2023-07-16 20:06:02
Switzerland is clean. Life is sweet there. Economic freedom is enshrined in the Constitution. We can sleep peacefully. On closer inspection, the picture is far from being as pristine as the opponents of the climate and innovation law have claimed, carefully considering only local emissions and conscientiously ignoring all externalities. negative effects stemming from our consumption of goods and services produced abroad.
A few figures: 66% of emissions related to our consumption come from abroad. Taking them into account radically changes the image we give of our country. In 2020, 12.36 tonnes of CO2 were produced there per inhabitant. In Italy 6.53 tons, and in Germany 9.23. Nothing to be satisfied with. Another example? We are one of the biggest consumers of plastic in Europe. Only PET is properly recycled, and it cannot be infinitely so. About 85% of our plastic waste ends up incinerated and we contribute 2 billion tonnes of the 45 billion dumped into the oceans each year.
At the same time, there are 245 companies registered in the commercial register in Switzerland with the aim of marketing coal. Our leaders are putting the brakes on when it comes to getting out of the Energy Charter Treaty. SUVs are still widely acclaimed and the National has just voted in favor of 5.3 billion credits to widen the motorways, while road transport is already responsible for 37% of our country’s CO2 emissions, rail transport is lagging behind and that it is enshrined in the Federal Constitution that any attempt to make public transport free is illegal, thereby prohibiting a simple debate at cantonal level.
Should I continue with fast-fashion? The fight once morest single-use products that is struggling so much to take off? The federal subsidies granted to Proviande to finance the promotion of the sector while health and global warming should rather encourage our authorities to support breeders towards a reduction in their supply? Need I remind you of how “sweet” life was for lobbyists? That wanting to regulate sugar gives rise to indecent situations, when initiatives are refused by the National Council while certain federal elected officials eat at the expense of Coca Cola? So sweet also for the tobacco industry, which uses and abuses its influence to the point that tightening the rules on even among young people is a challenge? All this in the name of what? economic freedom.
Protecting the profitability of companies is necessary, but not at any price, and essentially to enable the basic needs of everyone, bosses and employees, to be met. Perhaps we have forgotten for too long that both are, above all, living beings. The first protection they need is that of their health and the nature on which they depend to survive.
When are we finally going to understand that it is urgent to put economist Kate Raworth’s donut on the menu in Switzerland too? It is still too common to read that the Federal Council and Parliament advise rejecting an initiative on the grounds that it means a “restriction of economic freedom”. However, it is not a question of restricting economic freedom by dogmatism, but of supporting the operation of activities and consumption so that these can be carried out while preserving public health locally and, more broadly, without aggravating, whatever borders, climate change, pollution, the destruction of biodiversity… and therefore our future living conditions.
The stakes are high, the task complex, but it is indeed in respecting planetary limits that we must place the economy of the 21st century, so that it can truly return to serving people, and not that it contributes ever more, in the name of a deadly freedom, to worsening our chances of living well. We are not the only ones who have to accelerate this transition, it is true, but we can do much better while living comfortably. The Earth is an incredible “machine”, defined by a balance that is both extremely sophisticated and fragile: let us finally recognize it and respect it.
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