In February 2025, there will be a referendum in Switzerland to commit to full environmental responsibility within ten years, that Switzerland does not ‘overshoot’ but acts within a renewable and sustainable level of global environmental impact.
I appreciate the direction and sentiment but the environmental problems of the world are not caused by Switzerland. If we do vote for this and successfully achieve the goals, the global environmental impact will be negligible, effectively zero. Will we set and example for other countries, at least? Actually I struggle to think of a single policy implemented in Switzerland where other countries have followed. So I see this vote and this idea as idealistic virtue-signalling and a distraction from the real problems which need to be addressed.
I don’t like that we in wealthy, highly-developed countries are focussing more and more on what we see in front of our faces and forgetting the big picture. This environmental initiative is an example. The big environmental picture is gloomy. The actions we need to take are mostly in India and China long-term, in USA short-term. The actions taken in Switzerland to address global problems have no effect. It is similar to the current high-profile gender equality and trans rights battle, which in highly-developed countries is currently about pronouns, puberty blockers, and eliminating the last remaining small inequalities. Surely this effort would better used to fight for rights in countries where homosexuality and transgender are still illegal, in come cases punishable with the death penalty, eg Uganda. Nigeria is projected to reach 400 million people by 2050 but homosexuality is currently illegal. If we could improve that, imagine the impact. Yet activists in developed countries are more concerned with pronouns. No-one is imprisoned for the wrong pronoun but people are regularly imprisoned for loving the wrong person, just not in front of our rich-country faces.
In my opinion, we need to get our global priorities clear and start campaigning and taking actual action where we can have the most impact rather than inventing increasingly minor ‘problems’ so we can get likes on social media when we escalate little things into big things. Social media likes have no impact on the people who are being persecuted in oppressive countries and they also have no impact on climate change. We need to fight the ongoing big battles not invent convenient new little battles.