It sounds like you are calling nuclear energy a “renewable” source in the same way that solar, hydro & wind are. Can you explain how a mined material with a depleting nature is renewable?
They had even on there own FAQ written "this is an unproven and risky business model." which is now gone. I question how legit they are and would not be surprised if this will cost a lot of people money.
As a Swiss, this video is quite well researched. But I have some small details: 0:16 - The tunnel is designed for 250km/h and they might implement it in the far future, but it has always operated at 200km/h. There is currently no track in Switzerland running faster than 200km/h. 3:14 - The reactor Mühleberg has been shut off in 2019 and is right now slowly beeing disassembled. Switzerland has also decided to abandon Nuclear Energy generation like Germany but they will keep them running until the end of the contract which does make sense economically.
Another major underrated upside of Switzerland imo is also that we dont have a 2 party (government vs opposition) system in politics and that our political parties basically have a gentleman's agreement over who to vote into the executive (which gets elected by parliament and consists of 7 equal members rather than one president)
they call those "coalitions" in English not like the US and UK, or most other English speaking countries have a competent system of it, just wanted to tell you its name
I like Switzerland but I would consider Netherlands and Austria any time over Switzerland. These two countries are also beautiful but I respect your opinion.
I don't like Switzerland, they don't have bottled water for sale anywhere in the airport. And i got a ridiculous 250 euro speeding fine. I was only there for a few hours - going from Geneva to the French alps.
Whenever I go on vacation abroad and come home to Switzerland, I simply realize how much just makes sense in our system. A really beautiful country to live in
Another factor for the good infrastructure is the willingness to invest for returns in decades, rather than for the next quarter or an election term. Another factor is probably the permanent coalition government, which means you need 60% political support for more for most projects. The referendum system ensures boondoggle/pork belly projects have no chance.
The continuity of our Executive branch is also an aspect for that The same people are kept in basically a permanent coalition for a long time with maby one or two being replaced in an election cycle voted on by the parliament, meaning that the pragmatists get the job We don't have 180° turnovers where one government undoes everything the previous govenment tried to build in the last few years
Correction: Being neutral since 1815 and living in what could be charitably described as an impenetrable cragged fortress of death to any invader for little to no reward outside of a cool LHC, secret money, and a uniquely multicultural, yet cohesive group of people who not only hate you, but have a Sig rifle, fifty rounds of ammo, and mandatory practice to make that known is a great way to build up infrastructure and grow your economy to help bring in more tourism Belgium and the Netherlands were neutral for almost as long and we all know what happened to them.
I live in the italian part of switzerland, but a lot more north than Lugano, and we often say stuff like "Lugano is shit" or "Lugano is already italy, much worse than here"
i lived in switzerland for just 4 months, and even though im from denmark (also with great infrastructure), i was amazed by especially trains in switzerland - so modern and efficient. one time i was using the train, and then it stopped for 30 minutes without anyone announcing why, and soon after the staff walked through the train with "giftcards" to all passengers as a way of apologising for the delay. never seen anything like it before!
Delays like this and unannouced train cancellations of connections happened quite often to me and I never got any compensation whatsoever. I liver there for 10 years and must say in the recent years it has become more and more unreliable, at least on the Lucerne-Geneva route
The only reason this can hapen this long without a announcment why is that someone got in front of the train.. sadly or a big animal (cow, deer) source: i work at a train company in switzerland
@@_trixter_9181 Happens quite a lot too to be honest, I've seen it happened once in front of my house at 2 in the morning, not sure if it was an animal or a human though, but a lot of police and ambulances came up and they were looking under the train and covered everything from the sides with these portable walls, once in Thalwil Bahnhof and once on a track near Winterthur... That all within 3 years. Even like that though ive never seen the SBB or SZU or whatever other company hand gifts.
I'm a German and I lived in Switzerland for 2.5 years. The traffic infrastructure is really great. I still struggle to use the adjective "efficient" with Switzerland, because of the overbearing, error prone beaurocracy. It's a nice country to live in, but don't expect things to be easy as soon as you have a piece of paper in hand (and yes, you will use a lot of paper)
I'm glad you raised this. I have a friend from Switzerland who regularly complains about the bureaucracy. Even for things as simple as passport renewals, driving licences, etc., he said was an absolute pain in the backside - especially when compared to the UK, where he has lived (for most of the year) for about 10 years now.
Well if you compare it to the German bureaucracy it is VERY efficient. The obsession with "certfied copies" can only be described as employment creation measure (Arbeitsbeschaffungsmassnahme) for bureaucrats, and do not get me started on how complicated it is to get a passport from a german embassy.
In Canada we have an overbearing error prone bureaucracy that seldom produces anything efficiently and occasionally dispossesses, interns, forcibly sexually sterilizes, forcibly separates children from parents and otherwise destroys the lives of its citizens. If using a lot of paper as part of our bureaucracy were worth mentioning as a significant problem, we’d be in good shape here.
I have a question concerning the swiss system: In Germany a plan gets debated in the "Bundestag" and almost always changed a bit before beeing voted on to a: Better represent the publics view b: Be more efficient. Do the swiss referendums also have a way to be changed without having to be outright voted out?
@@tilli1514 Well, with an initiativ you can write almost anything into the swiss constitiution. As long as you get your 100k signatures and you win the public vote. The parliament has the opportunity to propose an "Gegenvorschlag" (counterproposal). If the committee responsible for the initiativ deems the "Gegenvorschlag" enough they can withdraw the initiativ in favor of the "Gegenvorschlag". In some cases no vote is needed. When the "Gegenvorschlag" is not accepted the public vote will be between the initiativ and the "Gegenvorschlag". Then the referendums. They are needed, if you are not content with a proposed change of law by the parliament. Some proposals need a mandated referendum. So the referendum in itself is for stopping and changing proposed laws.
@@tilli1514 When a new law / initiative / referendum has been agreed on, the "Bundesrat" (which is basicly a group of 7 presidents) and the rest of the executive part of the goverment need to implement the law. In the process, their allowed to change minor things. Back to your question though: If the law is being worked on by the national rat / ständerat, (The senat and the other thing that i forgot the name of) they can make the law whatever they want. (And can change it however they want) BUT: If the law is bad for the people, we can simply collect 50'000 Signatures and bring the law to the national voting.
yeah very great. the initiative has to be accepted by the staenderat, so it renders the concept useless. its almost like the system in germany, where the people cant really decide anything, but they can vote a few people, who again decide for the rest. so our direct democracy isnt very direct..
Trust me Lisa, you were more then Lucky you were blessed . Just being born in a country like this it's a gift in today's madness that is happeing around the world. So if you have a bad day,just be gratefull for your country. -Love from Romania
@@cow2hug483 just ask them after a few years when they moved abroad... thy will change their minds as i did when going to Brazil for 6 years... just then i reaized how much i like the infastructure here :-)
Wow, Switzerland sure knows how to do things well By the way, they are geniuses when combining methods such as nuclear power plants and dams to avoid consuming oil, it's a good move knowing how unstable its price is
about 60% of the energy Switzerland is using comes from fossil fuels. We got a mostly CO2 neutral electricity production, but you often forget the rest of the Energy we are using, for driving a car, heating water or apartments in winter or building new infrastructure.
No, Switzerland doesn't know, although the whole world is convinced of the contrary. Switzerland screwed up big time in a vital point for the country!!!
you can see dams as well... people will get used to it. in my area there are some big windfarms as well, they are much more silent then my neighbours or the cars or the planes etc etc, and are just there, like trees, providing me power to write my bullshit comments into the internet.
Public transport here in Switzerland is indeed so good that I with my 31 years have neither a driver's license nor a car and I never faced issues because of that and I moved 4 times already.
I'm swiss and i think we do still have many things we can improve such as city planning to be better for bicycles, give people more benefits if they do not own a car, do not use as much electricity and other resources. The military for example needs reorganization in that area as well. However overall i am really happy to live here. The semi direct democracy is the closest one can have at the moment as a "true" democracy imo. Living costs are high, but so are wages. You have tons of ways to change/educate yourself further in professional life. We have an apprenticeship system where you do not have to go to college/university at all to earn a good living. Someone in my family made an IT apprenticeship back in the day and some further education, but no bachelor or masters degree and they earn about 8k a month. This is way more effective as tons of job require more practical knowledge and you can always add degrees later on. I did the purely academic route (go to uni now) and i work in my respective field. Every path is possible. If you loose your job, you will get paid 80% of your former pay for 2 years if you continue to send out applications. They still have possibilities to improve this as many swiss that used this service say they felt not treated optimally, but it's on good tracks
Agreed, riding the bike in cities like Zurich or Lucerne really can be a bit adventurous. And even outside of cities you have to switch lanes what seems like every minute ^^
I have to make something clear, Germany is not shutting nulcear powerplants down for no reason, because there are a few: First of all, the money to energy ratio of nuclear powerplants isn't that good and the main factor is ofcourse the risk of one missfunctioning and exploding/poisioning the area. (Just wanted to make that clear, but the rest of the video is really great.)
I just want to give you a complimet for the sheer quality of your video’s. The videoclips are perfectly matched to your speech. Your titles manage to catch my attention every time.
No disrespect for CH or to you, but "CH has super efficient hydro plants compared to the European average" could just as well have been "CH has all the mountains, compared to the European average". :)
@@crytill There's stuff to like about CH, but goodness does it have a lot of issues! I didn't know, until I gained some family and friends who live there. Before then, they just seemed to be so well organized. So surely they would also be sensible, right? I was so naive!
Get real dude. Yes, Sommeruga Simmonetta gave Donald Trump a lecture on this garbage - and eventually had to quick over her misleading the country about the hydropower solutions.
Swiss here. 3:14 Mühleberg is out of service since 2019 (there are still 4 reactors because Beznau has 2) 3:22 the government decided in 2011 that Switzerland will opt out of nuclear energy (they started with Mühleberg --> closed in 2019). Although there are debates now about stopping the plan of a controlled shut down (mostly from right wing parties).
Climate change is a bigger and more urgent problem than nuclear waste. Fossil fuel plants emit more radiation than nuclear into the air. In 100 years technology should be able to dispose of nuclear waste by sending it into e.g. a miniature black hole, thus turning it into energy, or some other means. Closing nuclear should wait until no more fossil fuel plants in Europe are online.
@Smith Rockford - Price compared to renewables is way too high. - Not even that reliable. Look at France right now. -- With increased risk of drought, the reliability of cooling water in the summer decreases. --- Thus also environmental potential damage to hydrological systems - Dependancy on fuel producers like Russia. - Take a decade to build - Take decades before they break even the initial carbon emitted to build them, thus are not suitable to reach climate goals until 2050. - Lifetime CO2 emissions incl. uranium mining and enrichment way above all renewable sources - Not enough uranium deposits worldwide for a century of an all-in nuclear option on an international basis
For curious ppl the mostly shown towns in this video are Luzern, Bern and Zürich The big trainstation shown is in Luzern and the beautiful bridge is in Bern 😊🇨🇭
They were actually one of the poorest countries in europe for a long time, because they lacked any kind of resources (except maybe agriculture) and only recently they became so wealthy (recently as in historical)
@@موسى_7 Iran is such an ethnically divided place held together by their religion but will split. Persians dont even make up 50% of Iran population they are destined for civil war.
@@swedishprogrammer good for you 😅 AND you should be proud ☝️😉 actually the most beautiful watches like omega and all from the swatchgroup come directly from my hometown biel/bienne - who is also named « watchcity » 😉☺️… To someone from sweden, i would mention, if it could be possible to let us win just once against your icehockeyteam?! ☝️🤷♀️😅 enjoy the day! 😊
@@Area-wq9ze I'm proud. From this moment I'm both swede and swiss! Omega from your hometown? Cool! I don't follow icehockey so I hope you guys win 😁. Switzerland is such a beautiful country. I really feel that you should borrow us some mountains 🤗
I even had the best gas station experience in Switzerland back when I had to use the motorway from Southern Germany to the Cotê d'Azur 😂 You have to pay + get a coupon when you want to use the toilet & get a discount at the gas station store BUT while I was looking up to the coffee prices, almost everyone who got out of the toilet barrier just gave me their coupons as well so at the end the coffee was free for me. 😎😂
To be fair, shining the EU average nuclear dependence of 11% on France was a pretty bad placement, kinda leads people to thinking France isn't a huge nuclear user when it makes up about half their electricity
Not anymore, more than half of frances nuclear reactors are broken at the moment so France imports much (mostly renewable) energy from Germany at the moment.
@@konfigjunior1855 yeah the Frenchie have the worst electricity generation in Q4 2022 in EU. They have almost double the price of EU. But noone care as long as the gouvernement subsidise it and pay the difference
There are a few points in this video that are quite misleading: 1. Nuclear Power Plants are set to shut down. Definitely not for "no reason", as we all know about Fukushima and Tshernobyl. It's rather a matter of risk management, do you want to take it or not? Moreover there's the (currently) unsolved issue of nuclear waste. 2. Hydropower Plants as depicted here are hardly an energy source but rather an energy storage. They don't get magically filled with water and then provide clean energy. Are renewables used to pump the water uphill? -> renewable energy. Is fossil energy used to do it? -> fossil energy. Moreover you need the geographic potential to implement these plants. Thus it is of course great that Switzerland uses its potential, but it's not a state of the art example for flatter nations. 3. The education you mentioned has got nothing to do with children under the age of 15, as though shown in the video. It's a way of learning professions that do not require an university degree. Compared to the US, where nearly every professional passed high school and went to college afterwards, the largest part of the swiss doesn't attend high school but learns their profession in a work and education combining programm called "duale Ausbildung" (dual apprenticeship). This is a very succesful, hands on concept which also exists in Germany (not as widespread though). Eventually you would only go to college or university for subjects as engineering, science or social studies.
Very impressive for a mountainous land locked country which makes it naturally difficult to develop but the Swiss determination shows anything is possible!
Hydropower is actually really easy in the mountains, and railways aren't too difficult if you have enough money. Far easier to serve villages lined up in a valley with a train than serving dozens of small places spread out in a flat land
@@haisheauspforte1632 are you from Switzerland? I am actually from Hawai’i but always wanted to visit Europe. I have family friends who live in Norway which is also a very developed country!
Imagine if the US worked even with 1% of the energy the Swiss had with the mountain technology involving energy and transportation. The Appalachian region would boom.
You would need a majority intelligent population that hadn't grown up attacking problems from an evil vs good mindset . One pragmatic idea gets thrown into the fire once one government was official frames it in an "us vs them " context
Switzerland's secret to green energy production/reliance: Step 1: Find a lake wedged between mountains (preferably with only 1 downstream exit point) Step 2: Build a wall (with turbines inside) at downstream end of lake and let gravity do the rest Step 3: Connect said wall to national power grid
@@Eluv3iti3 I know about hydro battery and of course snow and rain can do refilling too tho I just hope the native species in those lake aren't affected.
You missed Switzerland's best innovation to the prosess you defined: Add a second lake downstream to the first, capture water flowing from the first lake into the second lake, buy cheap German thermal energy at night and use it to pump water from 2nd lake into first lake, then wait for peak noon demand and repeat process, starting at #1!
This is generally a very good and informative video. But regardless of your stance on nuclear power - claiming that Germany is phasing it out for “no reason” is not really contributing to peoples understanding of either Germany or nuclear power. Even if you disagree with the reasons, at least acknowledge that they exist.
That jab came out of left field. I think Germany is being ridiculous but I'm not going to act like a usually competent country and people have suddenly all become idiots. They're intelligent and knowledgeable, at least as much as any of us, and I'm sure most have seriously weighed the options. They have valid reasons.
How idiotic it is instead destroy living grounds Landcapes and animal engironments with thousends of giant ugly Windmachines and huge areas of solar Panels. Insane you can See in Germany to destroy forests because of building Wind machins.that is now law!!! Birds and wilddears animals, we are shitting now on you.thanks the Wind and solar Lobby. A tragedy...insane
7:05 Small correction. The tunnel in the beginning of the video (and the one in the picture) is the Gotthard Basetunnel and was finished in 2016 so it did never have any explosives. The tunnel you mean is the Gotthard tunnel. This one is the older of the the 2, they are both for the same route, but the Gotthard tunnel was built more than 100 years ago where they didn't have the equipment to build such a long tunnel like the Basetunnel. The reason there are 2 is because the 1st one built in the 1800s was already the longest in the world back then with 15 kilometers, but the trains have to take a long route up the mountain and back down on the other side to get to it. For the new tunnel they don't have to go uphill but instead blast towards it, stay in the dark for 20 minutes at 200kph max. speed and blast further to the next station saving about 30 - 60 minutes.
So as a "Echter Deutscher" as we say we say in Germany, I have of course something to complain. Jokes to side, we Germans don't shut down our nuclear power plants for no reason. Our people simply don't want them near them, and a big reason for that was also Chernobyl. I personally don't identify with that statement, since I think nuclear power plants are a good way for green energy, besides the nuclear waste, but that's also a problem in Germany. We just don't have any good place for keeping nuclear waste for hundreds of years. Our geographic sucks at that point. And most people protest still to that day for the running Power plant wich should go down this year I think. I love Switzerland "Grüße and alle Schweizer" and I think their way is great. We simply have not the right geographic, too many people, and a weird political situation, especially with our last leaders, since they aren't really for renewable energy stuff. I hope for the best we can change that and take the Ukraine war as a good Startpoint for Invest more in renewable energy than fossile plants. Sorry for my weird English, hope y'all have a wonderful day 😉 greetings from Cologne🇩🇪
I think we could all understand that some people are nuclear 'refuseniks' after Chernobyl. But we all know the decision to scrap nukes was after Fukishima. That exploded after a seismic shock and tsunami. Is Germany at risk of either?
11% of its citizens live abroad. The local population consists sort of nearly 30% migrants with a much higher birth rates than the original ethnic Swiss. Public schools were very conservative in the past but have come up to world standards. Google and many more have set up camp in Zurich to select talents from their very own "MIT" called ETH, a similar tertiary institution having endless courses in English and rivaling the very best global universities sometimes reaching rank 6 of global lists. Sadly, traffic jams are ever present but the rail options are heavy subsidized with affordable bike rentals on many stations. With over 5000km of dedicated scenic bike tracks summer season is full of endless fun. A medical system that en-corrugates better self responsibility with a choice of excess and direct access to specialists. A single common sense accident insurance for all workers that runs on a low 5.5% overhead rounds up the overall efficiency of the country.
@@joelrebollar7055 over half are from just 4 or 5 nationalities: germans, italians, portugese, fench and kosovo. And over 80% are europeans, but of course also many africans, middle easterners and asians.
@@arolemaprarath6615 not many christians here, neither swiss, nor otherwise. Even on paper barely 60 percent are christian anymore, but pretty much noone goes to church or does anything else religion-y aside from some social events like weddings and such. Altho you might also not care and just be using "christian" as a synonym for "non-muslim" of course.
My question on energy production is always “how much of *consumed* energy does ‘X’ handle” since in denmark we might produce a lot of wind power(example number 50%) but that doesn’t de facto mean it is 50%(example) of consumed
@@ElijahEystberg Denmark has a rather small population so i think it can handdle it but i mean 3 or 4 plants would power the country. Germany huge mistake with all the coal/gas plants. For once my country france is doing somthing good by reviving the nuclear industry.
There is a big difference between energy and electricity. The electricity generation is almost fully carbon dioxide free, as almost 100% of it comes from hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. There was a fuel oil fired thermal power plant in the canton of Wallis, but it has been shut down in the 90s. Not to mention the many waste incirenation plants there are in Switzerland. They generate electricity (about 2% of the total consumption) and heat for local houses. There are currently no fossil fuel fired power stations operating in the country.
Because you have no fossil fuel ressources. But you are importing fossil fuels and fossil electricity from other countries. So what you said is absolutely irrelevant.
@@QLEK99 That might be true to some extension. Yes, there are electricity imports from neighboring countries, but the amount of electricity imported is very small. Even if the imports of electricity were huge, not all the imported electricity would be fossil-based.
There are two more aspects to our semi-direct democracy. generally pure direct democracy for a modern nation isn't feasible. we already vote ~4x a year on some 4+ major issues (trade deals, migration laws, energy projects, covid laws and such) if everything was done via direct democracy we'd be doing nothing but vote all day. so generally we leave the day to day politics to politicians. there are however a few important mechanisms. first: Switzerland is extremely federalized, we have 26 Kantons that can decides most things for themselves. second: one can gather signatures to trigger referendums to either force a law or action politicians didn't want. or prevent one they did. basically the citizens always get to veto the politicians. this has many obvious great sides but it also means Organisations like the EU hate dealing with us since our politicians cant really promise things the way pure representatives can, also the process is fairly slow and thus not suited for something like proactive geopolitics games (imho a good thing). I would like to add that we should stick to our neutrality now more than ever. I hate to see our neutral position drift to someone like Erdogan and frankly the credibility of our many institutions from the red cross, to many aid and development organizations, or diplomatic services depend on it. also we already carry sanctions if the majority of the UN and the security council do. why we should automatically carry one decided by brussels and Washington is beyond me and I think our country can do a much greater service to peace and stability in the world by (until now anyway) being able to send observers to conflicts that everyone trusts as neutral (and allows to say send doctors to their prisoners of war), providing a platform for conflict parties to meet that isn't controlled by nato/Russia/China or even being able to exchange messages between say north Korea and the US at the most hostile of times.
exaclty. I dont get it, how a lot of people think, that we have direct democracy, while living in a democracy. Shows real lack of understanding a democracy, which should be basic knowledge while living in one.
@@xXSAIMANXx i think the correct term is "Halb-direkte Demokratie". but since switzerland is, as far as i know, the only country that has this system, i've never heard the term in english (though i'm sure it exists) and i don't think it's well-known. obviously, having a direct democracy is impossible, but since the other term is so unknown i guess it's easier to call it direct. point of it is: the citizens get a say in almost every single thing the government does, there are just limitations to make it manageable.
@@Slydime917 you get nice lanscapes if you travel to the alps, not if you live in a city. The education is extremely detailed-oriented and perfectionist - I don’t know how much any foreigner would enjoy that. Also, the culture here is super closed, some people tend go be petty and feisty and there’s barely any life in cities
Poland is certainly one of them. Driving to places per automobile can take ages (but it shouldn't) and the rivers aren't connected. I learned this through a Polish guy that I know and was shocked. Living in bigger cities or in their sorrounding area is recommended if you plan on living in this country.
The world should look at us more for inspiration. Halfdirect Democracy, sharing responsibilities, immigration and integration as a culture, almost zero crime, extremely low unemployment, a generally wealthy population, a functional social welfare system, free education. We are not perfect and there are big unsolved problems like how expensive it can be to have children and the sometimes unmaintainable high cost of living. But all in all, it works for most. It's like living a premium service.
Tertiary education actually isn't free, but has fees associated with it, which can be a problem for people with a poverty background. Also, when taking the vocational route, higher education can quickly become a financial challenge, especially for people working in lower income sectors. Also, Swiss unemployment statistics are just about as misleading as they are in other countries, as anyone who's been unemployed for more than (roughly) 2 years isn't included in that statistic anymore. And, no, the welfare system isn't exactly functional. It fails in particular when it comes to people who should be in the disability support system, but who got excluded by the reforms of the last 20 years. Any personal development and growth that costs anything more than trivial amounts rapidly scales out of reach, which is devastating for people whose chances in the economy are virtually nil. Also, the final deal breaker for the "functional" qualifier of the welfare system is this: People who aren't citizens are penalized in their ability to become citizens later if they had to go on welfare at a certain point, and the right wing forces who passed the bill that includes this law aren't done with their xenophobically motivated work. They're stabbing at every opportunity, every loop hole they can find to deepen the cracks between the people who live in Switzerland, between poor and wealthy, citizens and non-citizens. This is the reality that these fluff pieces on TH-cam never talk about, and that is easy to ignore if you're wealthy and you've spent 2 years in Switzerland having a total blast or whatever. But it also erases the struggles of those with the least power, of which many don't even have the right to vote.
Fun fact, the Gotthard tunnel must be cooled down because the heat from the Earth core (due to it being so deep underground) would keep it at 42C, or 110F. Also, there's 4G connectivity along the whole 20 min of tunnel.
The UK railways were terrible in public hands, and now terrible in private hands. The railway problem is not the system. It's the UK/Anglosphere itself. In the Middle East, the people are very corrupt. You can't design a government free of corruption. You just need the people to be good enough if the country is not rich enough to handle corruption. So it's the corruption of UK management which is the problem.
@@موسى_7 I mean I'm not sure the UK is much worse than, say, France in terms of corruption. Yet France has a developped and rather efficient railway system with the TGV being one of the fastest trains in the world. Although it's true many train lines in scarcely inhabited regions were closed in the latest decades.
@@JScot92 USA, UK, Canada, and Australia and NZ are nothing when it comes to railways and transit when compared to developed Eurasian countries, especially China, Japan, Spain, and the Netherlands.
The UK is 8th in the world in terms of rail passenger kilometres, has a denser rail network than France, Spain and many others and runs a higher number of daily services than France (which has a similar population). The UK rail network also has an excellent safety record. It's not so good in other ways but it very much depends on what stats you look at.
Must be nice to live in a safe, efficient, well governed society with a high quality of infrastructure, education, healthcare and environment. It’s especially envious when the society that you live in is moving backward…..America needs to get its act together
@@Gillipollas26 that's the reason America literally will continue the trajectory it's in . Just leave and go where like minded people are . There are fewer people like you in America than you may think
@neal cassady US population is 300'000'000. 3mil is 1% of that. Swiss Population is 8'000'000. 100k is 1.25%. So percentage wise Swiss has more immigration.
3:23 "and unlike Germany Switzerland plans to keep these running instead of shutting them down for no reason" . Just to clarify, Germany had many reasons to shut them down, it was a decision with downsides and upsides, in my opinion a bit too early but the right choice.
@@toms8812 But to call nuclear "green", that is misleading. Renewable resources should be called green, but not nuclear. And I said too early, because it takes time to build actual renewables.
As someone already said this choice has caused Germany to have climbing emissions. Nuclear power plants are essential for green energy production, as they are the only stable and reliable means of green energy production. It is also the safest, as statistically they have the lowest death/twH (yes somehow lower than wind, don’t ask me how). There isn’t much of a reason to shut them down, as far as i can tell. Every possible upside i found is easily discredited, and the downsides are numerous
Well, up and down I think is not the right term to define it, more like Schulz(or whatever his name was) got paid by the kremlin to promote Gas and demote Nuclear.
@@toms8812 no we dont replace it with coal and gas. We replace it with renewables. Even though we should have Shut down coal First, atom energy is Not replaced By fossil fuels at all.
Thank you for spending the time to create and share this content 🙏🏾 some countries do some things better, why not pull from the experience of another if/when there’s something to learn/etc from 💙🇺🇸
3:23 Just a correction, Germany shut their plants down after they saw the nuclear disaster in Japan. Not for no reason. Other then that, amazing video as always!
3:30 is a weird dig at other countries being dependent on solar and wind, like electricity will turnoff at night when no wind is blowing? Which European nations?
The footage is stunning. Maybe one day I’ll get to see it myself but I’m blessed to be around the world in bed seeing this beautiful country. Those mountains 🏔😱
I am Swiss, and it must be said that Switzerland is developed thanks to the things that the video said. But its success is also due to the fact that Switzerland is a tax paradise, and that it has not known the destruction of war (thanks to its mountain barrier) Good chanel btw !
Rather be a tax oasis than a tax dessert. I really don‘t get the problem some people have with competitive taxation where the governments focus on a minimum spending rather than a maximum.
I am swiss too and my minor is history. I do love switzerland, too, but the reason we were not destroyed during the war is mainly because of all the trading and lenient behaviour we had towards nazi germany. But we were efficient enough to conceil that so the allies didn't attack us either. We were technically neutral, but not really. If you'd like some more detailed information on it, I'll happily type it out.
How does Switzerland compare with like, such as the other Alpine nations - such as Slovenia and Austria or even Alpine regions of Northern Italy, SE France?
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It sounds like you are calling nuclear energy a “renewable” source in the same way that solar, hydro & wind are. Can you explain how a mined material with a depleting nature is renewable?
@@ttopero I am definitely in favor of nuclear power, but I agree "clean" would have been a better term.
They had even on there own FAQ written "this is an unproven and risky business model." which is now gone. I question how legit they are and would not be surprised if this will cost a lot of people money.
WOW 😳 😁 Next stop 🚂🚃 Australian Ski Fields. 🌏 🦘 highest mountain 🏔️ can fit inside those tunnels if they built 1 from the surface to the bottom.
As a Swiss, this video is quite well researched. But I have some small details:
0:16 - The tunnel is designed for 250km/h and they might implement it in the far future, but it has always operated at 200km/h.
There is currently no track in Switzerland running faster than 200km/h.
3:14 - The reactor Mühleberg has been shut off in 2019 and is right now slowly beeing disassembled. Switzerland has also decided to abandon Nuclear Energy generation like Germany but they will keep them running until the end of the contract which does make sense economically.
Yeah
Germany also stopped it because its dangerous,they decided after seeing the Japanese nuclear disaster
@@Israelball Nope, incorrect. It's because of german politicians being bought out en masse by russia. Oil and gas, my friend, oil and gas.
@@salieri_sg9413 well they started the plan a few years ago before this whole russia ukraine thing
It's also funny how the Video Creator sais for no reason, although there are more than enough.
Another major underrated upside of Switzerland imo is also that we dont have a 2 party (government vs opposition) system in politics and that our political parties basically have a gentleman's agreement over who to vote into the executive (which gets elected by parliament and consists of 7 equal members rather than one president)
It called monarchy, Hasburgs one 😅
@@TurbidSugar19 No because the 7 people aren't in the same political party :)
@@TurbidSugar19 i think you are mistaking another mountainous European country for swiss
Yes! Makes for a very slow-moving and therefore stable system.
they call those "coalitions" in English
not like the US and UK, or most other English speaking countries have a competent system of it, just wanted to tell you its name
I’m not Swiss but I live in Switzerland and I’m in awe of how amazing of a country I live in every day
I like Switzerland but I would consider Netherlands and Austria any time over Switzerland. These two countries are also beautiful but I respect your opinion.
@@alexandermuller950 how come?
@@JohnSmith-vg6hb My personal preference only!
@@alexandermuller950 why haiku
I don't like Switzerland, they don't have bottled water for sale anywhere in the airport. And i got a ridiculous 250 euro speeding fine.
I was only there for a few hours - going from Geneva to the French alps.
Whenever I go on vacation abroad and come home to Switzerland, I simply realize how much just makes sense in our system. A really beautiful country to live in
I visited Switzerland last September. I was very impressed, not just with the infrastructure, but with the culture. Gives one hope for humanity.
Another factor for the good infrastructure is the willingness to invest for returns in decades, rather than for the next quarter or an election term. Another factor is probably the permanent coalition government, which means you need 60% political support for more for most projects. The referendum system ensures boondoggle/pork belly projects have no chance.
I admire the pragmatism of the swiss .
The continuity of our Executive branch is also an aspect for that
The same people are kept in basically a permanent coalition for a long time with maby one or two being replaced in an election cycle voted on by the parliament, meaning that the pragmatists get the job
We don't have 180° turnovers where one government undoes everything the previous govenment tried to build in the last few years
@kamil s where are you from
@kamil s you are obviously talking rubbish!
@kamil s public infrastructure creates a favorable context for private profits.
Being neutral since 1815 is a great way to built up infrastructure and grow your economy to help bring in more tourism
Correction: Being neutral since 1815 and living in what could be charitably described as an impenetrable cragged fortress of death to any invader for little to no reward outside of a cool LHC, secret money, and a uniquely multicultural, yet cohesive group of people who not only hate you, but have a Sig rifle, fifty rounds of ammo, and mandatory practice to make that known is a great way to build up infrastructure and grow your economy to help bring in more tourism
Belgium and the Netherlands were neutral for almost as long and we all know what happened to them.
@@EbonySaints yeah good luck climbing those mountain if the bridges is destroyed
@@Rawarart Or is a Rocky avalanche is coming your way lol
Being one of the very few actual democracies in the world helps, too.
They are NOT neutral. They act neutral but have picked sides many times. They sides with Nazi germany and Hitler for example.
A few years ago I went to the Italian Switzerland, a city called Lugano. Of all the cities that I have visited, this one was the closest to an Utopia.
I live in the italian part of switzerland, but a lot more north than Lugano, and we often say stuff like "Lugano is shit" or "Lugano is already italy, much worse than here"
@@tcholly its still beautiful tho
@@tcholly hey ma cazzo
@@tcholly sto andando a vivere a lugano, ed è appena un po' meglio dell'italia xd
@@tcholly and it is saying how cultural are you! gosh
i lived in switzerland for just 4 months, and even though im from denmark (also with great infrastructure), i was amazed by especially trains in switzerland - so modern and efficient. one time i was using the train, and then it stopped for 30 minutes without anyone announcing why, and soon after the staff walked through the train with "giftcards" to all passengers as a way of apologising for the delay. never seen anything like it before!
Delays like this and unannouced train cancellations of connections happened quite often to me and I never got any compensation whatsoever. I liver there for 10 years and must say in the recent years it has become more and more unreliable, at least on the Lucerne-Geneva route
The only reason this can hapen this long without a announcment why is that someone got in front of the train.. sadly
or a big animal (cow, deer)
source: i work at a train company in switzerland
@@_trixter_9181 Happens quite a lot too to be honest, I've seen it happened once in front of my house at 2 in the morning, not sure if it was an animal or a human though, but a lot of police and ambulances came up and they were looking under the train and covered everything from the sides with these portable walls, once in Thalwil Bahnhof and once on a track near Winterthur... That all within 3 years.
Even like that though ive never seen the SBB or SZU or whatever other company hand gifts.
In Germany I had regular delays of over 30 mins on my 45 minute ride. It’s completely ridiculous
Quick note: The nuclear powerplant in Mühleberg was already shutdown in 2019. Otherwise great video!
That can't be. That would be for no reason.
@@pfandfrei8771 it was shutdown by the company who owns it due to the sinking rentability (it was running since 1971) :)
Also, the rest will be shut down until 2050 i think. So we're also shutting them down for no reason.
@@neoneonize if I remember right.. Switzerland will use them until "they are not safe anymore"... Whatever that means
Most of the people, mostly the green ones, want to shut it down because its a security risk. And rather go to gas and Coal..
I live in switzerland and this country amazed me everyday. Thanks switzerland for being my second home.
I'm a German and I lived in Switzerland for 2.5 years. The traffic infrastructure is really great. I still struggle to use the adjective "efficient" with Switzerland, because of the overbearing, error prone beaurocracy. It's a nice country to live in, but don't expect things to be easy as soon as you have a piece of paper in hand (and yes, you will use a lot of paper)
I agree. The Swiss use two mantras: "do something well once so you don't have to do it again" and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
I'm glad you raised this. I have a friend from Switzerland who regularly complains about the bureaucracy. Even for things as simple as passport renewals, driving licences, etc., he said was an absolute pain in the backside - especially when compared to the UK, where he has lived (for most of the year) for about 10 years now.
@@grantm6933 I don't think it compares to the nightmare bureaucracy of France tho.
Well if you compare it to the German bureaucracy it is VERY efficient. The obsession with "certfied copies" can only be described as
employment creation measure (Arbeitsbeschaffungsmassnahme) for bureaucrats, and do not get me started on how complicated it is to get a passport from a german embassy.
In Canada we have an overbearing error prone bureaucracy that seldom produces anything efficiently and occasionally dispossesses, interns, forcibly sexually sterilizes, forcibly separates children from parents and otherwise destroys the lives of its citizens. If using a lot of paper as part of our bureaucracy were worth mentioning as a significant problem, we’d be in good shape here.
We don't only have referendums, we also have initiatives! That is the real achievement 😎
I have a question concerning the swiss system: In Germany a plan gets debated in the "Bundestag" and almost always changed a bit before beeing voted on to a: Better represent the publics view b: Be more efficient. Do the swiss referendums also have a way to be changed without having to be outright voted out?
@@tilli1514 Well, with an initiativ you can write almost anything into the swiss constitiution. As long as you get your 100k signatures and you win the public vote. The parliament has the opportunity to propose an "Gegenvorschlag" (counterproposal). If the committee responsible for the initiativ deems the "Gegenvorschlag" enough they can withdraw the initiativ in favor of the "Gegenvorschlag". In some cases no vote is needed. When the "Gegenvorschlag" is not accepted the public vote will be between the initiativ and the "Gegenvorschlag".
Then the referendums. They are needed, if you are not content with a proposed change of law by the parliament. Some proposals need a mandated referendum. So the referendum in itself is for stopping and changing proposed laws.
@@tilli1514 When a new law / initiative / referendum has been agreed on, the "Bundesrat" (which is basicly a group of 7 presidents) and the rest of the executive part of the goverment need to implement the law. In the process, their allowed to change minor things. Back to your question though: If the law is being worked on by the national rat / ständerat, (The senat and the other thing that i forgot the name of) they can make the law whatever they want. (And can change it however they want) BUT: If the law is bad for the people, we can simply collect 50'000 Signatures and bring the law to the national voting.
yeah very great. the initiative has to be accepted by the staenderat, so it renders the concept useless. its almost like the system in germany, where the people cant really decide anything, but they can vote a few people, who again decide for the rest. so our direct democracy isnt very direct..
every day I get more and more proud of my country, I'm so lucky to be born here
Trust me Lisa, you were more then Lucky you were blessed . Just being born in a country like this it's a gift in today's madness that is happeing around the world. So if you have a bad day,just be gratefull for your country.
-Love from Romania
@@HuskyTerrier69 I'm sorry for you :(
Switzerland is such a cool country. Many lessons to be learned from them and a true example to follow.
Well as a swiss person i don’t exactly agree but hey nice you like my country 😅
@@fuji.21 why?
@@fvs666 swiss youth thinks its better elswhere. Im 16 and live in swiss, allot of young people have the same mindset.
@@cow2hug483 just ask them after a few years when they moved abroad... thy will change their minds as i did when going to Brazil for 6 years... just then i reaized how much i like the infastructure here :-)
@@kalesunil8377 are you Indian?
Wow, Switzerland sure knows how to do things well
By the way, they are geniuses when combining methods such as nuclear power plants and dams to avoid consuming oil, it's a good move knowing how unstable its price is
about 60% of the energy Switzerland is using comes from fossil fuels. We got a mostly CO2 neutral electricity production, but you often forget the rest of the Energy we are using, for driving a car, heating water or apartments in winter or building new infrastructure.
@@nopenopenobody2971 you also need to mention the imported energy
No, Switzerland doesn't know, although the whole world is convinced of the contrary. Switzerland screwed up big time in a vital point for the country!!!
California: noooo we can't tunnel through mountains that's too expensive :(
Switzerland: hold my tunnel-boring machine
boom
Silicon valley alone has more wealth than the entire nation of switzerland combined.
They used a ton of explosives and a lot of miners got killed
No, it`s "hold my Rivella".
@@matthiasmartin1975it is indeed. Glad someone set this straight.
Proudly Swiss, I will share this video with my friends in the world.
Wind power has a very low uptake in Switzerland, mainly because people don't want to see them. Possibly new forms with vertical blades may help.
Wise people. Wind energy destroys the landscape
you can see dams as well... people will get used to it. in my area there are some big windfarms as well, they are much more silent then my neighbours or the cars or the planes etc etc, and are just there, like trees, providing me power to write my bullshit comments into the internet.
It's also not efficient, kills a lot of birds, and is very expensive to maintain.
@@renkov9840 what u say is untrue.
@@certaindeath7776 Statistics say otherwise.
I'm Norwegian and approve this message: The Swiss are masters of the mountains! ✋🏻😌
Isn't Norway also a powerhouse though?
Thanks! Norway is one of the best countries in the world, too!
Proud to be a swiss 🇨🇭
Best AD I've seen in a while, genius
Public transport here in Switzerland is indeed so good that I with my 31 years have neither a driver's license nor a car and I never faced issues because of that and I moved 4 times already.
I'm swiss and i think we do still have many things we can improve such as city planning to be better for bicycles, give people more benefits if they do not own a car, do not use as much electricity and other resources. The military for example needs reorganization in that area as well. However overall i am really happy to live here. The semi direct democracy is the closest one can have at the moment as a "true" democracy imo. Living costs are high, but so are wages. You have tons of ways to change/educate yourself further in professional life. We have an apprenticeship system where you do not have to go to college/university at all to earn a good living. Someone in my family made an IT apprenticeship back in the day and some further education, but no bachelor or masters degree and they earn about 8k a month. This is way more effective as tons of job require more practical knowledge and you can always add degrees later on. I did the purely academic route (go to uni now) and i work in my respective field. Every path is possible. If you loose your job, you will get paid 80% of your former pay for 2 years if you continue to send out applications. They still have possibilities to improve this as many swiss that used this service say they felt not treated optimally, but it's on good tracks
Agreed, riding the bike in cities like Zurich or Lucerne really can be a bit adventurous. And even outside of cities you have to switch lanes what seems like every minute ^^
@@TheSandkastenverbot agree, swiss cities and streets are primarily built for cars and that's gotta change.
The video was a bit chaotic but I learned a lot about Switzerland. Good country I wish the best for them.
I have to make something clear, Germany is not shutting nulcear powerplants down for no reason, because there are a few: First of all, the money to energy ratio of nuclear powerplants isn't that good and the main factor is ofcourse the risk of one missfunctioning and exploding/poisioning the area. (Just wanted to make that clear, but the rest of the video is really great.)
Anyone else finds it sometimes weird, when a TH-cam video pops up and its about ur small country:D?
I just want to give you a complimet for the sheer quality of your video’s. The videoclips are perfectly matched to your speech. Your titles manage to catch my attention every time.
No disrespect for CH or to you, but "CH has super efficient hydro plants compared to the European average" could just as well have been "CH has all the mountains, compared to the European average". :)
True that, not to mention CH isn't self sufficient in terms of energy.
@@crytill There's stuff to like about CH, but goodness does it have a lot of issues!
I didn't know, until I gained some family and friends who live there.
Before then, they just seemed to be so well organized. So surely they would also be sensible, right?
I was so naive!
@@Scapestoat I'm Swiss😅
@@crytill Oh no! Then you're well aware of so many more things than I am. XD
Get real dude. Yes, Sommeruga Simmonetta gave Donald Trump a lecture on this garbage - and eventually had to quick over her misleading the country about the hydropower solutions.
The new Gotthard rail tunnel is too new to have had explosives in it. The Gotthard road tunnel probably did though.
The Gotthard road tunnel never had explosives in it, as it is part of the alpine bunker system. It does have blast doors on both exits to seal it.
Swiss here. 3:14 Mühleberg is out of service since 2019 (there are still 4 reactors because Beznau has 2) 3:22 the government decided in 2011 that Switzerland will opt out of nuclear energy (they started with Mühleberg --> closed in 2019). Although there are debates now about stopping the plan of a controlled shut down (mostly from right wing parties).
Climate change is a bigger and more urgent problem than nuclear waste. Fossil fuel plants emit more radiation than nuclear into the air. In 100 years technology should be able to dispose of nuclear waste by sending it into e.g. a miniature black hole, thus turning it into energy, or some other means. Closing nuclear should wait until no more fossil fuel plants in Europe are online.
@Smith Rockford "potential" hazards. Although the chances are insanely low.
@Smith Rockford nuclear waste is expensive to store
@@sqq3985 even more expensive than global warming?
@Smith Rockford
- Price compared to renewables is way too high.
- Not even that reliable. Look at France right now.
-- With increased risk of drought, the reliability of cooling water in the summer decreases.
--- Thus also environmental potential damage to hydrological systems
- Dependancy on fuel producers like Russia.
- Take a decade to build
- Take decades before they break even the initial carbon emitted to build them, thus are not suitable to reach climate goals until 2050.
- Lifetime CO2 emissions incl. uranium mining and enrichment way above all renewable sources
- Not enough uranium deposits worldwide for a century of an all-in nuclear option on an international basis
I’ve always had a strange passion for geography which your high quality videos manages to please
That's why I love Switzerland
For curious ppl the mostly shown towns in this video are Luzern, Bern and Zürich
The big trainstation shown is in Luzern and the beautiful bridge is in Bern 😊🇨🇭
Your country is full of cowards profiteering off war. Shame on you
l mean they had no war for like 200 years?
That's enough time to perfectly design a country :D
They were actually one of the poorest countries in europe for a long time, because they lacked any kind of resources (except maybe agriculture) and only recently they became so wealthy (recently as in historical)
0-2 losers
Iran isn't so rich despite similar 2 centuries of peace, though Iranians are much better fed and living in less violence than Arabs and Afghans.
@@موسى_7 Iran is such an ethnically divided place held together by their religion but will split. Persians dont even make up 50% of Iran population they are destined for civil war.
@@موسى_7 Iran had a huge war with iraq.
They: Where are you coming from?
Me: Sweden
They: I have been there, Swiss people are really nice
Me: 🤦♂️
the opposite is also true, the struggle is real
They: Where are you from?
Me: Switzerland
They: Oh, i love Stockholm! 😉
I‘m ok with that - it could be worse ☺️ lots of love from switzerland!…
@@Area-wq9ze 🥰 Usually they say that we make good clocks 😅
@@swedishprogrammer good for you 😅 AND you should be proud ☝️😉 actually the most beautiful watches like omega and all from the swatchgroup come directly from my hometown biel/bienne - who is also named « watchcity » 😉☺️…
To someone from sweden, i would mention, if it could be possible to let us win just once against your icehockeyteam?! ☝️🤷♀️😅 enjoy the day! 😊
@@Area-wq9ze I'm proud. From this moment I'm both swede and swiss! Omega from your hometown? Cool!
I don't follow icehockey so I hope you guys win 😁.
Switzerland is such a beautiful country. I really feel that you should borrow us some mountains 🤗
I even had the best gas station experience in Switzerland back when I had to use the motorway from Southern Germany to the Cotê d'Azur 😂 You have to pay + get a coupon when you want to use the toilet & get a discount at the gas station store BUT while I was looking up to the coffee prices, almost everyone who got out of the toilet barrier just gave me their coupons as well so at the end the coffee was free for me. 😎😂
coupons from the toilets are almost everywere in western europe
@@dolentec8733 I know, I'm from Southern Germany but the gas station in Switzlerland was 1000 times cleaner + everyone just gave me their coupons.
This video proofs that despite what is actually happening in switzerland, the countries myths and cliches lives on forever
To be fair, shining the EU average nuclear dependence of 11% on France was a pretty bad placement, kinda leads people to thinking France isn't a huge nuclear user when it makes up about half their electricity
Not anymore, more than half of frances nuclear reactors are broken at the moment so France imports much (mostly renewable) energy from Germany at the moment.
@@leonst99 what? i thought it was the other way around
@@konfigjunior1855 yeah the Frenchie have the worst electricity generation in Q4 2022 in EU. They have almost double the price of EU. But noone care as long as the gouvernement subsidise it and pay the difference
There are a few points in this video that are quite misleading:
1. Nuclear Power Plants are set to shut down. Definitely not for "no reason", as we all know about Fukushima and Tshernobyl. It's rather a matter of risk management, do you want to take it or not? Moreover there's the (currently) unsolved issue of nuclear waste.
2. Hydropower Plants as depicted here are hardly an energy source but rather an energy storage. They don't get magically filled with water and then provide clean energy. Are renewables used to pump the water uphill? -> renewable energy. Is fossil energy used to do it? -> fossil energy. Moreover you need the geographic potential to implement these plants. Thus it is of course great that Switzerland uses its potential, but it's not a state of the art example for flatter nations.
3. The education you mentioned has got nothing to do with children under the age of 15, as though shown in the video. It's a way of learning professions that do not require an university degree. Compared to the US, where nearly every professional passed high school and went to college afterwards, the largest part of the swiss doesn't attend high school but learns their profession in a work and education combining programm called "duale Ausbildung" (dual apprenticeship). This is a very succesful, hands on concept which also exists in Germany (not as widespread though). Eventually you would only go to college or university for subjects as engineering, science or social studies.
thanks for this video ,I am a Swiss-Canadian growing up in Switzerland and am extremely proud of both countries
Very impressive for a mountainous land locked country which makes it naturally difficult to develop but the Swiss determination shows anything is possible!
Hydropower is actually really easy in the mountains, and railways aren't too difficult if you have enough money. Far easier to serve villages lined up in a valley with a train than serving dozens of small places spread out in a flat land
@@haisheauspforte1632 hydropower is also the cheapest form of renewable energy!
@@jon6309 only where it is feasible, lime mountains or deep valleys. Flat terrain is completely unsuitable
@@haisheauspforte1632 are you from Switzerland? I am actually from Hawai’i but always wanted to visit Europe. I have family friends who live in Norway which is also a very developed country!
@@jon6309 I live in Germany, but i've been to Norway and Switzerland as well (plus many more European countries)
So proud to be Swiss. thanks for the awesome video mate
Imagine if the US worked even with 1% of the energy the Swiss had with the mountain technology involving energy and transportation. The Appalachian region would boom.
its sucks that the region best poised for green energy revitalization (cheap hydro+cheap labor is great for industry) is so thoroughly yoked to coal
same in my country, there is a part in my country where the government always gives excuses for it's slow development just cause it is mountainous
And the Rocky Mountains.
@@adamcheklat7387 the rockies are much less impoverished, they have reliable tourism and a decent industrial base
You would need a majority intelligent population that hadn't grown up attacking problems from an evil vs good mindset . One pragmatic idea gets thrown into the fire once one government was official frames it in an "us vs them " context
Usually small countries tend to build really well since they've got very limited land and they think so much before building something
And a tiny country makes it super easy to enforce laws
Switzerland's secret to green energy production/reliance:
Step 1: Find a lake wedged between mountains (preferably with only 1 downstream exit point)
Step 2: Build a wall (with turbines inside) at downstream end of lake and let gravity do the rest
Step 3: Connect said wall to national power grid
Empty lake like a Chad
Are they refilled tho?
@@yestermonth Yes. Some lakes just fill naturally and some are filled with pumps (to use excess electricity, turns the lake into a battery)
@@Eluv3iti3 I know about hydro battery and of course snow and rain can do refilling too tho I just hope the native species in those lake aren't affected.
@@yestermonth I don't know enough to say they aren't affected, but the lakes drain and fill very slowly and are never completely dry.
You missed Switzerland's best innovation to the prosess you defined: Add a second lake downstream to the first, capture water flowing from the first lake into the second lake, buy cheap German thermal energy at night and use it to pump water from 2nd lake into first lake, then wait for peak noon demand and repeat process, starting at #1!
Switzerland shows excellent democracy, ethical life, employment, scenic nature, sectoral developments, educations, and nobel laurates. Great............always.........
3:42 i thought he was gonna start talking about the secret Swiss military bases inside mountains.
Very secrete - so secret that they don't remember where they are.
This is generally a very good and informative video.
But regardless of your stance on nuclear power - claiming that Germany is phasing it out for “no reason” is not really contributing to peoples understanding of either Germany or nuclear power.
Even if you disagree with the reasons, at least acknowledge that they exist.
That jab came out of left field. I think Germany is being ridiculous but I'm not going to act like a usually competent country and people have suddenly all become idiots. They're intelligent and knowledgeable, at least as much as any of us, and I'm sure most have seriously weighed the options. They have valid reasons.
How idiotic it is instead destroy living grounds Landcapes and animal engironments with thousends of giant ugly Windmachines and huge areas of solar Panels. Insane you can See in Germany to destroy forests because of building Wind machins.that is now law!!! Birds and wilddears animals, we are shitting now on you.thanks the Wind and solar Lobby. A tragedy...insane
7:05 Small correction. The tunnel in the beginning of the video (and the one in the picture) is the Gotthard Basetunnel and was finished in 2016 so it did never have any explosives.
The tunnel you mean is the Gotthard tunnel. This one is the older of the the 2, they are both for the same route, but the Gotthard tunnel was built more than 100 years ago where they didn't have the equipment to build such a long tunnel like the Basetunnel.
The reason there are 2 is because the 1st one built in the 1800s was already the longest in the world back then with 15 kilometers, but the trains have to take a long route up the mountain and back down on the other side to get to it.
For the new tunnel they don't have to go uphill but instead blast towards it, stay in the dark for 20 minutes at 200kph max. speed and blast further to the next station saving about 30 - 60 minutes.
Love the theme of vids OBF! You cast another light on many projects/countries and change the way i think about things! Greetings from the Netherlands!
Whenever I leave Switzerland I instantly realize how nice it is to have our infrastructure and clean toilets everywhere.
So as a "Echter Deutscher" as we say we say in Germany, I have of course something to complain. Jokes to side, we Germans don't shut down our nuclear power plants for no reason. Our people simply don't want them near them, and a big reason for that was also Chernobyl. I personally don't identify with that statement, since I think nuclear power plants are a good way for green energy, besides the nuclear waste, but that's also a problem in Germany. We just don't have any good place for keeping nuclear waste for hundreds of years. Our geographic sucks at that point. And most people protest still to that day for the running Power plant wich should go down this year I think. I love Switzerland "Grüße and alle Schweizer" and I think their way is great. We simply have not the right geographic, too many people, and a weird political situation, especially with our last leaders, since they aren't really for renewable energy stuff. I hope for the best we can change that and take the Ukraine war as a good Startpoint for Invest more in renewable energy than fossile plants. Sorry for my weird English, hope y'all have a wonderful day 😉 greetings from Cologne🇩🇪
It's a reason for sure but it just feels so dumb and such a back-peddling way of handling it
dein englisch ist toll! meine deutche ist arm jaja. Ich bin Amerikaner. Ich versuche langsam Deutsch zu lernen
Lol modern reactors create medium radiation waste that go down in centuries. Not a logistical problem. You can also send them abroad
@@laiswith2dots Besten Dank! :)
I think we could all understand that some people are nuclear 'refuseniks' after Chernobyl. But we all know the decision to scrap nukes was after Fukishima. That exploded after a seismic shock and tsunami. Is Germany at risk of either?
11% of its citizens live abroad. The local population consists sort of nearly 30% migrants with a much higher birth rates than the original ethnic Swiss. Public schools were very conservative in the past but have come up to world standards. Google and many more have set up camp in Zurich to select talents from their very own "MIT" called ETH, a similar tertiary institution having endless courses in English and rivaling the very best global universities sometimes reaching rank 6 of global lists. Sadly, traffic jams are ever present but the rail options are heavy subsidized with affordable bike rentals on many stations. With over 5000km of dedicated scenic bike tracks summer season is full of endless fun. A medical system that en-corrugates better self responsibility with a choice of excess and direct access to specialists. A single common sense accident insurance for all workers that runs on a low 5.5% overhead rounds up the overall efficiency of the country.
Who are these migrants?
@@joelrebollar7055 mostly french, german, and italian lol
@@joelrebollar7055 over half are from just 4 or 5 nationalities: germans, italians, portugese, fench and kosovo. And over 80% are europeans, but of course also many africans, middle easterners and asians.
@@MaxVliet As long as they Europeans and Christians, Switzerland is in good hands.
@@arolemaprarath6615 not many christians here, neither swiss, nor otherwise. Even on paper barely 60 percent are christian anymore, but pretty much noone goes to church or does anything else religion-y aside from some social events like weddings and such. Altho you might also not care and just be using "christian" as a synonym for "non-muslim" of course.
That plug was so smooth. I literally did not know that I was watching an ad until it was over.
My question on energy production is always “how much of *consumed* energy does ‘X’ handle” since in denmark we might produce a lot of wind power(example number 50%) but that doesn’t de facto mean it is 50%(example) of consumed
this is a good point
I mean hydrolic and nuclear power produce electricty constantly whereas wind turbines and solar pannels depends on the weather. So yeah good point
@@achillezins6548 hence why I support nuclear and hydro. Sadly Denmark and Germany are removing all nuclear..
@@ElijahEystberg Denmark has a rather small population so i think it can handdle it but i mean 3 or 4 plants would power the country. Germany huge mistake with all the coal/gas plants.
For once my country france is doing somthing good by reviving the nuclear industry.
@@ElijahEystberg and also i didn't knew that denamrk had nuclear plants
I love your Videos and Im so happy u did somethimg about switzerland
Greetings🇨🇭
Shoutout all my swiss folk, lets be grateful every day. Here in zurich people forget way too easily how privileged we are.
As a schwizer myself i aprove this video. Das hesch guet recherchiert!!
There is a big difference between energy and electricity. The electricity generation is almost fully carbon dioxide free, as almost 100% of it comes from hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. There was a fuel oil fired thermal power plant in the canton of Wallis, but it has been shut down in the 90s. Not to mention the many waste incirenation plants there are in Switzerland. They generate electricity (about 2% of the total consumption) and heat for local houses. There are currently no fossil fuel fired power stations operating in the country.
Because you have no fossil fuel ressources. But you are importing fossil fuels and fossil electricity from other countries. So what you said is absolutely irrelevant.
@@QLEK99 That might be true to some extension. Yes, there are electricity imports from neighboring countries, but the amount of electricity imported is very small. Even if the imports of electricity were huge, not all the imported electricity would be fossil-based.
Im a Swiss here learning a lot! Thanks
There are two more aspects to our semi-direct democracy. generally pure direct democracy for a modern nation isn't feasible. we already vote ~4x a year on some 4+ major issues (trade deals, migration laws, energy projects, covid laws and such) if everything was done via direct democracy we'd be doing nothing but vote all day. so generally we leave the day to day politics to politicians. there are however a few important mechanisms.
first: Switzerland is extremely federalized, we have 26 Kantons that can decides most things for themselves.
second: one can gather signatures to trigger referendums to either force a law or action politicians didn't want. or prevent one they did. basically the citizens always get to veto the politicians. this has many obvious great sides but it also means Organisations like the EU hate dealing with us since our politicians cant really promise things the way pure representatives can, also the process is fairly slow and thus not suited for something like proactive geopolitics games (imho a good thing).
I would like to add that we should stick to our neutrality now more than ever. I hate to see our neutral position drift to someone like Erdogan and frankly the credibility of our many institutions from the red cross, to many aid and development organizations, or diplomatic services depend on it. also we already carry sanctions if the majority of the UN and the security council do. why we should automatically carry one decided by brussels and Washington is beyond me and I think our country can do a much greater service to peace and stability in the world by (until now anyway) being able to send observers to conflicts that everyone trusts as neutral (and allows to say send doctors to their prisoners of war), providing a platform for conflict parties to meet that isn't controlled by nato/Russia/China or even being able to exchange messages between say north Korea and the US at the most hostile of times.
exaclty. I dont get it, how a lot of people think, that we have direct democracy, while living in a democracy. Shows real lack of understanding a democracy, which should be basic knowledge while living in one.
@@xXSAIMANXx i think the correct term is "Halb-direkte Demokratie". but since switzerland is, as far as i know, the only country that has this system, i've never heard the term in english (though i'm sure it exists) and i don't think it's well-known. obviously, having a direct democracy is impossible, but since the other term is so unknown i guess it's easier to call it direct. point of it is: the citizens get a say in almost every single thing the government does, there are just limitations to make it manageable.
Thanks for reviewing my country's infrastructure. We're proud of it.
Now I'm jealous of people who live in Switzerland. They're so lucky to have been born there
I live in Switzerland and its not that nice. There’s a lot of problems too haha
@@vicns4602 uh huh. The most beautiful landscape, great education, protected from outside forces.
@@Slydime917 you get nice lanscapes if you travel to the alps, not if you live in a city. The education is extremely detailed-oriented and perfectionist - I don’t know how much any foreigner would enjoy that. Also, the culture here is super closed, some people tend go be petty and feisty and there’s barely any life in cities
I'm not. I'm actually glad I live in The Fairbanks, Alaska. We don't get all of the world's problems up here.
@@vicns4602 I live in Switzerland too and, although it's not perfect, it is WAY BETTER than other places.
Greetings from Switzerland to y'all
Can you do one on the worst designes european country aswell?
Just take a look at east europe lol
Italy, in many regions the railway system sucks and Sardinia doesn't even have any highways.
I’d Honestly suspect more people mentioning belarus or greece
Poland is certainly one of them. Driving to places per automobile can take ages (but it shouldn't) and the rivers aren't connected. I learned this through a Polish guy that I know and was shocked.
Living in bigger cities or in their sorrounding area is recommended if you plan on living in this country.
@@theisgunvald4219 Belarus... are you serious? that's not in Europe - at least not as long as this clown is in service..
6:44 so in Switzerland theres a whole new meaning to "living under a bridge".. lol nice video!!
lol
The world should look at us more for inspiration. Halfdirect Democracy, sharing responsibilities, immigration and integration as a culture, almost zero crime, extremely low unemployment, a generally wealthy population, a functional social welfare system, free education. We are not perfect and there are big unsolved problems like how expensive it can be to have children and the sometimes unmaintainable high cost of living. But all in all, it works for most. It's like living a premium service.
most people in that situation living in switzerland cross the boarder to buy things. There's 2 big duty-free cities on the eastern boarder too.
Tertiary education actually isn't free, but has fees associated with it, which can be a problem for people with a poverty background. Also, when taking the vocational route, higher education can quickly become a financial challenge, especially for people working in lower income sectors. Also, Swiss unemployment statistics are just about as misleading as they are in other countries, as anyone who's been unemployed for more than (roughly) 2 years isn't included in that statistic anymore.
And, no, the welfare system isn't exactly functional. It fails in particular when it comes to people who should be in the disability support system, but who got excluded by the reforms of the last 20 years. Any personal development and growth that costs anything more than trivial amounts rapidly scales out of reach, which is devastating for people whose chances in the economy are virtually nil.
Also, the final deal breaker for the "functional" qualifier of the welfare system is this: People who aren't citizens are penalized in their ability to become citizens later if they had to go on welfare at a certain point, and the right wing forces who passed the bill that includes this law aren't done with their xenophobically motivated work. They're stabbing at every opportunity, every loop hole they can find to deepen the cracks between the people who live in Switzerland, between poor and wealthy, citizens and non-citizens.
This is the reality that these fluff pieces on TH-cam never talk about, and that is easy to ignore if you're wealthy and you've spent 2 years in Switzerland having a total blast or whatever. But it also erases the struggles of those with the least power, of which many don't even have the right to vote.
4:32 this graph is confusing. why is 900B taller than 1.7T
it’s +900B, adding onto the 1.7T
Proud to be Swiss🇨🇭❤️
hey. great video and almost everything is rigth. well researched. i love my country 🇨🇭🇨🇭
Did you just call nuclear power "renewable" after 3:05???
kinda sounded like it
Fun fact, the Gotthard tunnel must be cooled down because the heat from the Earth core (due to it being so deep underground) would keep it at 42C, or 110F.
Also, there's 4G connectivity along the whole 20 min of tunnel.
..and the warm water from the tunnel is used to make kaviar in warm water basins! (I mean to grow up the fish who produce kaviar)
Goes to show that with smart planning, nature and progress can coexist.
I wrote a book on Switzerland and you did way better than I did! Good job.
What a lovely compliment you made to the video author!
Their railways are nationalised. Maybe the UK should do the same
The UK railways were terrible in public hands, and now terrible in private hands. The railway problem is not the system. It's the UK/Anglosphere itself.
In the Middle East, the people are very corrupt. You can't design a government free of corruption. You just need the people to be good enough if the country is not rich enough to handle corruption.
So it's the corruption of UK management which is the problem.
@@موسى_7 I mean I'm not sure the UK is much worse than, say, France in terms of corruption. Yet France has a developped and rather efficient railway system with the TGV being one of the fastest trains in the world. Although it's true many train lines in scarcely inhabited regions were closed in the latest decades.
@@موسى_7 What a sweeping generalisation about the anglosphere. I'm guessing you're one of those people who bases all opinions on stereotypes.
@@JScot92 USA, UK, Canada, and Australia and NZ are nothing when it comes to railways and transit when compared to developed Eurasian countries, especially China, Japan, Spain, and the Netherlands.
The UK is 8th in the world in terms of rail passenger kilometres, has a denser rail network than France, Spain and many others and runs a higher number of daily services than France (which has a similar population). The UK rail network also has an excellent safety record. It's not so good in other ways but it very much depends on what stats you look at.
Quality and investment security.
The two exports of Switzerland.
Powered by the one resource we have.
Well educated people
Must be nice to live in a safe, efficient, well governed society with a high quality of infrastructure, education, healthcare and environment. It’s especially envious when the society that you live in is moving backward…..America needs to get its act together
Exactly, it annoys when me fellow Americans say this (US) is the best country in the world… Quite the opposite
US isnt a landlocked country of less than 10 million souls. Neither does the US have an ethnic majority to rely on like the 60%+ Swiss Germans.
@@Gillipollas26 that's the reason America literally will continue the trajectory it's in . Just leave and go where like minded people are . There are fewer people like you in America than you may think
Don't you worry, we have more and more crazy people here too.
@neal cassady US population is 300'000'000. 3mil is 1% of that. Swiss Population is 8'000'000. 100k is 1.25%. So percentage wise Swiss has more immigration.
I am moving to🇨🇭from Germany in just one month , there is a lot of useful ℹ️ in this video, thx 🙏🏼
This made me think of a song from my country: Moj je život Švicarska - skoro pa savršen.
(Translation: My life is Switzerland - almost perfect.)
Switzerland is so beautiful.
3:23 "and unlike Germany Switzerland plans to keep these running instead of shutting them down for no reason" . Just to clarify, Germany had many reasons to shut them down, it was a decision with downsides and upsides, in my opinion a bit too early but the right choice.
Right choice? Pro-environment, green Germany closes green energy plants and replaces with coal and gas. Yeah, very smart move.
@@toms8812 But to call nuclear "green", that is misleading. Renewable resources should be called green, but not nuclear. And I said too early, because it takes time to build actual renewables.
As someone already said this choice has caused Germany to have climbing emissions. Nuclear power plants are essential for green energy production, as they are the only stable and reliable means of green energy production. It is also the safest, as statistically they have the lowest death/twH (yes somehow lower than wind, don’t ask me how). There isn’t much of a reason to shut them down, as far as i can tell. Every possible upside i found is easily discredited, and the downsides are numerous
Well, up and down I think is not the right term to define it, more like Schulz(or whatever his name was) got paid by the kremlin to promote Gas and demote Nuclear.
@@toms8812 no we dont replace it with coal and gas. We replace it with renewables. Even though we should have Shut down coal First, atom energy is Not replaced By fossil fuels at all.
Thanks from a Swiss for this clip. Sometimes people ask you where you would like to be. My answer is: I'm already here.
Thank you for spending the time to create and share this content 🙏🏾 some countries do some things better, why not pull from the experience of another if/when there’s something to learn/etc from 💙🇺🇸
I soon hope to leave my country and be able to become a Swiss citizen, my country has a lot to learn with this country.
It still takes surprisingly long to get from A to B in Switzerland due to the winding road. But on the bright side, you get stunning views
That is extremely important on the way to work at 6 am in the morning.
The sponsor for this video is so dystopian, I love it
The swiss are amazingly creative. I would have to consider creative and adaptability is some of the best assets for a nation to have to function.
ey das isch denn e super sach!! E schaurig guet video.
3:23 Just a correction, Germany shut their plants down after they saw the nuclear disaster in Japan. Not for no reason. Other then that, amazing video as always!
*no rational reason
Literally no one died in the powerplant accident in Fukushima. So yeah...
when i asked people in germany also often cited the nuclear waste as a reason to not use those power plants. But eh...
@@officialshivertrip still. I’m not totally sure on this because I got this from a TH-cam video
less than 100 people died in fukushima..
3:30 is a weird dig at other countries being dependent on solar and wind, like electricity will turnoff at night when no wind is blowing? Which European nations?
The footage is stunning. Maybe one day I’ll get to see it myself but I’m blessed to be around the world in bed seeing this beautiful country. Those mountains 🏔😱
2:28 genius! Why didn't anyone else ever think of building hydro power plants?
The Schutzstaffel symbol at 2:41 was unfortunate, surely there is a better way to represent electricity diagrammatically.
It's an international symbol to represent electricity, I suggest you leave WWII and come to the 21st century
Lucky and fortunate are those who are born in such countries 😔
Nice video.
my recommended section gave me this when it had 106 views. thank you youtube
I live in Switzerland 20 years only I can say is thank you million times what I great country ❤️🔥
I am Swiss, and it must be said that Switzerland is developed thanks to the things that the video said. But its success is also due to the fact that Switzerland is a tax paradise, and that it has not known the destruction of war (thanks to its mountain barrier)
Good chanel btw !
Tax paradise. Beautiful.
Rather be a tax oasis than a tax dessert. I really don‘t get the problem some people have with competitive taxation where the governments focus on a minimum spending rather than a maximum.
I am swiss too and my minor is history. I do love switzerland, too, but the reason we were not destroyed during the war is mainly because of all the trading and lenient behaviour we had towards nazi germany. But we were efficient enough to conceil that so the allies didn't attack us either. We were technically neutral, but not really. If you'd like some more detailed information on it, I'll happily type it out.
How does Switzerland compare with like, such as the other Alpine nations - such as Slovenia and Austria or even Alpine regions of Northern Italy, SE France?