- 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.