Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the BBC, “Voter rejection undermines Switzerland’s entire strategy to comply with the Paris Agreement. Today’s results are a devastating blow for environmentalists.”.
Swiss voters reject key climate change measures
Switzerland’s policy on fighting climate change has been thrown into doubt after voters rejected key measures in a popular vote.
A referendum saw voters narrowly reject the government’s plans for a car fuel levy and a tax on air tickets.
The measures were designed to help Switzerland meet targets under the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Many voters appear to have worried about the impact on the economy as the country tries to recover from Covid-19.
Opponents also pointed out that Switzerland is responsible for only 0.1% of global emissions, and expressed doubts that such policies would help the environment.
The vote, under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy, went 51% against, 49% in favour.
…
Voter rejection undermines Switzerland’s entire strategy to comply with the Paris Agreement. Today’s results are a devastating blow for environmentalists.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57457384
The impudence of those Swiss peasants voters, upsetting the carefully orchestrated plans of their leaders.
No doubt a vigorous public climate propaganda campaign is already on the launchpad, to ensure voters don’t cause international embarrassment next time they are offered the opportunity to agree with their government.
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Envious of the Swiss and their referenda here (NL).
As a long term shareholder of Royal Dutch Shell, I am appalled and disgusted by the company’s craven managers who have chosen to appease the climate crackpots that seek the company’s destruction.
Climate Crackpots
Alliteration always works, especially when it’s spot on!
Woulda, coulda, shoulda trademarked that.
Let’s spread it around. Climate denier is such a useless leftard-concocted garbage phrase, it has no actual meaning, whereas Climate Crackpot, says it all.
Climate crackpot is better than climate scammer; because although many people accept and promote the scam, they don’t know it’s a scam and they’re gaining nothing – in fact they’re support for crackpot climate policies is self-harm.
‘Climate change’ is a new meme to get away from the dismally failed ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’. We should not let the get away with it. Bring ‘AGW failed’ at every available opportunity,
‘Climate change’ is reinventing the wheel, climate has always changed, and always will, there is nothing new about it. It is time that these morons realise that climate will stop changing only when this planet loses its magnetic field, its biosphere, its oceans and its atmosphere. If they wish to live in an unchanging climate they can go to the Moon and learn about it.
You mustn’t forget the ‘Catastrophic’ part. If it’s not catastrophic, it’s not a problem.
In fact, the real issue is, if it’s not:
Warming, then no problem;
Global, then not a major problem;
Anthropogenic, then we can’t fix it so just mitigate;
Catastrophic, then it’s not a problem.
All of these need to be fact before we actually have to address it. If one of them is not fact, then we can likely ignore it or mitigate the effects.
Vuk, I would like to add to your list the all important factors of Earth’s spin axis tilt relative to its orbital plane and Earth’s orbital eccentricity, both of which add to the “climate” changes we know as the seasons.
If we really want to have an unchanging temperature and very little weather change on Earth, we most definitely will have to “stabilize” these two parameters first and foremost.
Those actions can probably be started for a mere USD $10-20 trillion paid out to physicists and engineers.
Laissez les bons temps rouler! 🙂
So slightly less than they’re wanting to spend now. Oh jolly good.
Agree with sanity of Swiss voters. But, not Climate Change as a new meme. The IPCC has had that in their name since 1988.
last time we had such stupidity
we burned Joan of Arc as a heretic
who shall we burn this time
Gretta
Joe
Angela
Michael Mann
Boris
Actually lets burn the lot
It should be a good boon fire
There should be enough carbon for at least a couple of hours
I like Lib-Tard better!
John, I couldn’t agree more. They say attack is the best form of defence. Take the beggars on. Take them to court and make them produce ‘facts’ and not just computer models to prove that the Earth is months (years) away from a Catastrophe/Collapse etc. which is all down to Anthropogenic CO2.
A problem is that so many of the ‘facts’ they might bring to court have been officially distorted to change the past.
The big problem is their facts don’t match the facts.
When the peers review a paper how do they judge the data, as being accurate? Oh ya it depends on Who originated the data!
….. maybe they know that it, the oil and gas, will still be accessible to them, after climate crackpottery goes away.
no oil and gas
no vaccines
no food
no clothes
great we need to remove some
I wont be chasing the stupid
I intend to keep my ICE car and my natural gas heating
John,
Same here as a BP pensioner, I cannot believe my company have joined the brainless mob.
Led by the aptly named Bernard Looney.
The money they must be given to be so stupid must be very good.
maybe you and the rest of the sane shareholders better speak up LOUDLY
because its the few warmist lunatics presently being loud and annoying that got this happening
they pull their shares? ppht
the rest of you threaten that and theyd sure take notice!
As a long time shareholder in Exxon, I was disgusted by Blackrock’s support of the Engine No. 1 proxy. I think it is completely disgusting that Blackrock can vote their client’s ETF shares in support of Larry Fink’s ESG/SJW agenda (or con game, as it may be).
I have since sold all my iShares ETFs (Blackrock), except for IAU which will go shortly once I figure out what I want to do with it. And I will never willingly do business with these shysters again.
Consolidation of the investment management firms has resulted in the concentration of corporate proxy voting power in the hands of a very small number of people (we’re talking about 15-20 people— among them, Larry Fink of BlackRock, the managers at Vanguard and the treasurers of states with large pension funds).
The climate crackpots in California and New York have the ability to inflict their delusion on the rest of us.
This can very clearly be seen in the recent ExxonMobil proxy fight where, in effect, A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE— the state treasurers of California and New York by voting the shares owned by their respective state pension funds along with the crook Larry Fink of BlackRock— were able to place three (3) completely unqualified and incompetent individuals on the Board of ExxonMobil where they have a mandate to disrupt that company’s critically important mission.
Yep, moving everything I have in a BlackRock fund out to something else. Same for any other where the Fund managers wish to impose their probably wrong ESG agenda on others. They have no more credibility than Hollywood actors spouting the same blather.
The solution is obvious: As Royal Dutch Shell is a British-Dutch Holding, leave The Netherlands and relocate to the UK. Boris is a welcoming guy. And put the large Rotterdam refinery up for sale. Enjoy the Uk’s tax haven and lot’s of refineries to chose from.
As a Swiss living in Canada and working for decades on ocean monitoring projects I am very proud of the Swiss direct democracy at work leading to rational outcomes!
deepslope, any quantitative take on the field accuracy of ARGO floats?
Great question, impressive map shows coverage, but as drifters would seem to have a bias. A study of surface drifters found that unlike the eastern Gulf, “…western [without Mexico] areas received drifters from everywhere.” (Lugo-Fernández, A., M., et al., 2001. Gulf of Mexico historic (1955-1987) surface drifter data analysis. Journal of Coastal Research. 17(1):1-16.). I put some drifters outside of the GOM once.
I’ve found two field calibrations indicating ±0.6 C systematic error in ARGO SSTs, H.D. I’m wondering if there are others.
I’m told that all major parties supported the proposal, which was promoted by blanket propaganda in the media, and the proposition still failed. Whether that is correct, I don’t know, but either way I would like to thank the Swiss people for standing up to their would-be oppressors and showing the world that there is still a place for sanity in the scheme of things. It’s time for everyone in the world’s democracies to follow the Swiss lead.
As an aside I note that at the recent G7 talks on “climate change”, the ly ing David Attenborough was invited to give a pep-talk but the group still only put out a meaningless statement at the finish. It’s time for our leaders to show a bit of spine and Mr Attenborough the door.
If the UK were to follow our brave Swiss friends with the same referendum question, I guess we would get the same result. Like Brexit of course, but Boris wouldn’t risk it would he? Ruin his recent marriage lol.
It should be put to vote in every country. My guess is any country that would be a “donor” to CC funding would reject it and every country that would be a recipient would accept it. The next step would be for all the recipient countries to figure out how they will pay each other.
I agree. I think that the results would be rather similar in most countries. The fact is that the silent half just doesn’t shout about it, and actually doesn’t really care, or has more important things to worry about. That’s my experience, anyway.
Wish I could afford to live there and get a vote that counts for something on real issues.
I you’ll give me 1 million dollars, I’ll give you 1 million dollars and they we will both be rich.
What are you, a central banker or an IMF employee?
MarkW,
Wow! you have stimulated the economy by $2million, and if you leave the money on deposit for a little while, the banks can lend it out 10 times over too.
Plus if you buy a house with it, the government mortgage corp. will insure the bank’s lending, and a few weeks later the central bank will buy the mortgages off the banks, turning them into “assets” in their investment portfolio.
Governments have come to believe they can just issue as much money as they want to….however everyone along the chain has to believe that their loan is really collectible…plus that when they collect, the money will be worth something. It turns out that as long as people have faith and you control inflation, it works fine. And you can mostly control inflation by only giving loan guarantees to large corporations to invent jobs for low pay workers, plus give government subsistence payments to the very poor. Sound familiar ?
Well, at least one of you will have a million dollars…
That you had before
I have a contact in Nigeria who is itching to help.
Just send me your bank details and I’ll pass them on
The fact that the vote was close is cause for worry.
Sorry, but in this case, I find the glass to be half empty rather than half full.
Hey it’s better than all those surveys showing 97% of climate doomsters are taxeaters. There’s always the other 3% on leave at the time.
I, too, wish the margin had been greater, but we’re looking at a country where more than half the people feel some action is needed to combat climate change, yet aren’t prepared to shell out any money to stop it. That seems to prove the belief of many, including me, that the combination of skeptics and people without any meaningful commitment to stopping “catastrophic global warming” make up a majority there, and maybe everywhere. I’ll take that as a victory.
Maybe not too bad given that Switzerland is the home of Davos and the WEF.
Every narrow victory buys time. And time reveals more and more what a scam this is. It produces ever more examples of failed predictions:
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
Time also exposes more hypocrisy by the doomsayers, such as the following examples of climate disaster advocates ignoring threatened rises in sea levels:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenhowley/2019/12/08/barack-and-michelle-obama-buy-marthas-vineyard-estate/
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-04-22/report-bill-and-melinda-gates-buy-43m-del-mar-home
https://www.velvetropes.com/backstage/leonardo-dicaprio-house (island)
John
https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/f/pore/va/20210613/can644.html
I actually doesn’t look too bad.
My interpretation ( note I don’t speak Swiss, French German or Italian) is
Only 60% turnout.
Big cities voted yes but had less turnout
Smaller cities voted no but had more turnout.
IMO this indicates the silent majority will come out when needed.
The actual vote score was 4 1/2 vs 16 5/2 which is actually b pretty good
Interesting. Thanks.
Zurich, Bâle-Ville, Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Geneva were the only five cantons (out of a total of twenty-six) to vote in favor.
As I am unfamiliar with Swiss law, I do not know if the question required a majority of cantons or a majority of the popular vote.
As you point out, it was the big cities that voted “yes.”
Very clearly, there is a rural/urban divide on this in Switzerland as well as the U.S.
If, as reported, all the major parties were in favour and launched a blanket media propaganda campaign in the run-up to the vote, then for the proposition to be voted down – even if only narrowly – is very impressive. Kudos to the Swiss people!
Not all major parties, SVP was against.
Good to see Swiss voters recognize the scam even as their “leaders” propagandize the crisis and use it for attempted looting in the form of carbon taxes (read Wokerati Dispensations). Good work by normals rejecting the machinations of the garbage elite…but sadly “by a narrow margin.” Wokerati deserve an overwhelming rejection.
The “normals” just need to inform everyone what carbon taxes will really cost. Not just the upfront cost but the long term negative impact to their economy. And of course, such taxes will be just the beginning of the poorly thought out, unnecessary, de-carbonizing revolution.
In Switzerland, the expensive energy produced by carbon taxes will cause a surge in Winter fuel-poverty deaths, as it has already done in the UK.
It’s only purpose is to take money from the Swiss people and put into the hands of greedy arseholes who enjoy taking it. They rely on global warming, climate change being trendy and a virtue signal for the stupid in order to get away with it.
Well that settles the science in Switzerland according to the consensus crowd. Can we have more referenda like that in Oz to help settle the science?
Absolutely.
I mean, the government decided to have a referendum on same sex marriage, mainly because they wanted to avoid being seen as responsible for approving it and upsetting their core voting base, so why can’t they do the same with CAGW? That way we’d see if the country really wants to ‘fix’ the ‘climate’. I suspect not, but would be willing to go along with the majority.
I thought that we already had that referendum in the last election that the climate alarmists lost? It’s a pity that the conservative government that won doesn’t have the guts to honor that result and keeps taking the knee to the international leftist pressure.
” No doubt a vigorous public climate propaganda campaign already on the launchpad, to ensure voters don’t cause international embarrassment next time they are offered the opportunity to agree with their government.”
Exactly, and you can bet the next time is very soon.
Now why can’t we all be allowed to vote on life style changing legislation like the Swiss, they call it direct democracy, because we don’t even have indirect democracy, we have vague lacking in detail ambiguous manifestos, that allow politicians to do whatever they want. The sheep don’t seem to care.
How about a vigorous public election campaign to install a government that won’t embarrass Swiss voters by engaging in absurd international green dreams?
Good luck with that.
If Swiss had Dominion voting machines, you would not need the second plebiscite…
“Ask not what your country can do to you; ask what you can do for your country policy.”
Can some of those Swiss be bothered to record some videos to educate the Californians
Taxation with representation? In California?
Regrettably, with our direct democracy here in California, the power-shat-be ensure that the populace votes for new taxes by crafty languagiung of the referendum.
The problem with much of California, is that politics is dominated by those who consider representation without taxation to be a good thing.
Heck, they think that representation without a measurable metabolism to be a good thing.
The problem in California is that about half the 30 million or so people who came into the US illegally since 1980, and advanced to citizenship, settled in CA. Some 80-90% of them vote Democrat because they want the services.
This changed the entire voting pattern of the state. It’s become uni-party. The politicians can do as they like because they’ve got a lock on the vote and the entire state government. All of it.
Things may slowly be turning because the large Hispanic population is becoming slowly more prosperous. People get more resistant to taxes and promises when they’ve got something to lose.
But the lesson of CA is not lost on the national Democrat leadership. Open borders is their attempt to uni-partyize the entire country.
Right on
Open borders has been an evil attempt to “safeguard” the Democrats power over the US, ever since Reagan.
They are too dumb to work in private enterprise, so they make their careers in BIG GOVERNMENT as highly experienced grifters and grafters.
Yeah and Reagan really cucked on the illegal immigration amnesty issue. That pretty much nullified all his other accomplishments. Communism was gonna fall eventually anyway. I had reason to know that being in military intelligence, although the CIA seemed to miss it completely. Another useless organization. But I digress….
Never understood the Reagan worship amongst conservatives.
People become resistive to taxes when taxes become something that not just “other people” pay.
Good posting, Eric. Nothing like a dead mackerel upside the head type of Reality Check. Even the green fruitloops in Oregon rejected paying more for green windmill electricity.
Maybe the tide is turning.
Don’t count on it…
A 2% victory margin is hardly a tide turning, more like hanging on to sanity by a thread.
It would be good to get some feedback from those in Switzerland about the amount and type of propaganda they were subject to
Luckily, it’s a nation with a lot of common sense- which it must have to survive as a tiny nation in the middle of Europe with all its past empires. But, is this news item being widely disseminated? Doesn’t seem to be.
https://www.thegwpf.com/why-the-swiss-people-rejected-the-new-climate-law/
It’s like that here in New Zealand too, with all branches of the MSM bribed by our red government with a massive dose of taxpayers’ money. Large subsidies for EVs just announced, despite there being very little chance that those EVs forced on farmers and tradesmen will even be available on the market. Technically illiterate politicians seem to be everywhere nowadays!
Yet they approved yesterday the controversial, 1984-like COVID law – so not every decision those voters take is wise.
indeed, in the case of the COVID law, the massive official government and mainstream media propaganda prevailed! As Jit pointed out earlier today at 11:28 am, there was only one party, the SVP, that opposed the proposed legislation vigorously. While it’s the largest party, its voter share usually doesn’t reach 49%, therefore, I see it as a huge win for rational Swiss citizens that may well mean an indicator of things to come!
Today’s results are a devastating blow for environmentalists. – article
Okay, should I send them a sympathy card? Box of tissues for their tears? A create of Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa?
Just askin’, because the Swiss people seem to have some common sense, which is refreshing these days.
They just need to get them some Dominion voting system machines.
Joel you can hack a pipeline but not an election…got it?
Good on the Swiss! A similar type referendum in other countries might have a similar response as well. But the rest of us are not asked the right questions!
If Swiss politicians are anything like EU politicians, they’ll just declare that Swiss voters are to ignorant to know what is best for them, and impose the taxes anyway.
No, they can’t do that. Read up on the Swiss system, it’s about as good as it get’s on this planet.
EU politicians are the worst.
William Tell them to GTH.
Everyone wants to be “green” until they see the bill. Under modern Progressivism, the assumption is that it will always be someone else to do the real work and pay the bill.
OK, in the voice of Nelson from The Simpsons:
HaHa!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOPBP9vuZA&w=560&h=315%5D
I am not personally aware of any major population group (a nation-state, or a US state or Canadian province) that has actually voted in favor of killing their economy with green taxes or prohibitions on the normal stuff that everybody in a modern first world economy depends upon, like electricity, gas or diesel vehicles, airplanes etc.
Is there such a thing?
Even as green weenie-dominated a state as California or Vermont or Massachussetts has not actually enacted any such radical restructuring of their economies via any kind of public referendum, and I don’t know of any nations who did so either.
It’s always the oppressive majorities in legislatures or executive mansions who do all the mandating of economically-suicidal green measures.
sorry, irrelevant reply on my part.
Contrast that to the US. Our current beloved leader promised to not invoke the “Green New Deal.” Like everything else, it was a lie. He broke his promise. Instead, he’s pushing the GND but in a renamed form. The substance is nearly the same.
Jeffrey P,
Even the Guardian says the GND is virtually indistinguishable from the “Biden Plan”.
Oops, Jeffery P,Sorry 😢 for the misspelling.
The green movements have always been about social oppression by an ideological minority. They must game the system so that democracy does not have a chance to work. At least it seems that it sometimes does still work in Switzerland. Shouldn’t wonder that BBC, CNN, and NYT won’t get it.
How about a global vote, including China and India?
As a Swiss guy I’d like to add, that we did not only vote on a CO2-tax, but some other hot topics, too. Over all, the common sense was limited. But we should be glad for any sign of it:
> Fresh water initiative
I think we are very glad of having very clean ground and well water. Nevertheless, with nowadays analytics you will always find some pesticide and some other things in the water, althoug in a very, very low concentration which is very very far of having any potential of harm. So, the Greenies started an initiative that would have the effect that nowhere any pesticides and other “poisons” would be allowed. 60.7% Swiss voters said “No”.
> Initiative for a ban of all artificial pesticides
This initiative had a very close target as the one above. For farming all artificial pesticides should have been banned totally. Even a lot of farmers that produce organic products voted against, because the pressure of any kind of pests would raise strongly and with a potential of significant reduction of their harvest. 60.6% of Swiss voters said “No”.
> Legislation for “Covid”
This was not an initiative but the parliament that wanted this. This legislation should facilitate any “lockdown”- and other actions for the state to intervene in another similar case like Covid. It was a kind of deceptive package as it was linked to repair payments and so on. 60.2% of Swiss voters loved it and said “Yes”.
This is not a bad result over all, but we need to be on alert. In a few months we should vote about a “Glacier initiative” which wants to ban all fossils and reach “climate neutrality” until 2050. The glaciers are still much bigger and longer than they were at the time when Hannibal crossed the Alps with his elephants. Probably it was him urging the Roman empire to head for “climate neutrality” which was the end of Rome…