Avoiding a Swiss Dystopia

I read predominantly mystery novels, and that’s fine, but sometimes I need a break from crime. So for the past couple of weeks, before and during my husband’s and my vacation in Uzbekistan (which was fabulous), I’ve been reading highly praised literary novels that I’d downloaded onto my Kindle but hadn’t yet gotten around to. Unwittingly, I found myself in the middle of several well-written but devastating dystopias centered around future climate-related disasters. Eventually, I had to download one of Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police mysteries and a historical romance just to fall asleep at night!

So it was with particular joy that I came home to Bern from Uzbekistan and found that the right-wing Swiss People’s Party’s referendum, meant to persuade the Swiss to vote against the government’s newest anti-emissions law, had been defeated at the polls. Despite the far-right’s massive anti-government campaign, fifty-nine percent of Swiss voters cast their ballots in favor of the parliament’s move to encourage a shift to renewable energy and reach zero emissions by 2050.

This was a special relief because the government’s last attempt to speed up the transition from carbon-based to renewable energy was rejected by 51.6% of the voters, along with two other, much more radical anti-pesticide measures. (I posted about this vote on May 26, 2021: https://kimhaysbern.com/2021/05/26/telling-swiss-farmers-what-to-do.) The defeat of the 2021 anti-carbon law was a triumph for the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), and for the oil lobby, the automobile associations, and all the landlords who didn’t want to better insulate their buildings and move away from oil- and gas-based furnaces.

The law we just accepted refrains from using higher prices and taxes to punish individuals and companies that use excessive amounts of gasoline, natural gas, oil, and coal. (I would like to punish the heck out of them, so I guess it’s a good thing I’m not running the world.) Instead, this new law will, among other things, provide financial support for homeowners to encourage them to replace their current heating systems with more climate-friendly heat pumps. In addition, businesses will be given financial incentives to invest in green technologies.

Switzerland is not just being a good little country for the sake of the planet.  It needs to take measures like these. Switzerland’s average temperatures have risen more than twice the global average in the past 150 years, and the country has failed to invest sufficiently in solar and wind power. Many Swiss have been complacent about the energy problem, convinced that Switzerland would always be able to generate electricity through water power because of its Alps. Ever-more-rapidly shrinking glaciers, a lack of snow, and recurring droughts have recently shown how foolish this smugness is. If greenhouse gas emissions remain at their current levels, all the glaciers, not only in Switzerland but in all of Europe, will be gone by the end of the century.  And as Switzerland loses its glaciers, it also loses its drinking water.

Uh-oh. This post is starting to sound like one of those climate-disaster dystopian novels that overwhelmed me during my vacation, which took place while Uzbekistan was experiencing temperatures around 100° F every day, their hottest June on record. Whoops! There I go again. Soon you won’t be able to fall asleep.

Instead, let me be optimistic. Thanks to this newest climate law that the SVP did not succeed in getting rid of, Switzerland’s emissions-reducing future is looking brighter. After all, if a country as rich as Switzerland with its essentially well-educated and law-abiding population can’t deal intelligently and responsibly with these problems, who can?

I took the photo of the Aletsch glacier, but the rest of the pictures are PR photos provided by three Swiss energy companies: BKV, Romande Energie, and Alpiq.