Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Ecological Sustainability Chapter Introduction

We all know the truth. Our planet is dying. Climate change is searing a major ecological crisis across the planet.

Glaciers and polar ice shelves are crumbling. Species are being eradicated at record numbers. Air pollution kills about two million people prematurely each year. Water supplies are drying up, while water systems are being sold off to big corporations concerned only with expanding their profits. Meanwhile, our nation keeps building new coal plants, even though they are the most destructive way to meet our energy needs. And the Obama administration and some Democrats are pushing dangerous new nuclear power plants.

Our Green solutions make a sharp and immediate break from this madness. We believe that the human community is just one part of the Earth community. The human community is an element of the Earth community, not the other way around. People and our governments must support the ecological dynamics, not destroy them.

The global climate crisis is the defining challenge of our generation. We have a plan to make drastic changes quickly to avert global catastrophe. Greens are ready to lead the way to save our planet.

Here’s our Green vision for protecting our planet:

To forestall disaster, we call for a halt in increases in greenhouse gas emissions, and then reducing these emissions 90% by 2050. Senator Obama only calls for 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions below 1990 levels by 2050. That won’t be enough to avert catastrophic climate change. The Green plan is stronger.

As a nation, with less than 5% of the world’s population, we consume 22% of the world’s energy resources. That must change.

Greens support a decisive shift away from coal, oil, and nuclear power, towards clean and renewable energy such as wind, solar, ocean power, geothermal and small-scale hydropower. Republicans and Democrats do not.

We call for extensive energy conservation efforts, to reduce energy consumption by 50% in 20 years. Republicans and Democrats do not.

We call for a Manhattan Project-level of commitment to developing clean renewable energy technologies.

To jumpstart the solar market, we call for massive federal, state and local investment in solar cells on government buildings.

Unlike Democrats and Republicans, we Greens are opposed to nuclear power. The prospect of a radioactive catastrophe is ever-present, and there is no safe way to dispose of the radioactive waste.

We call for early retirement of nuclear reactors in less than five years, no new nuclear plants, and an end to all corporate welfare for the nuclear industry. Compare that to Senator Obama, whose top campaign staffer was a lobbyist the nuclear power company Exelon.

We also support a ban on new coal-fired power plants, and phasing out of electrical production by the burning of coal. Senators McCain and Obama say they support “clean coal” but really clean coal is a fiction invented by the coal industry.

Much of the solution to climate change is at the local level. We Greens support massive subsidies for the growth of mass transit, as well as more bike lanes, bike paths and auto-free zones.

Greens support major changes in agriculture. We call for a dramatic expansion of organic farming. We want to shift price supports and subsidies away from industrial agriculture to organic agriculture, small family farms and cooperatives. We also oppose the construction of all new factory farms.

We Greens want environmental justice. That means no new siting of toxic chemical or waste facilities in areas already contaminated.

And we must stop polluting so much. Greens support a shift away from the use of toxic chemicals, and towards an industrial system based on clean production.

We Greens want to protect our nation’s beautiful public lands. We call for a halt on all industrial timber cutting and clear-cutting on federal and state public lands.