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I can't really follow your arguments.

Wether the actions have been approved by a democratic majority seems orthogonal to whether human rights have been violated (if a government performs torture on some humans it would still be a human rights issue even if there's democratic support for it).

The fact that this would imply that other countries, such as India and China, also would have similar human rights issues doesn't seem very strange either - several countries often violate human rights in the same way.

Not saying I agree with the legal case, but your explanations of why it's "insane" doesn't really hold water to me.

Maybe it is insane but the prisoners dilemma we face regarding climate inaction is also insane. I don't have a solution to propose but can appreciate the kafkaesque nightmare we've barrelled in to.

I have not formed any opinion whatsoever about the decision itself, but regarding the court itself:

> This is legitimately insane. You have a court, which was created in an attempt to give legal options to victims of crimes committed by nation state and which could not be heard elsewhere. And people are suing over whatever a tiny European state doesn't do to stop environmental harm. Which may or may not even effect the people who are suing at all.

The court was created to evaluate any situation that violates the general principles of the European Convention of Human Rights. There is no rule that only those suffering an injustice is allowed to complain about it.

> And these people are from the country on earth where the population has the greatest control over their government. Switzerland isn't some rogue state, the population has legal means to force the government to do essentially whatever they want. So the human rights violation is essentially being committed by the population themselves.

The government is still the final party responsible for having policies and nation-level actions adhere to laws and conventions.

It would not be fair to sue John and Jane Doe for having voted for a possibly non-compliant government action, or for failing to push policy suggestions sufficiently for them to be voted into action. The regular population only has limited knowledge about statecraft.

> If Switzerland is commiting a human rights violation by doing this, what monumental human rights violation is committed by India. A country which uses the oceans to distribute it's waste globally? How about China, burning endless coal?

India and China are not parties to the European Convention on Human Rights. Switzerland is. Whataboutism also has no relevance to the court ruling.

It's not really "whataboutism" in the context of the problem when you realize that we're locked in the same closed system as them. It's just absurd to think that the younger generations are being told that if they want to enjoy a similar quality of life as their parents did, they are directly causing the destruction of the world, when in reality the sacrifices they are being asked to make are going to have the net effect of at best kicking the can down the road a few more years.

It is whataboutism to complain about court action against a bad thing the basis that others, outside the court jurisdiction, will still do the bad thing.

> are going to have the net effect of at best kicking the can down the road a few more years.

All individual climate initiatives "kick the can down the road N more years" when viewed in isolation. What you need to look at is where the can started, and how to get people to keep kicking until it makes it all the way off the map.

Phasing out CFCs kicked the can N years, phasing out HCFCs and HFCs kick it N more, tightening up emission regulations and not having individuals commute in 12 liter hemis with cat delete and coal rolling mods kick it N more, tightening up international shipping emissions another N years, etc.

It’s a multi generational issue. It’s not a question of fair when the repercussions for not addressing it are massive. Younger generations know this. It’s too bad older generations did nothing to address the issues they saw in front of them. They were too selfish

I also think it’s preposterous to put climate change at their feet

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

The more steps you take towards any goal, the greater the fractional impact of each subsequent step.

Reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions needs changes on par with:

• "every nation must reduce all emissions to zero, except Ghana who can continue as-is": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

• or "every source of emissions must be reduced to zero, except for the degradation of grassland which can continue as-is": https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector

I think most people would agree that rationally no amount of action by the Swiss Government is going to change the climate change experienced by the claimants. But I also concede that line of thinking ends in never doing anything. It's a fair position to say not doing your share is meaningful.

Personally I don't agree with the ECHR's definitions/breadth of remit, and I suspect that I am not alone. I believe it's the sort of ruling that devalues what should be an important control mechanism on protecting people from serious abuse. But, just my pov and others are free to vote in line with theirs!

They absolutely could turn the whole country into one big nuclear reactor for long term carbon sequestration from the atmosphere.

It's basically the only thing we can do at this point if we want to have a planet left by 2100.

Have you read the actual court ruling and not only the clickbaity headline?

The Swiss Federal Constitution says that federal courts have to enforce national laws, but also international agreements. That's all. Swiss courts have just failed their own constitutional duties according to this supranational instance.

Also China is fabricating basically all your products, so of course it's only natural they also produce more pollution.

>So the human rights violation is essentially being committed by the population themselves.

While I too find it somewhat weird that the ECHR is involved in climate regulation, I find the appeal to majority/democracy to be missing the point of constitutional legal systems, and European Convention on Human Rights is a sort of a constitution. Without independent judiciary that is not subject to the pressures by the majority (ideally), even democracy itself wouldn't survive, not to mention the rights of the minority, say people who will be displaced or will lose their livelihood due to the climate change (albeit Switzerland should be one of the countries least negative affected by the climate change).

> So the human rights violation is being committed by the population themselves.

Isn’t that fairly common? Slavery in the US, Nazi concentration camps, Rawandan ethnic cleansing…

Yeah the real question is if climate immutability is a human right

The court might also accept projects to adapt to climate change as „climate action“, but to my knowledge such projects are pursued even less than reducing emissions (for good reason).

That's not at all what this is about.

Climate immutability is not a human right, but if something is shown to cause harm, then you might reasonably expect humanity to limit this harm.

While the right to life is a human right, safety from all harm isn't

Does that distinction matter when we are talking about something that absolutely causes loss of human life?

Hunger causes loss of life, and in order to eradicate hunger people need a lot of stuff (like natural gas for fertilizer) that is environmentally damaging

I appreciate the judge here making a stand for something they believe in, but it's not easily defensible

Also in my mind when talking about developing and middle-income nations what level of prosperity is human right? And what level of emissions resulting in climate change is acceptable? As surely denying prosperity is more against human rights than delaying climate change...

If economic prosperity requires humanity to trade it's future away then the economics simply don't work. The economy should serve us, and the direction we choose to go, not the other way around.

Yes, I realize I'm arguing against capitalism in some sense and no, that does not imply I'm a communist. I'm just pointing out a fundamental flaw, but I don't have an alternative.

I'm sure that whatever follows capitalism and communism will be conscious of the idea of a Nash equilibrium and the prisoner's dilemma.

It's just a large-scale Prisoner's dilemma, or Tragedy of the commons.

In their effort to optimize locally, they lose globally.

> what monumental human rights violation is committed by India

a) You know the answer.

b) Last time I looked on the map, India was not in Europe.

> Instead we have people arguing literal nonsense in a court.

Either you're arguing in bad faith, or you don't understand that this might help pushing governments to take stricter measures.

If democracy isn’t working and you’re looking for an outside authority to start forcing your agenda on people, then what you’re looking for is tyranny.

Since when is the legal system was outside of democracy?

The ECHR is very obviously writing brand new legislation here, completely outside of the democratic process. The argument of “well that’s good because I think the democratic process should have already created this legislation” is simply anti-democratic.

Read the article, that's not what happened.

The ECHR rules that Switzerland has failed to meet its treaty obligations WRT climate action. IE, there's been an internal failure by Switzerland's government and courts to enforce its own legislation and treaty obligations. So, these women took the next step - an international court (to which Switzerland is a party - if the Swiss don't like it, they should vote to abandon their obligation to the ECHR).

>b) Last time I looked on the map, India was not in Europe.

There is an international court of human rights. How often was India found guilty there?

>Either you're arguing in bad faith, or you don't understand that this might help pushing governments to take stricter measures.

I am 100% convinced that there is nothing which makes you object more to climate protection than a foreign entity trying to compel the government you control to "do more".

And even if. When will India/China act? How many International court of human rights ruling will that take?

> There is an international court of human rights.

There isn't. There is the ICJ, which handles disputes between states, and the ICC, which handles war crimes etc. and definitely isn't going to judge climate legislation.

> There is an international court of human rights. How often was India found guilty there?

The International Criminal Court is not the European Court of Human Rights.

The ICC appears to be focused on crimes against humanity, and I'm not a lawyer so I'd be even worse than ChatGPT at figuring out if climate change would be under that banner.

India is neither a state party, nor a signatory, to the ICC, so (again, IANAL) I assume that means they can't be taken before it.

> When will India/China act?

They already are, because despite the memes the problem itself is directly relevant to both, and the solution happens to be a cheap export opportunity and soft power projection opportunity for one, and a subsidised cheap economy growth opportunity for the other.

It's not a "foreign entity." Switzerland has signed a treaty in which they recognize that court. The trial was brought by Swiss people.

> When will India/China act?

First, China has made promises, and have acted a bit. But we, the people, don't hold leverage over China nor India, so it will be on their citizens to achieve any progress, or on international powers to apply sanctions. But international politics is extremely slow and change averse, so probably the 2C limit will have become unavoidable by the time that happens.

But above all: this decision does not depend on China nor India. It's totally irrelevant to object to it by appealing to those countries.

I agree that the ruling is troubling - if we take the article on face value.

It bothers me for the same reason that some people are dismayed by attempts at compelled speech. Because it gets a problem ass backwards.

One cannot claim that inaction is a violation of human rights.

All of us have the right to just look at the world and throw our hands up in the air, and cry, and say "I just don't know what to do!". Climate change is a tragedy that makes the greatest people, the most compassionate, motivated experts freeze in fear an inaction.

What is wrong and is a blatant violation of human rights in the face of looming catastrophe is inhibiting or sabotaging action. For example, the UK government has gone out of its way to spitefully outlaw legitimate peaceful protest by environmentalists.

Complaining about inaction while failing to step up and defend rights to action is hypocritical and a passive.

Switzerland is party to treaties that concern climate change and action. Switzerland is failing to meet these obligations. So, some women sued in international court. That's what the court ruled - that Switzerland is failing to meet its obligations under the law.

So this is about broken promises. The Swiss overcommited.

Basically, yes.

The Swiss promised to do their part to mitigate climate change. They failed to do so. So, a group of Swiss citizens took the government to court to compel action. Nothing that seems particularly unreasonable to me.

I guess I find it troubling because my own government are working so hard in the opposite direction. Maybe a bit of jealousy that the Swiss get to call their government to account.

Now, whether this ruling can actually move anything... who knows. How can you make governments do something? Meaningless fines, strong words and other toothless gestures?

I am not optimistic. For 40 years I'm used to being actively lied to by a corrupt and inept government. They will burn the planet rather than concede a single penny of profit for their cronies.

That's why I say, the ECHR would be much better off defending the rights to action. That would give encouragement to people. It should be illegal for the UK or any government to inhibit lawful protest (including making laws to do that).

Yes. Very very well said.