Greta’s school strikes led 30% of Swiss citizens to change habits
Greta’s school strikes led 30% of Swiss citizens to change habits
www.euronews.com
Greta’s school strikes led 30% of Swiss citizens to change habits
65 comments
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Go vegan
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Having less children, car free and plane free have more impact.
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Killing other people's children is even more environmentally friendly!
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This whole "have one fewer child" thing is totally bonkers, because even on the face of it, it really only makes sense for people in Western nations with their current lifestyles. It's also an average over all the people in that country, meaning it's heavily spoiled by rich kids. Essentially, 1. you can't know beforehand how your child will live and 2. emissions don't scale linearly with the number of people (again, look at the difference between countries). And then there's the anti-humane undertone of it.
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And we have to choose only one?
edit: Also, I have avoid one fewer child for more than 2 decade !
And avoided transatlantic plane travel too!
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Or just you know, all of the above :)
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One can easily be vegan while doing all of those, I am :)
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Going car free isn't an option for most Americans, unfortunately.
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Your point is valid, but the fact is none of those are enough on their own. Even if we get rid of all emissions except for the cattle industry, wed still shoot way past the 1.5° mark. So not going at least vegetarian was never an option.
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The environmentally beneficial effects of plant based diets or a vegan lifestyle are not reduced to harmful GHG emissions alone but encompass a wide range of advantages. To name some:
- Reduced agricultural land use (the vast majority of land is used to grow cattle feed). This can also reduce deforestation (especially interesting in the Amazon region), increase ground water and soil quality. Avoids soil erosion. It also perserves eco systems on land and helps to mitigate species extinction.
- Water usage. It takes about 1000x to produce meat than to produce an equivalent amount of, e.g., wheat.
- Reduction of overfishing and thereby protecting and stabilizing oceanic eco system.
- Reduction of the huge amount of water and air pollution caused by the animal industry.
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Let me guess, to reduce murder rates we should also have less children! After all, they might turn out to be murderers.
Any person remotely willing to not have children in order to protect the climate was not a big problem for the climate anyway.
Any person who doesn't care slightest about the climate, and would never look at the debate we're having, is a much bigger problem.
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I've only gone vegan after two things happened:
- FFF strikes made environmentalism "a thing"
- Easy vegan alternatives have been easily accessible and cater to my carnivorous eating habits
There are likely other factors as well. Point is: it's never just one thing, and therefore every little thing helps.
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Greta! ✊
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Almost a third of Swiss people changed their daily habits as a result of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future climate strikes, new research has found.
Now, a study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has examined the wider impact of these strikes on people’s environmental choices.
To examine the wider impact of the school climate strikes, EPFL researchers surveyed Swiss residents in the wake of the protests in October and November 2019.
“Our findings showed that people have become more aware of how their behaviour affects the environment and that significant shifts are under way at an individual level,” says Livia Fritz, a researcher and the study’s lead author.
Changes in transport habits included looking for alternatives to driving to work, such as walking or cycling, and avoiding flying by choosing holiday destinations closer to home.
Survey participants also reported seeking out local, organic produce, eating more vegetarian meals, and making a bigger effort to reduce plastic waste following the climate protests.
The original article contains 421 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Changes in transport habits included looking for alternatives to driving to work, such as walking or cycling, and avoiding flying by choosing holiday destinations closer to home.
Survey participants also reported seeking out local, organic produce, eating more vegetarian meals, and making a bigger effort to reduce plastic waste following the climate protests.
Positively surprised to see effective measures, like avoid flying and meat.
IIRC Switzerland also has quite an exemplary carbon pricing scheme. I'm totally unaware how much flights and meat are encompassed. The general point I'm trying to make: It's probably hard to say wether people changed their habits due to FFF, or due to policy changes. Of course, FFF likely influenced policy changes.
Either way, thanks for the uplifting news :)
Now I'm waiting for the more serious news how Swiss companies have changed their business practices ;)
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Look, any progress being made about environmental awareness is great, HOWEVER; this bullshit concept of offloading the responsibility of climate change strictly to the consumer is never going to fix the problem.
The people responsible for the largest amount of climate change are the insatiably wealthy that give absolutely no fucks about how much their mega corp ruins the planet.
I don't know how the rest of the world feels, but here in the U.S., it's basically impossible to buy anything that doesn't come packaged in single use plastics, and half our population has been brainwashed to believe climate change is not even a concerning issue.
The companies that profit from blowing everything up should be responsible for cleaning everything up. I do my best to reduce, reuse and recycle, but my city doesn't even recycle plastic bags because it clogs the machines, and everything comes in damn plastic bags. Putting solar on your house now comes with a high possibility of having your insurance policy canceled, etc, it's literally one barrier after another, and my carbon footprint is pretty damn low.
Sorry for my rant, it is just very frustrating.
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True, and single-use plastic wrappers are indeed a scourge.
But one thing is often omitted when ranting about "companies that profit from blowing everything up": They often produce stuff that we a) don't need and b) buy. Nobody needs new phones / computers every year, but they get produced. Almost nobody needs pickup trucks and SUVs, but the suburbs are full of the things. Nobody needs "fast fashion", but here we go.
It's true that international manufacturing companies cause a majority of CO2 pollution, but they produce stuff for everyone. If people bought less useless stuff, we'd be better off.
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I do my best to conserve, I have a 10 year old car I keep up and try not to purchase frivolous items, but everything is from hygiene products to food comes in single use plastics...
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Things start to make a lot more sense when you realize plastic is a patroleum biproduct. Just think about the insane amount of power the oil and gas industry have. They get billions of dollars a year in subsidies, as basically blackmail to not raise gas prices, plus you know the blatant bribery.
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No doubt that is a large part of it!
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Yea, i'm sure Greta would be angry with this headline's framing
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This is great. Now we only have to get the governments to regulate global companies that spent millions on propaganda that climate change isn't real.
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Today they told in the radio news that FFF had an impact on "only" 25 % of Germans. IMHO that's a lot.
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That's a Gretachievement!
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I saw what you did here, that's greta
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The study is Open Access. If someone else wants to read it, just click the doi link:
Fritz, L., Hansmann, R., Dalimier, B. et al. Perceived impacts of the Fridays for Future climate movement on environmental concern and behaviour in Switzerland. Sustain Sci 18, 2219–2244 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01348-7
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Proof that Europe is not too bright.
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How so?
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65 comments
I hope a lot of people have made at least some changes in their lifestyle by now.
I understand that companies are doing the greatest damage to the environment, but its always:
"People should try to live..."
"Yeah, bUt cEoS AnD cOmpAnIeS"
It feels like people are just pointing fingers at each other and no one is doing shit.
Guerilla gardening fruit trees.
Surprisingly, also: gorillas gardening.
Fine I'll bite, what does eating more meat do for the environment?