and the President sign it into law that says the current Congress will act in accordance with the result of referendum. The congress could even pass the enabling of the referendum and the enabling of the result of the referendum without the consent of the President - if they have the votes to override the President's veto.
It'd be odd to be sure but I don't see why they can't do it.
In a democracy you have to horse trade. You have to compromise. If 51% want X and 49% want not X, then you don't implement X, you implement 51% of X, or alternately you give the opponents something else so everyone walks away a little happy and a little unhappy. The idea of total victory as a result of getting 51% jeapordizes the republic as a whole -- that's how you get secession and create chaos, by locking people out entirely instead of giving them some of what they want and some of what they don't want. Referenda aren't able to do this. They aren't able to put people into a room and say "OK, we will put a bridge here and to gain your support we'll move the library over there". That type of consensus gathering process is critical to governing, which is why long lasting forms of government require closer to 60% or even more, e.g. they add various hoops and checks and balances to prevent the 51% from forcing their way and excluding the 49%. These anti-democratic measures are required for democracy to work.
This is similar to leading a team. If you have 10 devs and 6 are strongly for something and 4 are strongly against, only the bad manager chooses to steamroll over the 4. The good manager will find some alternate compromise to get most of those 4 onboard, because you don't want to lose a large chunk of your team and need a broader consensus than just 50% +1.
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%.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution
My personal experience however (very limited, it's based on a single referendum) suggests that the opposite might happen: back when the public smoking bans happened my local legislation was iterating through some moderately extreme approaches until eventually closing in on some rather reasonable compromise. But because the smoking fronts ran pretty much orthogonal to the usual party alignments they feared backlash from their followers and ducked out, handing over responsibility to a referendum. In this referendum, two groups were providing options, and it should come to no one's surprise that those groups where from the very far ends of the spectrum. It was basically a vote between two evils of you happened to be even the tiniest bit moderate. The vote was incredibly close, which means that both sides were quite successful at pushing their agenda: if your goal is on an extreme end, you'd want to compromise exactly as much as you need to reach 50%+1, and not the tiniest bit more.
So they can somewhat ignore rising sea levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metres_above_the_Sea_(Switzerl...
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".
.. 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.
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.
Wouldn't it directly cause more people to buy EVs, and wouldn't it directly cause less people to fly overseas?
ICE cars have direct substitutes and holidays aren't totally price inelastic.
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.
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.
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.
But this all has absolutely nothing to do with the parent post. It was about short-term/long-term and the assumption that people wont vote for long-term "benefits" if it has short-term disadvantages.
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.
I’m asking for a friend from a different planet …
At the same time, of course, we're also preparing. Iceland has broken ground on big port, expecting the warmer climate to make the Northeast Passage to become navigable year-round and more ships to pass by there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnafjord_Port
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.
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.
I think the important thing is how careful the local government is about resiliency.
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) used for pricing are based only on historical data or if they account for climate change.
We had a once in a 1000 year flood two years ago. It changed nothing.
[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.
But around a hundred years ago, most democracies decided that every person should have a vote, and that all votes should count the same. Including men who don't own land, women, people of color, poor people, uneducated people and young people.
And I think that, although it might seem worrisome that so many idiots vote against my personal preferences, it's better that way. Because the alternative of having an elite that consider themselves better than the rest always ends in justifying killing all who don't agree or who don't offer enough value.
As far as the actual idea goes, better would be to (1) make it finer gained, and to (2) make it depend on the issue being voted upon.
Maybe something like this (numbers for illustration only--much more thought would need to go into determining the right numbers):
(1) If the life expectancy for an average voter of your age is at least 30 years, your vote weight is 1.00.
(2) If your life expectancy is not at least 30 years, your vote weight decreases as a function of how much under 30 years it is, reaching a minimum of 0.25 at 10 years life expectancy and then staying at 0.25 for the rest of your actual life, unless #3 applies.
(3) If a particular issue will likely have major short term consequences, your vote weight is based on the percentage of that short term that occurs within your life expectancy.
If I'm only expected to live 10 more years and we're voting on something that is going to seriously affect people for much much longer than that, it seems only fair that the people who are going to be more affected should have more say than me. That's what #2 is trying to cover.
#3 is to protect people against front loaded projects. Say the vote is on building something that will take 10 years to build and then have a major impact for the next century, and construction is going to be paid for by a 10 year tax increase. People with 10 year life expectancy would only get a 0.25 vote under #2, but they would be fully hit by the taxes in this case, and see none of the benefit, so they should have more say. #3 in this case would supersede #2 and give them a 1.00 vote.
"Hey, I've seen everything!"
vs
"Hey, that's what I was told on TV!"
Realistically, I see no fair way to start disenfranchising people. The best we can hope for is to think about what constitutional controls we have to protect people generally from a tyranny of the majority, and consider if there are additional ones needed to account for demographic majorities. Getting anything passed is another story...
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.
The problem is bigotry is usually based on an immutable feature. While gender is becoming changeable to certain degrees, age and race are not, one can't de-age a person or change their race on a whim. Additionally, claiming that because someone's older disqualifies them from having a full vote in society opens the floodgate every other manner of depersoning seen in human history over the last 200-500 years.
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/Berich... (p. 66).