Greta’s school strikes led 30% of Swiss citizens to change habits

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?

Greta! ✊

Go vegan
- Having less children, car free and plane free have more impact.
  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
  
  Killing other people's children is even more environmentally friendly!
  
  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.
  
  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!
  
  Or just you know, all of the above :)
  
  Going car free isn't an option for most Americans, unfortunately.
  
  One can easily be vegan while doing all of those, I am :)
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  I'm absolutely not giving a fuck about someone's opinion of how many kids I want, it's bad enough the labour's wage isn't decent enough for big families these days without being guilted over having the children.
- 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.
  
  Is it more expensive? (Consideringthe same nutrients intake fat, protein, etc)
- I'll eat you.
- I'll go vegan once the oil companies have stopped killing our planet just for their numbers to go up and pinning it all on us living too extravagantly.
  First fuck the rich, then change the rest.
  
  You don't have to go vegan all the way to make a big positive impact for greenhouse gas emissions. If you manage to reduce the consumption of animal products this already helps a lot!
  You could also just eat the rich, that would help a lot more actually. Since people typically aren't considered animals that'd even be vegan
  
  Why do you want to continue your destructive habits just because others are also destructive?
  
  Its always someone elses responsibility isnt it. I wont stop beating my wife and kids as long as there are murderers out there.

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!
- 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 ;)
  
  Switzerland also has quite an exemplary carbon pricing scheme
  No we don't
  
  There are no policies really affecting the choice to fly or eat meat.

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.
- 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.
  
  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...
- 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.
  
  No doubt that is a large part of it!
- Yea, i'm sure Greta would be angry with this headline's framing

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.

Today they told in the radio news that FFF had an impact on "only" 25 % of Germans. IMHO that's a lot.

That's a Gretachievement!
- I saw what you did here, that's greta

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

I think this kind of activism is much more effective than the Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion people gluing themselves to roads and preventing ambulances from getting to hospitals.
Support for the climate movement has halved in two years in Germany because of these idiots.
While 68 percent of those surveyed in 2021 said they fundamentally supported the climate movement, the figure in the current publication has halved to 34 percent. What is striking is that support has declined significantly in all social groups, even in more progressive milieus that were otherwise more open to the movement.
When asked specifically about the "Last Generation" road blockades, 85 percent of those surveyed said they had no understanding of this form of protest.
- Moderate change is insufficient. We need to reduce CO2 by 10% per year if we want to keep the 1.5° goal. We need a wide spectrum of civil protest.
  Look at the history of womens' voting rights. Or the anti vietnam war movement, or the no nukes movement.
  Edit: The workers' movements for 48 and 40 hour weeks were also militant, violent protests. Obedience is not everything in a democracy.
  
  Moderate change might be insufficient, but you are confusing the size of the change with the extremity of the process. The evidence seems to show that some forms of more extreme protest reduce the prospects of change
  
  Big movements on developed countries won't change how developing countries will treat the climate going forward. Do you really believe on the numbers reported by China for example? Do you think that poor countries where millions of people starve care about not burning hydrocarbons? CO2 production is a game of scales and the little we can contribute is just that, little, very little in fact if compared to what big industries do around the world.
- Support may have halved, but I can think of several possible reasons.
  Maybe people decided it's a lost cause, we're on the sinking ship, and why not enjoy it while it lasts.
  Maybe people realized that they would actually have to take moderate cuts, instead of just talking, doing little, and continuing as always (electing conservatives and neoliberals).
  Maybe people fell for "Bild-Zeitung"'s campaigns ("a fraction of heating systems need to be changed out, with government financial assistance, by the year 2044" being portrayed as basically "the Green minister wants to forbid you from heating your home, starting next year").
  Maybe support wasn't that sincere if it collapses that easily.
  Maybe the last 3 years are not that different from the last 30 years. The rhetoric "please please think of how your children will live" in the last 30 years has impressed about 1 in 5 persons, but not more. 4 out of 5 just don't care.
  Maybe the surveys only got support because they presented the issue as "you won't have to do or pay anything or have any inconvenience".
  Etc.
- Extinction Rebellion doesn't glue themselves to the road. You don't know what you're talking about.
  They have e. g. put banners on public art works in the city, being very careful that they attach them in a non-damaging, easily reversible way. (They were called dangerous and radical for that.)
- Support for the climate movement has halved in two years in Germany because of these idiots.
  People who changed their minds on the topic of needed actions against climate change because of this, never were real allies to begin with! These people would have jumped ship anyway the first time they would be requried to do the slightest change to their way of life. The impact climate change has on all of our lifes already and will continue to do so even more, hasn't changed on bit simply because LG pissed off some people. So people who changed their minds certainly don't understand how deep in shit we're already in. These either need to be truely convinced or dragged with us while they kick and scream through laws!
  It's very easy to say your in favor of doing "something" when nothing is being done and nothing is required of you. Fuck these people and it's good that we see how far we still are from actually getting the population on our side.
  
  We do not even know from this poll, if people changed their mind about needed actions against climate change at all. We just know, that they dislike the Last Generation.
  
  I disagree. I’m an ally, I’ve mainly gone vegetarian, cycle a bike most days and have solar panels on my roof. But when Extinction Rebellion glues themselves to my train , or splashes paint across a painting in an art gallery that pisses me off.
  If a pollster had asked me the day after ‘do you support the movement’, I wouldn’t have been giving a clear ‘absolutely yes’ answer.
- A few years ago, FFF were dangerous, lazy idiots blind to reality who just want to skip school and who scare people unnecessarily.
  FFF today is often portrayed as moderate and reasonable.
  Why the change? Does FFF now seem acceptable because they are relatively quiet and marginalized and clearly no threat to the status quo?
  Suppose theoretically, FFF held the same large, constant demonstrations as they did a few years ago. Suppose they looked like they could actually influence politics. Wouldn't they again be seen as suspicious and impossible to support for decent reasonable people?
- Supporting the climate movement and adapting environmental friendly habits are two different kind of shoes. That poll says nothing on how the Last Generation impacted stuff like voting decisions.

Proof that Europe is not too bright.
- How so?