Sustainability: beware of the major step backwards

Between 2017 and 2024, three popular votes made it possible to establish a coherent federal energy and climate policy. The result is a roadmap based on three pillars : on the production side, a 100% renewable supply; on the consumption side, the generalization of technically achievable energy savings, coupled with sobriety in usages. Bearing in mind that the carbon weight of our imports represents twice the CO₂ emitted from our territory, this is the winning trilogy to ensure our energy supply while contributing to keeping global warming within tolerable limits.

In 2021, however, a first grain of sand had already been introduced into this well-arranged mechanism: the law on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (the CO₂ law) was rejected by the people in June. That law provided for taxes and subsidies intended to correct distorted prices, as well as a series of measures to achieve the climate targets set.

Its rejection highlighted the weak point of energy and climate strategies: the gap between objectives that appear consensual and the means to achieve them, which are much less so. A gap that is found in the dissonance between proclamations of a climate emergency and the lack of willingness to tackle the causes of the disturbances.

This trend is confirmed on the renewable energy front. While the share of solar in domestic electricity production now exceeds 10%, that of wind stagnates at a meagre 0.3%, held back by strong local opposition — skillfully orchestrated at the national level and reinforced by the recent extension of the right of appeal granted at the federal level to anti-wind organizations.

As for hydropower, the historical pillar of our renewable production, it must now contend with a context in which our mountains are experiencing warming well above the global average. Increasing instability in weather and precipitation, combined with accelerated glacier melt, bodes ill for what remains a national pride.

This "cognitive dissonance" even seems to be increasing. Recently, in Valais as in Bern, progressive legislation on climate or photovoltaic development was widely rejected in popular votes. And now a political party is asking that Switzerland withdraw, too, from the Paris Agreement — an initiative moreover carried by a mountain farmer from the Simmental, someone who faces the effects of climate change every day…

Squeezing the lemon to the last drop to turn natural resources into hard cash — ever more unequally distributed — seems to be the chosen path.

A great climate fatigue ?

Overall, the targets set ten years ago in the Paris Agreement seem less and less attainable. More worrying still: there is growing weariness — even aversion — among public opinion. How distant that time seems when we witnessed those massive climate demonstrations !

Worse still, we are once again readily pitting economy against ecology — as if our prosperity could rest on the continuous weakening of nature’s productive capacities. Squeezing the lemon to the last drop to turn natural resources into hard cash — ever more unequally distributed — seems to be the chosen path. Yet, of the nine planetary boundaries identified about fifteen years ago, seven have already been crossed or are about to be.

The observation is sobering: the more indicators signal the environment’s growing inability to sustain our activities, the less we want to know. It is true that the proven benefits of the transition, notably in terms of employment — in sectors such as renewable energies, the circular economy, water management, sustainable mobility or agroecology — have neither been properly communicated nor truly understood.

While some have only the word "greenwashing" on their lips whenever a public or private entity seems to do too little — while they themselves are far from adopting eco-responsible behaviour — others, far more numerous, are becoming tired of the subject. Disoriented, often strongly influenced by (anti)social networks, they turn to political movements whose explicit objectives include dismantling any sustainability policy, or even erasing the ecological question from collective memory.

The situation is complex: "ordinary people" are tired of being asked to change their behaviours, believing that "the big polluters do nothing". But when these are tackled, the same people immediately fear consequences for the economy and employment…

In this disconcerting context, the farmers' revolt at the beginning of 2024 marked the starting point of a rapid unraveling of the qualitative components of the contract between society and agricultural producers. Since the latter are largely — and rightly — subsidized by public money and protected by state measures at the borders, it is perfectly legitimate to question the economic, ecological and social conditions of agricultural production.

The reality: radio silence. There is no longer any question of reducing excessive herds that saturate soils and pollute waters. On the contrary, the concentration of farms is preferred and accelerated. While organic farming is regressing, pesticide reduction plans are postponed, and we accelerate the headlong rush into a productivism with no future.

Where will the destructive fury stop ?

In its wake, the European Union’s Green Deal has been largely emptied of its substance. As for sustainable finance, it is fighting for its survival — and not only in the United States, a country where the return to the Conquest of the West has swept away in a few months half a century of attempts to better frame destructive individual and collective behaviours.

Elimination of environmental and climate research and monitoring programmes — as if switching off the thermometer would restore health —, frantic promotion of fossil fuels, outright denial of climate change… nothing is spared. Dismantling environmental agencies, weakening surveillance in national parks: to date, none of this has provoked a significant reaction beyond the small circle of directly concerned people.

Most recent transgression: the American president’s decision to authorize exploitation of seabeds rich in polymetallic nodules. And this in areas located on the high seas, under the governance of the International Seabed Authority — the only body competent to develop a legal framework for this type of activity and which is currently working on it.

Nothing seems to curb the fury of a movement that considers nature to be malleable and exploitable at will, while all facts reveal its fragility.

Its secretary-general recently recalled that "the principle of the common heritage of mankind is a cornerstone of international law and a fundamental pillar of ocean governance, widely defended by the international community." But while about thirty countries are calling for a moratorium, for an America wrestling with its demons, all this is moving far too slowly and we are rushing once again into the unknown.

Nothing seems to curb the fury of a movement that considers nature to be malleable and exploitable at will, while all facts reveal its fragility. The United States, for their part, do not intend to submit to the law of the sea — they are not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, nor to that on biodiversity.

We spoke of ecological collapse; we are now faced with a political collapse — which precedes it and accelerates it. Unless the MAGA movement rediscovers that in the United States nearly a million people earn their living in renewable energies, compared with barely 42,000 in coal extraction… and decides accordingly to move from "Make America Great Again" to "Make our Planet Great Again".

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