Swiss narrowly reject tax hike to fight climate change | Hacker News Reader

Swiss narrowly reject tax hike to fight climate change

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38 pointsvelmu65 comments

But Switzerland as a country should become carbon neutral at some point, according to the Paris agreement?

Yes 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.

There 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.

They 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.

Yes. This proposal was more a way to redistribute wealth than fighting climate change.

Almost nobody is on track for the 1.5 degree goal: https://climateactiontracker.org/

What is the point if the US is critically insufficient? All we're going to do is make them even richer.

Everybody is pointing fingers to everybody else, which is why nobody is on track.

We are doomed - unless someone finds a technological (not social or political) solution to climate change.

Technology 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.

Technology could be enough if we have had clean solutions that are cheaper than the alternatives.

Technology 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?

A 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?

You 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.

Is 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?

Not 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.

> 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.

I 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.

Yeah, 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.

Technological 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.

But 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.

My "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.

There is and has been a solution for decades but the greens are against it.

Other 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).

Why? 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.

Somebody still needs to pay for it.

We 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.

If you're younger than forty, it's likely that you'll live to see pretty bad effects of climate change.

Live 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.

Interestingly, 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.

We're even better at rationalizing away the consequences of our actions.

Solar power? Wind power? Falling costs of batteries? Or even nuclear power mixed in.

Forcing polluters to pay to clean up their pollution will make non polluting solutions cheaper, and make cleaning up pollution cheaper

We 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.

There 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.

we 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

Humans 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.

I know one - condoms!

I (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)

People 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?

For 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.

The 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.

It 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/trinkwasseri...

> keep only as many animals as they can feed with the feed they grow themselves

woahhhh... that's a pretty huge requirement, no?

Yes, although note the proposed initiative wasn't to make it illegal to do that, just you wouldn't qualify for subsidies anymore.

Yeah, I feel th first two requirements are fairly uncontroversial while the last is a huge paradigm shift (maybe for the better, but still huge). I do not think I like that they were grouped together.

Why do you assume it was a good law? Just because of its title?

The initiative proposed to "protect clean water" by toughening the conditions on farmers to receive federal subsidies. The first two conditions were not especially controversial, but the third was a totally unmanageable show stopper: that a farm could only feed their animals with feed grown in the farm itself. People either voted against because their party told them to (plenty of parties were against it) or because of the third condition.

That sounds like a poison pill to kill the bill.

Somehow the statistics of the rising cancer diagnostics in agrarian areas are not a concern for the regular folk (like the documented 43% more incidence of brain tumors)

The clean water initiative would have denied public subsidies to farmers who didn’t drastically reduce pesticide use.

The farmers‘ lobby and the right wing parties representing a majority of the votes were against it. The outcome was not surprising.

Don't forget the usual Swiss mentalities: 1. we always did it this way and it worked and 2. we're already an extraordinary country nothing more is needed.

Just a general note, as a Swiss citizen: people are generally not in favor of federal regulations when a change could instead be implemented directly by states (I.e: canton). Initiatives at the federal level aren’t that popular.

I find it crazy that the libertarian-leaning right wing in general was pro the terrorism law... surely this gives too much authority to the government?

Yes, I am with you. I was very disappointed especially the new police law. I can see the clean water and pesticide not passing because it was too much too fast and scared off a lot of people. Sadly in the same go people then also killed the CO2 law.

But this is Switzerland. We accept the result and move on. There is a shift and I expect more and more of these "green" law to come up for a vote and with more and more young voting they will get passed.

Also it appears that the Police law may actually be illegal (Grundrecht Verletzung) and could be killed by the courts.

> I can see the clean water and pesticide not passing because it was too much too fast and scared off a lot of people. Sadly in the same go people then also killed the CO2 law.

Yeah have to agree on that...it's just, that pool gave me the feeling of no step forward three steps back.

>Also it appears that the Police law may actually be illegal (Grundrecht Verletzung) and could be killed by the courts.

I really hope..it's like we don't need the justice system if you can tag peoples (potential terrorist)..a bit like the Stasi (potential capitalist) in the DDR, no need to ask a judge and take responsibility for it.

> "Yeah have to agree on that...it's just, that pool gave me the feeling of no step forward three steps back."

It did feel like that. At least we can make pressure on the farmers by buying only bio (even if it means eating less meat because it costs more) and showing that we are willing to pay more for "clean" food.

Young people were more likely to vote against the CO2 law than older people [1]. They also are more likely to be affected by increased costs of living and traveling that were proposed, due to much smaller incomes and budget.

[1] https://nzzas.nzz.ch/schweiz/gar-nicht-so-gruen-junge-stimme...

Forget it with the Grundrecht. If there is something that the past 16 months have shown clearly, it is that neither the constitutional nor other fundamental rights do apply when needed.

Same here.. it is sad but there always seems to be a general lack of awareness over the polls. I believe that unfortunately many people did not bother to inform themselves thoroughly about the propositions.

Same here. Especially the law that ignores human rights and enforces discrimination. I do not consider myself part of that community anymore. (edit: in terms of, these are not the values I grew up with)

Already discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496422

People 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.

It 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...

Our 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-idUSKBN1WY...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com