From climate change to political change3 reading minutes

News Mondays - Jérémie Bongiovanni

Earthquake yesterday on the other side of the Sarine. The Zurich elections sent the canton's bourgeois parties into a panic. For their part, the new winners - the Greens and the Greens-Liberals - confirmed the trend of recent weeks, during which thousands of people demonstrated for the climate cause. From climate change to political change.

Yesterday, Sunday March 25, the people of Zurich elected their Council of State (executive) and their Grand Council (legislative). The results were crystal-clear: the Greens and the Vert'liberals won this battle against the other parties, in particular against a stunned right-wing. Last week, the left confirmed its success by winning the vacant seat on the Vaud State Council, thanks to the election of Rebecca Ruiz. She was thirteen thousand votes ahead of her direct rival, the SVP Pascal Dessauges.

Ironically, this figure also corresponds to the number of climate demonstrators in Lausanne on March 15. For those who still doubt it, the climate issue is definitely the new epicenter of Swiss politics.

An ideological deficit on the right

This crystallization of climate demands reveals the ideological deficit of a right-wing movement incapable of offering credible solutions. It stammers on, contradicting its own convictions and giving the impression of nothing more than grotesque opportunism. It considers itself misunderstood; in fact, it is incomprehensible.

This weekend's results should serve as a wake-up call ahead of the federal elections in October, so that it can offer a credible alternative and demonstrate that its ideological backbone still exists. In order to oppose the measures of those who see themselves as the saviors of the planet, it is essential that right-wing parties come up with solutions based on an ideological backbone that, among other things, preserves individual freedoms. A pipe dream? We shall see.

The saviors of the planet and their solutions

The Green and Green'liberals were victorious over the weekend. Those who set themselves up as saviors of the planet will now have to take on responsibilities and get their hands dirty. That's where it gets interesting. My optimism makes me prefer this adjective to ’worrying«, but it's only a short step from one to the other.

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The solutions of those who are monopolizing the planet's rescue are sometimes quite disturbing. We cause justifies much, too much. Taxes here, bans there bans here, saving the planet there, that's legitimate.

Emblematic of the solutions proposed by the ecological left, a list of proposals submitted by several Socialist National Councillors lists thirteen measures to combat climate change. As far as bans are concerned, we propose, for example, closing roads one Sunday a month or banning short-haul flights. In other words, you'll be arbitrarily banned from traveling as you please.

Taxes are less obvious. The idea is to offer a free SBB general season ticket to all those under twenty-five. The illusion of free travel is seductive, but it remains a deception. The cost of such political gifts is inevitably injustice: certain taxes will be raised, or we'll go into debt on the backs of future generations. Vice is sneaky and often hides behind its appearance of virtue.

«System change not climate change», they betray themselves. The climate thus becomes an alibi for slashing our freedoms and an excuse for defending a socialist, totalitarian model of society.

The political change

It's high time for the right to make up for its ideological void when it comes to climate policy, in order to demonstrate that it can be part of the solution. We need to be able to prove that opposition to a measure that claims to protect the planet does not mean wanting to destroy it, but rather to protect other values that cannot be sacrificed at any cost. There are other, liberal solutions! Otherwise, political change could prove just as pernicious as climate change.

Photo credits: © Wikimedia

Write to the author: jeremie.bongiovanni@leregardlibre.com