Switzerland residents on Sunday approved a climate policy that should protect the country’s glaciers, which are melting at a worrying rate. In a referendum, just under 60 percent voted in favor of the climate law, report Swiss media. Switzerland has now set itself the goal of being climate neutral by 2050. It sets aside more than 3 billion euros to get companies and households off fossil fuels. Large companies have to partly pay for this through taxation.
The Swiss parliament had already embraced the climate law, but the right-wing nationalist People’s Party refused to support it, wanting to leave the choice to the Swiss people. Conservatives fear energy costs would skyrocket as a result of the proposed measures.
Proponents believe that the consequences for the climate weigh more heavily, and that government intervention should cost quite a bit. Climate change is certainly no longer a far-from-my-bed show for the Swiss. Due to the lack of snowfall and the high number of heat waves, glaciers in Switzerland melted at record speed last year. They lost more than 6 percent of their volume. Without action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, glaciers in the Alps will have lost more than 80 percent of their size by 2100, scientists estimate.
Read also: The many dangers of melting glaciers