<img attachment="dwindling_glaciers.jpg" align="right" caption="Dwindling glaciers">The <a href="https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/abstimmungen/20250209/umweltverantwortungsinitiative.html" author="" source="">Umweltverantwortungsinitiative</a> is best translated as "How do you say virtue-signaling in German?" Predictably, it failed. The following are some notes from conversations I had about the initiative with friends. The referendum is basically Switzerland promising that it will be climate-neutral per citizen as a proportion of its population’s share of the world population. I am basically for every country on the planet doing this thing but I also think that it has no chance of happening. That would mean probably about at least a 90% reduction of CO2 output per person in Switzerland. A massive lifestyle and societal change. They list zero measures that they would enact to do this. That is left up to the <i>Bundesrat</i>, the <i>Nationalrat</i>, and the <i>Kantonsrat</i>. <img attachment="heat_george_monbiot.jpg" align="left">They don’t dare mention that it would mean reducing cars massively, reducing flying massively, reducing imports of high-CO2 goods like chocolate and coffee, etc. … in which case absolutely no-one would vote for it. My God, it was 14 years ago that I read Heat, a book about how we could get to climate-neutral. Here are my 14-year-old notes: <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=2349&search_text=monbiot">Citations from Heat by George Monbiot</a>. This initiative will not pass no matter which way we vote, so those who support fighting climate change can feel good about voting yes, and those who think the <b>MARKET</b> and <b>TECHNOLOGY</b> will fix everything can vote <b>NEIN</b> and feel all tickled pink about that. Either way, we’re in the shitter because no-one is doing anything about climate change but making it worse. I’ll vote yes, but have no hope that it will pass — in which case CH can brag on the world stage that it has promised to do its part, which it absolutely will not be able to do — and also have no hope that they will pass a single measure even moving in the direction of CH fighting climate change any better than it already does. If no-one else fights with us, it doesn’t matter one whit. I’ll say "yes" because it lines up with my principles and with what I think we need to do if we want to keep the planet habitable for more than (maybe) our generation, but I also know that 30 years ago was when we should have started and doing stuff now is better than nothing, but it’s like farting into a hurricane.