Yes, climate change is real

Thanks, Sacha, for launching this debate on climate change, and thanks to you, Marishka for your comment!

In two weeks we will take a vote on a stricter law, the CO2-act here in Switzerland.
It should replace a law that is in effect since 2011. 

Step by step it is going to make it even more difficult or more expensive to keep using gas, oil, and kerosene as fuel for vehicles, heating, and industrial production. The aim is to go along with the EU more or less and to adapt our laws whenever necessary to what Europe is going to do over the next ten years, which makes perfect sense. Take cars as an example. It would be impossible and insane to put out stricter regulations on cars in only one country;)

The law should lead to a reduction of our green-gas emissions by 50% compared to 1990 until the year 2030.
After that, a new law is required to reduce the emissions to 0 % by 2050.

What is the idea of that law:
Nobody in Switzerland will be forced to exchange his or her car for an electro-vehicle or anything like that. And no one has to replace a heating system before it has reached the expected useful time. This is about 30 years for an oil-heating system.
Instead, they hope to bring about the change and encourage the people and the economy to invest in climate-friendlier cars, industries, housing, and behavior by slowly increase the taxes on fossil fuel and implement stricter standard values for heating and insulation for offices and buildings, older buildings included.

New houses have already observed very high standards for quite some time now. Until now, about 40% of the population lives already in houses with alternative heating systems, fueled by wood for instance, or by heat pumps, district heatings, solar panels, and the like.

-> Personally I very much hope that the law will pass by mid-next month, fingers crossed! 
    But right now, the polls show that it will be a close-run, unfortunately.

People on the right political spectrum claim that not the state should interfere but that we should trust the citizens to do what is right. They claim that we have reduced CO2 emissions by 14% over the last decade and that this is enough to reach the goal by 2030 to reduce the emissions by half compared to 1990. They say that it will cost too much for everyone and by the way whatever we will do here is never going to save the planet. So why spend all that money at all...?!? :(:(:( 

All the other parties accuse them or insinuate that they in fact would rather do nothing about climate change at all and leave things as they are right now;)

-> Are the next generations going to have to sort out our mess? It appears so...

That is exactly why many young people are against the law because for them it is not strict enough by far and will never lead to solving the urgent problems we are in already.

In Switzerland, with its direct democracy, it is always about getting a majority to vote in favor of new laws and regulations. If you don't achieve that nothing will happen at all. So it's about good compromises and about convincing more than 50% of the citizens and the districts as well.

-> What is the situation like here?

Our temperatures have risen by 2° Celsius already since 1870, compared to about 1° Celsius worldwide (average).
So we suffer more than other countries in Europe that have sea coasts and such.
This led to a tremendous melt-down of our glaciers over the last 70 years. Furthermore, the permafrost up in the Alpes loses its stability which leads to more and more severe avalanches in summer. This threatens the villages, streets, and railroads up in the high mountains.

But what is the real big picture about the impact of our country on the greenhouse effect and global warming?

If you take our imports into account too then we contribute much more greenhouse-gas emissions than people are ready to admit. So we should multiply our national emissions by at least the factor 2 if not 3!
And we too signed the climate agreement in Paris, for God's sake!
So: to do nothing is not an option.

Of course, there are other opinions around:

Because it appears to be almost impossible to bring all the countries on the table to fight climate change in a worldwide effort, some scientists already declared the goal of 2° Celsius reduction as unreachable. Instead, they estimate that the climate will be warmer by 4° Celsius by the end of this century.

They don't think that mankind will disappear but that it will cost us an awful lot of money to fix all the damage. Cost estimates have already been made. Not to speak about the tensions all around the world that this temperature increase would cause...

Even higher taxes on fossil fuel will not bring about much change because it only would have that big an effect on car-owners or industries when the taxes would be insanely high. People would not approve of that, of course, and even if they would that would cost a lot of money too.

-> So: is it better to forbid fossil fuel consumption alltogether?

There appears to be another way to reach the goal:

Probably the cheapest way to go forward is to invest all we can now in research and science and manufacturing in order to find and establish new technologies as fast as possible and see to it that they are widely implemented and, most importantly, cheaper than fossil fuel.

That would do the trick in a quite effortless way and in an astonishingly short time.
We would avoid that people get angry because the state forbids them to drive cars and such, for instance.

Solar panels are cost-effective already, very much so.
It is expected that new electric-powered cars will be cost-effective in about 4 to 6 years in Europe. After that, they will probably get even cheaper, and you can save taxes too.
Half of the cars in Norway are already electric or hybrid-powered, thanks to effective tax regulations implemented many years ago.

And if our scientists and engineers finally would succeed to find good solutions for the energy storage issue (daytime - nighttime, summer - winter, wind - no wind) which is a challenge indeed, then we could take a big step forward. They are at it, of course, but a lot more has to be done and achieved!

It is not about the same technological solution for everything, but every possible way to eliminate fossil fuels and replace them with other means of energy production will do.

Along the way, we will still need fossil fuel to balance out the electric power grid for instance, or to keep everything running until the turnaround is completed. In case very effective filters or technologies to extract CO2 from the atmosphere can be implemented that are not too expensive these power plants could stay in place for a bit longer.

And they say that nuclear power plants could play a more important role again than now too - enhanced and more secure types of reactors which would use less Uranium but Thorium and, at the same time, would reduce the time of putting safely away highly radioactive nuclear waste from 100'000 to 300 years. Sounds very good, indeed!
But as I found on the Internet, these new types of reactors are VERY complicated to develop and results are only to be expected around 2040 despite many countries that invest in research now. So it will probably not help us much in the next couple of years, but maybe later.

-> Is there hope?

The whole climate change issue sounds like sort of a revolution, right?
It is to hope that the international community can bring about that change step by step and in agreement, even if that sounds like a dream and not very realistic.
The sooner we turn around the easier it will be to achieve it.
It should be done in a way that does not leave people behind, on the wrong side of history, so to speak.
If we won’t succeed, it will cost us ALL an arm and a leg, indeed, if not the whole body...;)

Have a good day!
Urs

P.s: I would like to add an explanation of how this new law is expected to work:

First of all: Two-thirds of all the fees on fuels that are collected will be paid back to the citizens.
In this case, we use the healthcare insurance system which is private but compulsory for everyone. So, every citizen gets back the same amount per year so his or her healthcare payment is decreased, for adults and children alike. So, the law is "family-friendly".

This leads to a benefit for all those who take climate change more seriously than others. By doing that they can save money. Those with big cars that burn a lot of fuel or those who fly to other countries several times a year pay much more than they get back.

On top of that: all the fees have a range, so a minimum and a maximum for the next ten years. The government measures the effects of the law and reports the results regularly to the parliament and the public. If the effect the fees lead to is not substantial enough the fees will be increased within these ranges. So, it is not a static law but one that allows the government to react to the developments in the next ten years.

The third part of all the fees is spent on research and financing of good projects to substitute fossil fuels. This trickles down to all districts that only contribute to the costs of that sponsoring by 25% but are in charge to run these programs and pay out the money.

Now: as long as alternatives in terms of better heating systems, better cars are not available or are too expensive the expected change will not happen. I pointed out that new cars with electric engines should therefore be economic and not more expensive than cars with fossil fuel engines, and in about 4 to 6 years this will be the case in Europe they say.

When enough countries put in effect stricter rules and fees and taxes on fossil fuel-powered cars then the car producers will turn around and invest in the production of these new better cars, because that is their future market. That is why Elon Musk invested in a huge car factory in Germany and challenges the car producers in Europe with his electric cars.

Or to give you another example: They say that because Germany wanted to abolish and close down their nuclear power plants they had to compensate for the loss of electricity and, therefore, set up huge programs to build wind parks and install solar panels which led to a significant decrease of the prizes of both the windmills and the solar panels. Nowadays, the German state does not have to sponsor much of the wind parks and solar panels anymore because the market prices have gone down. What is left to do is to invest in energy storage, high voltage power lines, getting rid of the coal-fired power stations, and a more sophisticated control system to balance out the electric power grid as a whole and on a local basis.

Now: that sounds all very well - but: there is no proof yet if all that will work out according to the expectations.

But all in all, there is, in my view, no other way to go forward. So let us wait and see what will happen in the next decade. It is, as I see it, also important that this new developement is driven forward by big players, like powerful countries, the financial sector, and businesses all around the world. After a while, they guess, whoever has not joined in yet will have no choice anymore to stay outside. That will take time, of course, but is a developement that should not be overlooked.

The new CO2 law was rejected in Switzerland by 50,6 % no voters last Sunday...:(:(:(!!!
We are back to field one, unfortunately...

Hello everyone,

Ah, I am very sorry, but the vote last Sunday in Switzerland on a new CO2-law has failed:(:(:(
I saw it coming that it would be a close run, the polls have suggested it already - but in the end, only 50,6 % no's brought it down which is a bitter pill indeed - at voting participation of 60% which is quite high...

Especially the rural areas here were against new taxes on fossil fuels and restrictions when someone has to replace their heating system with a green energy solution and at the same time invest in better insulation / better windows and the like... or buy a new Electric car and such...

So it gets more and more unlikely that we will reach the goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared to the year 1990 until the year 2030, and to 0 % by the year 1950 as promised by the Paris agreement we signed like so many other nations.

So far we managed to reduce 14% in total since 1990, or to put it in another way, 24% per capita, so per person which is unsufficient by far!

The arguments that convinced especially right-wing voting people, house-owners, and the middle class were:

- we suffer already a lot (Covid and such): why pay even more taxes now?
- I am living in the countryside where public transportation can not be as convenient as in the city areas. Why should I be punished once more?
- Switzerland contributes only by 0,1 % to the worldwide CO2 emissions. If we do something here it is tremendously expensive and will definitely not save the world and our climate will change anyway, nothing to be done about it!
- So let the big polluters like Canada, the USA and China do their job first!

What is the status nowadays in Switzerland?
Compared to the average worldwide emissions of 6 T CO2 equivalents per person we emit 14 T CO2 equivalents if you take imports/exports into account too, which you should.

What are some of the fields where we could reduce our emissions since 1990?
- buildings: - 34%
- industries: -14 %
- traffic: unfortunately +1%

Climate change measures are not for free, that is as cristal clear as pure water...!

The million-dollar question therefore is: 
Who is going to pay for it!
- the little guy like you and me?
- the state which means the taxpayers?
- those wealthy guys, industries, and companies that profit the most from globalization?
- those industries like oil and gas mining, car manufacturers or power plants that burn fossil fuels or coal?

Or should we think of other solutions to collect the necessary money of about 3 to 4 % of the GDP per year like:
- a tax on financial transactions?
- a worldwide minimum tax for the profits of each company of 15% at least - as the G7-states recently decided, paid out in every country they do their business?
- or should we increase the taxes on CO2 emissions to such a high level for everyone and everything that it just does not make sense not to invest in better solutions?

Who knows...

Our young climate activists like my older son Tobias are frustrated, now that is for sure!

It's about the world they will inherit one day and it's them who will have to deal with all the consequences we just do not want to solve now!

That much from Switzerland - I am very afraid we don't do better!!!
It does not mean a complete stop but it's a setback that won't allow us to reduce our emissions until 2030 by 50% compared to 1990...

Right now, Switzerland's ranking in terms of climate change is only at 14th place.
So all the other 13 leading nations do much more than we do. And that is a pity. We could afford it, one way or the other, no doubt!!!

Ah, I am a bit pissed right now, let’s admit it...;)

Have a good day now!

Very kindly
Urs