3. No Financing for Climate Sinners

Left-wing Beat Jans wants to ban Swiss firms from extending loans to «particularly climate-damaging projects». He specifically targets «oil, gas, and coal firms looking for new ways to use coal, or advocate using coal for electricity».

Jans' proposal targets UBS and Credit Suisse, which the lawmaker said lent $12.3 billion from 2015 to 2017 for deep-sea fracking, liquefied natural gas, Arctic oil, tar sand oil, and coal-based energy. These efforts undermine the Paris agreement, according to Jans. The Swiss government recommends rejecting the proposal, which it argues impinges banks' commercial freedom.

4. Stop «Greenwashing»

His left-wing party colleague Prisca Birrer-Heimo is devoting herself to the labeling of sustainable finance products. Birrer-Heimo wants the government to detail its measures to ensure sustainable finance does what the packaging says.

5. Ban Climate-Unfriendly IPOs

Left-wing lawmaker Samira Marti wants to make it harder for Swiss banks to chaperone initial public offerings from climate-unfriendly firms. She also questions the role of finance minister Ueli Maurer's visit to Saudi Arabia shortly before the state oil firm's December IPO.  

None of the proposals are likely to succeed in their current form: Switzerland's consensus-based system of lawmaking means that should one make it through to draft law, it will be adapted until it is acceptable to each of the five major political parties. Each is deeply unpopular on Paradeplatz and in Geneva's banking district – as was a 2013 popular initiative on pay caps, which eventually passed.