As has been widely reported this week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the Swiss Government failed to respect the human rights of a group of frail, elderly women in the face of the ‘climate emergency’. The decision requires the Swiss Government to implement more radical policies to meet the country’s commitments to the Paris agreement, including increasing the tax on fossil fuels. But the implications of this new precedent affect every state that‘s a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the U.K. What evidence did the court draw from, and what drove its decisions?
The case was brought by five applicants, the first of which was Verein Klima Seniorinnen Schweiz (VKS) – Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland – a Swiss green NGO funded by Greenpeace and other philanthropic foundations. The other four applicants, members of VKS, were senior women whose testimony explains that their age-related medical conditions are exacerbated by heatwaves. One, who had chronic gout and a pacemaker, had twice fainted and had had to “adapt her lifestyle” to cope with hot weather. Another, who suffered from unspecified “cardiovascular health issues” had to stay at home “with the blinds down and the air conditioning turned on”. A third suffered from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was made to feel “isolated” during heatwaves. And the fourth, who suffered from asthma, “complained that the heatwaves had the effect of taking away all her energy” – which meant that “she could not face leaving her home and going for a swim”.
No doubt this is a shameful litany of torture at the hands of a cruelly indifferent Swiss Government. But what evidence is there of a ‘human rights’ violation, and how will the ECHR’s judgement improve things for Switzerland’s old ladies?
It is true, according to MeteoSwiss, that urban areas do see more heatwaves than in the past. The small city of Lucerne, for instance, now experiences between 10 and 15 days a year in which temperatures exceed 30 degrees centigrade – a significant increase, when compared to the 1980s and 90s.
But as terrible as that might seem, these warmer summers do not appear to be harbingers of death, according to the country’s mortality statistics. Since 1990, life expectancy for Svizzers has increased from 77.4 years to 84 years. A Swiss woman reaching 80 in 1990 had a 5.3% chance of dying that year, whereas that figure is now almost halved to 2.74% – and she likely has a decade ahead of her. in 1940, a Swiss woman of the same age had a 12.6% chance of dying that year.
Despite climate change, it would seem that Swiss women are living longer lives. But what about healthier lives? It turns out that climate change has not been catastrophic. In 1990, the mortality rate of chronic respiratory diseases was 37.8 per 100,000 people. Today it is 35.8. Cardiovascular diseases claimed 386 lives per 100,000 people in 1990, but 279 today. Lower respiratory infections killed 38.4 per 100,000 in 1990, but just 22.7 today. And so it goes on. If climate change is negatively affecting the lives of old Swiss women, it is not showing in mortality data.
Nonetheless, it is the discomfort of just four women and their fellow campaigners, convened by Greenpeace on behalf of green billionaires, that shall be imposed upon the entire nation of some 8.6 million people. The ECHR has ruled that not feeling able to go to the shops, or for a swim, or to see your friends at midday, is a violation of human rights. Switzerland has failed to “afford them effective protection against the effects of global warming”.
No matter the facts that so many more people are living so much longer, healthier, wealthier and safer lives in Switzerland and beyond, thanks to economic development, ‘despite’ some slightly warmer days. No matter that it is unlikely that even if Swiss CO2 emissions had already been reduced to zero, these women would still not be any more comfortable. The court heard no substantive criticism of any claim that climate change and human rights are linked. Instead, it heard evidence from, among others, Greenpeace, Oxfam and climate lawfare activists, ClientEarth.
Under Swiss law, non-profit associations – verein – are not required to register or file accounts. And so we are unlikely to ever find out the full story of who turned these Swiss pensioners and their maladies into a puppet show. We know that Greenpeace was one of the extremely well-funded organisations underwriting the stunt. But in turn, organisations with names that might just as well be Mutterschaft und Apfelkuchen conceal the interests of their grantors, who are behind climate lawfare stunts throughout the world.
The countless millions of dollars that are behind that lawfare in nearly every jurisdiction are a concerted effort to circumvent democracy precisely because the cost of litigation excludes the public. There is virtually no organised opposition, yet to the green agenda at national or international levels, and what opposition does exist would have its resources exhausted within days.
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It is as foolish as the Hate crime legislation in Scotland and as dangerous.
We are at a crisis point not caused by climate, but by man himself, and we know from Darwinian theory that only those who adapt best will survive.
“It is true, according to MeteoSwiss, that urban areas do see more heatwaves than in the past.”
According to that graph the temperatures seem to rise at a rate that is appropriate to urban spral! more tarmac and concrete around the measuring equipment increasing over time.
And as stated, life expectancy is increasing!
These women are unlucky enough to be ill in later life but that’s not uncommon, you can’t go blaming the weather for making your illnesses uncomfortable!
Foolish and dangerous precedents!
I wonder how many “safe and effective” clot shots they’ve had…🤔 No but seriously, they need to have a ‘climate change’ jab each. As long as it’s of the mRNA variety that should bring the temperature down a titchy bit. They can get a free sticker with every shot which say, “I am the carbon they want to reduce”.💉⚰🪦🤡
The main problem for climate alarmists when they say that everything is changing and getting more extreme is that ——IT ISN’T TRUE. There is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event. The IPCC itself say they have low confidence that any of that is happening that can be attributed to human activities. There is also no evidence of any increase in the rate of sea level rise ——-Dear GB NEWS Presenters, like Eamonn, Elle, Bev, Stephen, Isable, Michelle etc etc can you please tell your resident climate change activists McCarthy and Dale that the next time they are on instead of giving them a free ride to spout the junk science.
They could invite Limpet Opek on like in the old days. He always questioned where is the evidence for c02 causing man made climate change at every opportunity.
Mark Steyn obviously would do the same, and indeed he wrote a book called “A Disgrace to the Profession”. But if something is supposed to be about science you are supposed to question everything. I am not expecting GB News presenters to know everything about every issue but to give climate change activists on like McCarthy and Dale to talk about climate change without someone also present who isn’t a climate change activist, then viewers are getting a false impression and are likely to come away with the idea that climate change is really as bad and as apocalyptic as these two would have everyone believe. ——It ISN’T, and I could suggest a whole army of people they could have on their shows who would put that case well.
As dinger says it’s unwise to quote an urban temperature series since it’s corrupted by the heat island effect. Don’t play on the enemy’s terms.
When you search the internet you will find a large amount of songs dedicated to living in a makebelieve world. Those song writers proved to be amazingly prescient.
It is a human rights issue. ——Here is why.—— Because climate change isn’t about the climate. Climate change is one of the main tools in the Liberal Progressive toolbox that has hijacked science for political purposes. If one looks back in time to when all of this climate stuff started we see talk of population growth and Malthusian fears of running out of resources like coal oil and gas, and the alleged unjustness of wealthy western countries having acquired great prosperity from their having used up way more than their fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground, and how wealth should be taken from these prosperous nations and redistributed to poorer ones (climate justice). The idea is also that the wealthy western countries have had their fill of coal oil and gas and should now wean themselves off those reliable energy sources and use unreliable sources like wind and sun. The excuse for all of this eco socialism is “climate change” the biggest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated.
It may prompt the start of political groups for the young refusing to pay taxes to keep elderly people alive who cannot pay for their own care needs. Once that starts, it is a slippery slope to the other groups who do not ‘pay their own way’.
As long as some of those Grandparents don’t have a trust fund set aside for their Grandkids. For the ones that do, they can take it out of the trust fund or the property when they pass it on to them, or their parents that eventually pass in to their kids.
What am I describing here?:
First there was the scare and the general sense that we might actually be facing a real danger.
Government’s overreacted (whether deliberately pushed or not is neither here nor there). There was a panic and an overreaction.
When evidence started to emerge that perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad and that actually we can probably carry on with life as usual, governments didn’t course correct and back down from their policies. They doubled down. And the stronger the evidence became the more draconian and insane the policies.
And what was terrifying for those of us who could see the reality of the situation is that there wasn’t an institution anywhere that seemed able or prepared to act reasonably. To the contrary, what emerged was a picture of a completely corrupted, captured system.
Governments and institutions conspired to produce laws and measures that made it increasingly hard to course correct and cemented the erroneous, misguided ideas on which policies were based.
Am I describing covid or global warming?
At a guess the Verein Klima Seniorinnen Schweiz were not so badly affected by the 2010 heatwave as in 2023. I wonder if that’s because they were 13 years younger?
Since we’re in Clown World, can I take the government to court for not giving me a sunny spring? I watched a brief youtube segment of Nigel Farage’s on GB News talking to some fanatical bloke called Tim Crosland – a very woke white human rights lawyer – about this, who came out with all the usual nonsense about global warming and how temperatures are rising due to our industrialisation since the mid-1750s. It just made me boil – and not because, well, global boiling was helping – because it’s so frustrating to see and witness how the narrative has been captured by people like this with their shiny-eyed zeal. He kept saying ‘the science says’ and while Farage did mention that there was alternative science, this guy wasn’t having it. These people – and this guy did go to Oxford but that doesn’t mean a thing these days – are complete zealots and fanatics. They can’t wait to impose their ideologies and restrictions on us all. Puritans.
Jacob Rees Mogg has been questioning c02 more saying it is just a theory. So buy the guy a pint of Somerset cider (the cloudy type in small bottle). I still much prefer the days of Mark Steyn that he replaced.
Jackanory legislation. I assume that logic would dictate that it will apply to cold as well as heat as both are the result of ‘climate’. In which case can citizens then demand – as a right – their govts start paying their heating bills in episodes of cold ‘climate’ or A/C bills in periods of warm ‘climate’? The first test case should be fun.
But that just means tax payers pay the bills, and that just adds to the cost.
With a national population of around 6 million, the Swiss activists behind this action in the European Court represent perhaps one person in approximately every 10,000 of the entire world population. So what would this naive Court have governments do to protect the human rights of those other 9990 people in each ten thousand who wish to live a more normal life than the hell of Net Zero?
If the Swiss government does try to implement this crazy judgement, how would anyone ever know whether it had actually achieved anything real at all? Even if the entire Swiss population were deeply immersed in a lemming-like drive towards the desired Net Zero endpoint, they would still only represent 0.01% of the entire world population.
We all have the same ‘human rights’ so the principle of proportionality invalidates this absurd attempt to impose the will of a tiny minority of deluded souls on the rest of the world’s human population – and inevitably too, on the sanctity of the global ecosystem we and all other life-forms call home.
There is absolutely no point in a Court making a judgement and directive to follow a particular political course of action if there is no possible way of identifying when the required result has been achieved. Collectively, the ‘averagely well-informed person’ (a favoured construct of the ECHR) would reject the implied lifestyle that Net Zero threatens us with, so the significance of this ruling is entirely disproportional if applied to the vast majority of humankind.
King Cnut pointed out the stupidity of attempting to govern the world and its natural processes by dictat. It looks very much like this absurd (dis)Organization is merely an up-market gathering of modern-day Wannabe Cnuts!
What most of the TV gurus seem to miss is that this action is purely designed to reinforce the interests of the environmental elite devoted to the Net Zero Project, as more national states and wider public opposition start to challenge the lemming-like rush to oblivion on which these background Eco-zealot funders are dependent. Getting a worthless, and meaningless, Court ruling, they seem to suppose, might slow down the growth of worldwide opposition to their grandiose but ultimately doomed fantasies. The ECHR seems to have been taken in too, like so many scientifically illiterate governments. I suspect that we are seeing the desperate rear-guard action of a panicking shadowy elite!
Good comment———-They look like pretty prosperous people to me these ladies. They also look very pleased with themselves as if they have won some moral victory. I ask these self satisfied well to do Swiss ladies if they are in the least bit concerned for the one billion poor people on this planet who don’t even have any electricity, and who are dying young of preventable diseases, because posturing snobs like them think they should be “protected” from climate change, and because they are coerced into not using the fossil fuels that would give them electricity ——-I suggest it is “climate policies” they need to be protected from, not climate change. While they suffer a miserable existence the wealthy western snobs can pretend they are saving the planet. ——Except they are so gullible and misinformed they have no clue that what they are doing has NOTHING to do with the climate or the planet.
Referring to this bunch or ‘judges’ , Cnuts is almost spelt correctly!
Exactly. Well said. The current wet spring following on from a very wet winter will significantly reduce the harvest and we will most likely face certain food shortages later this year and definitely next. All planned. Prices will go up. And it will of course be blamed on climate change. Anyone stepping away from this narrative will be very unpopular – it’ll be the same tactics as ‘wear a mask’ or ‘take a shot’ to save granny. At first, you/we will be asked to use your car less, to eat less meat, wood will be scarcer for your wood burner and there may even be rationing of some items. The way THEY get away with it is in these small incremental steps, always promoting the same monotonous message that is slowly being drilled into the heads of the populace.
‘Human Rights’ is just the vehicle by which the coercive collectivists impose their will. They tend to lose most elections they contest and have consequently decided to circumvent them by capturing the judiciary and countermanding the will of the electorate.
Efforts to reason with coercive collectivists using logic and empirical evidence will fail because they are beyond reason. They are evil and intent on destroying western civilization.
Nice write-up but it misses the point entirely. The Swiss government is party to the Paris agreement and it follows that the people currently governing the country do believe that their actions are adequate wrt these commitments. As usual in a so-called democracy, there’s an opposition which doesn’t think so and the directorate decree is a political appreciation of the political opposition in Switzerland over the current government. Its member of a court (in the sense of court of a monarch) stepping into what ought to be a national political debate to be resolved by the democratic process and trying to select a winner by decree instead. That’s nothing but a naked powergrab by so-called NGOs which envision themselves as dictatorial, supranational government and which are testing the waters with a relatively small state presumably more susceptible to blackmail.
The correct reaction to that is to withdraw from the EHCR immediately and make sure the would-be tyrants sitting on its court know that they’re from now on persona non grata in Switzerland and to initate criminal proceedings against the PostpostmenopausalClimateBitches.
Seconded👍
Possible error in the text: I don’t think 50⁰ C are ever reached in any city in Switzerland. This should probably have been 30⁰ C, ie, nice summer days.
““with the blinds down and the air conditioning turned on”….As long as she is rich enough to afford the energy when you consider the divestment away from cheap, reliable energy to please the green blob including herself.
The first response from the Swiss Government to this ECHR idiocy should be to get rid of the Climate Change hoax by abolishing Davos. Then go on and abolish all the NGOs in the huge cluster of buildings in Geneva. Thats the UN, UNHCR, UNHRC, GAVI, WHO, Gates etc.