That’s the problem with our rightwing politicians and government that finally needs to be balanced towards professionals who want to solve actual problems.

Unfortunately we still lie to ourselves about how our farmers do their best for the environment.

I doubt we can get there with only technological advances, but building more efficient infrastructure (also in public transportation) isn’t a bad thing except for cost and emissions of construction.

The conversation where to cut the lavish lifestyles that hurt the environment most will be a long and difficult one, but I believe there are many options and people don’t have to adopt every single one of them to make an impact. People are already changing their diets, sell their cars, go on vacation to nearer places and find creative ways to use the space in their houses.

And specifically for housing: building denser in urban areas is in the interest of the market that can capitalize on it.

I’m still optimistic because with the exception of city governments a majority of our politicians are right wing or conservatives right of center who are all very friendly to businesses. And look how far we’ve come already despite it all.

There is very few housing where some space is shared (I’m not talking about student dorms). They’ve built them as a pilot and it is controversial. Most housing being built trends towards being bigger area-wise per person, so modern 1- or 2- bedroom apartments are significant larger than older ones.

Vegan diets are slowly increasing but Swiss diet is heavy on dairy and meat. I’ve been vegetarian for over 15y, but the average Swiss still eats 3x the amount of red meat recommended by doctors.

The approach leans heavily on things we already do right (energy production is mostly carbon free already), and adopting new tech and standards, mostly by getting rid of gas and oil heating and improving insulation, HVAC systems and geo thermal heat pumps.

Concepts like degrowth or sufficiency are discussed and maybe individually introduced, but it’s still not very prominent.

It’s everything. Including heating, transportation and consumption.

Definitely not a tabu. We’re currently implementing the 2000 watt society in Switzerland. It’s a framework many decisions regarding housing and energy production flow from.

It’s the way I learned about the fuckcars subreddit a few years ago. I think this could be fun and strengthen community. I am around to participate from the European time zone.

Modern houses 10 to 20 years old usually have them, some owners add them later, but there’s still a lot of heating done with oil and gas… and also the heat pumps are often built for heating and not cooling. Often there are no good options for cooling even though better tech than the shitty monoblock ACs would exist.

Looks promising. Thanks for the tip.

Sometimes I wish we could reach back to them and let them know we finally started adapting their ideas.

Now we have huge fields of mirrors in the desert heating up molten salt on top of towers.

You wouldn’t want many carparks in the first place.