We need to stop runaway climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 95% by 2030, over 1990 levels.
Climate change is the gravest environmental, social and economic peril that humanity has ever met. Across the world, it is causing vanishing polar ice, melting glaciers, growing deserts, stronger storms, rising oceans, less biodiversity, deepening droughts, as well as more disease, hunger, strife and human misery. It is a tragedy unfolding in slow motion.
Greenhouse gases warm the Earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere. Much of that heat is initially absorbed by the ocean, creating roughly a 30-year delay in the impact of that heat at the surface of the planet. Practically speaking, that means that the melting glaciers and expanding deserts of 2009 were the result of greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere in the late 1970s, when the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was below 350 parts per million (ppm). To return to a safe level of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, we must reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases as quickly as possible to levels that existed before 1980, to 350ppm carbon dioxide.
It is important to support science-based policies to curb climate change. We must have an ambitious plan to make drastic changes quickly to avert global catastrophe. We must expend maximum effort to preserve a planet friendly to life as we know it by curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and actively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
We need to enact an emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change, revive the economy and make wars for oil obsolete.
Initiate a WWII-scale national mobilization to halt climate change, the greatest threat to humanity in our history.
Create 20 million jobs by transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture, conservation and restoration of critical infrastructure, including ecosystems.
We need to implement a Just Transition that empowers those communities and workers most impacted by climate change and the transition to a green economy. Ensure that any worker displaced by the shift away from fossil fuels will receive full income and benefits as they transition to alternative work.
WE need to enact energy democracy based on public, community and worker ownership of our energy system. Treat energy as a human right.
We need to redirect research funds from fossil fuels into renewable energy and conservation. We need to build a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, energy.
We certainly must end destructive energy extraction and associated infrastructure: fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil trains, mountaintop removal, natural gas pipelines, and uranium mines.
Let’s halt any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas, and phase out all fossil fuel power plants. Let’s phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies.
Let’s end all subsidies for fossil fuels and impose a greenhouse gas fee / tax to charge polluters for the damage they have created.
Source: Green Party
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Green Party Platform on the Issues
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