24 Hours: readers’ letter dated November 8, 2024

UNITED STATES

“We are going to help our country heal,” Trump said after his victory. We will help our country heal. We have a country that needs help, and it needs it very badly. We are going to secure our borders, we are going to make everything right in our country, and we made history tonight for a reason, and that reason will be just that.”

When tasting a good local white in a bar in Flon, you may be surprised by the Americans’ choice. The former and future president is infamous for his erratic view of politics, which was on clear display in the final weeks of the campaign. However, Trump consistently offered a clear message that expressed Americans’ frustration with the economy and the state of the country, and he promised to resolve it.

Throughout the campaign, Trump told voters that President Joe Biden, his vice president, Kamala Harris, and undocumented immigrants were responsible for inflation, and that he was committed to solving the problem. . His proposals were often incoherent and absurd. For example, Trump promised to fight inflation while imposing massive tariffs, a combination that almost all economists consider impossible. The mass deportation (of those who invaded America, according to him) that he promised would likely raise prices rather than calm the economy. But in a country where about three-quarters of Americans believe things are bad, a promise to fix everything had a certain flavor and force.

In a strange way, Trump offers a form of hope. This is not a hope for women with complicated pregnancies, nor for LGBTQ people or immigrants, even legal ones. But for those who find themselves under Stephen Miller’s maxim that “America is for Americans and Americans only,” Trump was a way out.

José Conde, Lausanne

“Success has many parents, failure is an orphan,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy said in 1961. Today a certain recently re-elected president would say: “Success only belongs to the delinquent billionaires who are part of the criminals. justice, knowing how to handle the world of mediaand using of those who love ferocious political beasts, in addition to the gullible underprivileged population by promising them that he will lower prices (this is a decoy).” A new synonym for the word deception is: Trumpery.

Many Americans have forgotten the promises he failed to keep during his first term. Due to his unpredictable side, some depredations will continue when his Pandora’s box reopens.

Alain Rochat, Beer

Highways

Car traffic, we now know, is a major contributor to global warming. This is already showing its dramatic, sometimes fatal effects during the serious natural disasters which are increasing.

Reducing automobile traffic, particularly commuter traffic, is therefore an essential objective of transport policy.

Many people, out of personal convenience, have chosen to live in the countryside for its calm and proximity to nature, and to work in the city for a higher salary. Among these, more and more are making the effort, often at the cost of a certain loss of time, to choose public transport for their daily journey between home and work. But most others, to save time, choose the car for these journeys, inconveniencing local residents with the noise and pollution they cause, by not hesitating to cross villages to avoid traffic jams.

And it is now to these very unresponsible citizens that Mr. Rösti wants to give a big gift by widening the motorway between Nyon and Geneva. This is not only extremely costly environmental nonsense, but above all it is in blatant contradiction with the efforts made by the authorities to encourage modal transfer in commuting traffic.

Pierre Guignard, Villeneuve

Since ancient times, we have known that the presence of trees and more particularly forests brings rain. The ancients even deforested humid regions of northern Europe in order to dry them out and make them arable.

We now know that trees and, to a lesser extent, grasslands and annual crops “evapotranspire” water from the soil and thus help feed the clouds. These clouds then give new rains repeatedly. This is called the small water cycle which is responsible for much of our rainfall on the continents.

This evaporation also cools the atmosphere near the ground by carrying latent heat up high and into space. This essential function of vegetation acts as a thermal elevator which maintains the energy balance of the earth. It is for this reason that during the summer it is cool inside the forests, while the tar surface of the roads burns our feet. Where there are no trees or vegetation, such as in deserts, rain is very rare.

If we want to avoid climate degradation and a reduction in our rainfall, we must not build more highways. If we wanted to avoid this degradation, it would be appropriate, at a minimum, to compensate for the destroyed vegetation by reforestation equivalent in surface area and value of existing car parks.

Fred Tschuy, Nyon

Service public

We learned this October 30 that 19 post offices will be closed in the canton of Vaud, which makes our canton the 3^e the most affected in Switzerland. The Post Office seems to completely forget its public service mission and seems affected by a total ignorance of the reality of our countryside.

For us, elected officials from the Morges region, the pill is even harder to swallow with seven municipalities affected, or nearly 40% of the Vaud closures impacting the Morges district. This decision will only isolate our rural regions and its sometimes elderly residents.

At a time when we are constantly being told about the climate impacts of our travels, we are moving away from public services and we are forcing our residents in rural areas to take their vehicles, given the sometimes incomplete public transport service.

Cédric Weissert, head of the UDC group at the Grand Conseil, Mont-la-Ville; Sylvain Freymond, UDC national advisor, Montricher

Did you find an error? Please report it to us.