Bastien Girod

Bastien Girod (2011)

Bastien Girod (born December 21, 1980 in Geneva ; resident in Champoz ) is a Swiss politician ( Greens ) and environmental scientist .

Life, education and work

Girod first attended a Rudolf Steiner School , then the German Gymnasium Biel, and then studied environmental science at the ETH Zurich . From 2006 to 2009 he worked on his doctorate on life cycle assessments under the title “Integration of Rebound Effects into Life-Cycle Assessment”. For the period from July 2010 to June 2012, the Swiss National Science Foundation sent him to the University of Utrecht as a visiting researcher or postdoc . In August 2011 he ended his research project prematurely after a year, as he had already achieved his research goals and returned to Switzerland. He took a position at the ETH Zurich at SusTec (Group for Sustainability and Technology), which deals with the interaction between politics, companies and technology in relation to climate protection . From 2016 to 2018 Girod completed part-time training in general management at the University of Zurich, which he completed with an Executive MBA. In 2018 he started working as a team leader at South Pole. In the same year he took over the presidium of the trade association for the waste recycling industry (VBSA), which is committed to sustainable waste management.

Girod has been married to Ellen Girod (née Tkatch) since 2012. The couple has two daughters (* 2014, * 2017) and lives in Zurich-Wiedikon .

Political commitment

Bastien Girod first came into contact with politics among the Young Socialists , became a Greenpeace activist and later a founding member of the Young Green Canton of Zurich. From 2005 to 2007 he was a board member of the Zurich section of the VCS . In 2006 he was elected to the city council of Zurich and in the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2007 to the national council, whereupon he gave up the council mandate. In 2011 and 2015 she was re-elected in the elections to the National Council. In the parliamentary elections on October 18, 2015 , he received the highest number of votes from the Green candidates with 70,267 votes . In 2015 Girod also ran for the Council of States. After two ballots, he landed in third place with 107,000 votes, which the media saw as a respectable success. From 2012 to 2018 he was one of the vice-presidents of the Swiss Green Party.

He became known at the cantonal level primarily through protests against off-roaders and controversial practices by the Zurich police.

Green Change - Strategies to Maximize Happiness

In 2010 Girod published a book under the title Green Change at Zytglogge Verlag in Bern . The book is partly autobiographical, partly a political program and a blueprint for the future. The subtitle of the book - "Strategies for Happiness Maximization" - refers to Girod's approach in the non-biographical part. There he combines the findings of happiness research with the requirements of ecological change. Economic growth in itself is not a desirable goal. Instead, a growth in people's happiness must be sought. This goal could also be achieved with less consumption of resources. Girod calls this approach Green Change . A political reorientation is necessary for implementation, which corresponds to the challenges and needs of the people in the 21st century. According to Girod, the protection and improvement of human happiness should become the main goal of political and social activities. The book was discussed in the NZZ , the Tages-Anzeiger and the weekly newspaper , among others .