Who must act, and how?

Just imagine our climate as a beast of burden – a donkey. We keep on loading it with CO₂ every day by our lifestyles. Although the climate is a resilient donkey, it is already carrying a great burden. Read about how you can ease this burden.

Who is responsible for this excessive burden? We all are. And no-one is. But each of us contributes a small amount to the donkey’s load by the way we live. To prevent our donkey from collapsing, each of us must do something to reduce our CO₂ emissions. But who’s going to start? You, your neighbours and friends, or companies, politicians and research institutes? And why should you be the first to act, when everyone else blithely continues to load their baggage onto the poor old beast? Of course, everyone can wait for someone else to start. But we are also quite free to take the initiative ourselves.

Whoever decides to be among the first does our society a great service – because the overwhelming majority of people never get moving at the same time. Enterprising individuals are always needed for the others to follow, so that finally everyone begins to stir.

A rethink has already taken place in large parts of the private sector. Many companies take the problem of CO₂ seriously, quite possibly because the business world is based on cool reasoning. Because the solution to the problem becomes more expensive the longer we refrain from acting. That’s why lots of Swiss companies are working on sophisticated systems to compensate their CO₂ emissions, and some of them have already managed to make massive reductions in their output of climate gases. However, many people in industries such as oil and aviation are still resisting fundamental changes.

Politicians are also being called upon to act. They must issue laws to create the framework conditions that can effectively limit a country’s CO₂ emissions. Today, no one is allowed to simply dump their waste in the forest. Waste disposal has a specific price. And yet if I load a kilogram of CO₂ onto the donkey, my act is currently still largely free of charge.

But this model will not work in the future. Why should we pay for disposal of our waste when everyone else simply dumps theirs in the forest? To make sure that no one is disadvantaged, the same rules should apply to everyone - including when it comes to CO₂. Under the present framework conditions, a commitment to reducing CO₂ emissions is not (yet) worthwhile for many companies. It is up to politicians to specify the framework conditions by passing corresponding laws so that the same rules apply to everyone as regards CO₂. This is a lengthy process that calls for a great deal of persistence and initiative.

Anyone who wishes to contribute actively to a change is well advised not to wait until everyone else has done their homework.

So what can you as an individual do? You can influence the policies of companies by your purchasing decisions. You can support relevant political initiatives as well as personalities who are active on this issue. You can exert influence through your everyday decisions. The following pages on various sectors show how this can be done.