the Green Jobs New Deal that includes my annotations and very much a work-in-progress:
1. Cut military spending at least 90%.
2. Create millions of green Living wage jobs through massive public investment in relocalized renewable energy, mass transit, conservation, food and material production, wildlife corridor and watershed revitalization.
3. Set ambitious, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax to meet them. Focus public expenditure on what all plant and animal species are confronting at present and into the interminable future: beyond increasing tipping points of Extreme, Runaway Climate Change Adaptation.
4. Establish universal, quality single-payer "Medicare for all" health care.
5. Fully fund free pre-K through 16 public, lower through higher education.
6. Replace all existing trade agreements with those to improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards.
7. Decriminalize and regulate marijuana. Treat drug abuse and addiction as a matter of public health, rehabilitation and education rather than a criminal matter.
8. Enact tough limits on credit card interest and lending rates, progressive tax reform and strict financial regulation. Return all illegally seized, bank-held property to their rightful owners. Break up the mega-banks with Local banks that reinvest in the Community.
9. Amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood.
10. Pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms. Overturn the so-called 'Top-two' Proposition 14. Return all lobbyist donations to the public coffers. Campaign reform with public financing by a check off your tax return - necessary for democracy to be resuscitated. Stop the lobbyist third house from owning the legislators and writing the legislation.
11. Institute proportional representation - retire the electoral 'college' - Implement Instant runoff voting to ensure grassroots democracy and save taxpayer funds spent on elections.
Four Pillars • The international Green Party movement is guided by the "Four Pillars": Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, Nonviolence.
Ten Key Values • Greens in the United States added six more of three paired, complementary Values:
Decentralization, and Community-Based Economics,
Feminism, and Respect for Diversity,
Personal and Global Responsibility, and Future Focus/Sustainability
- to form the "Ten Key Values" subscribed to by Green Parties in locals, Counties, States throughout the US and the US National Green Party.
Live the Ten Key Values!
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Friday, April 13, 2012
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Financial meltdown offers opportunities for green economic growth
With financial markets world-wide frozen and if failed political governance is held to account, opportunities now are beckoning for a environmentally sustainable, regulated, green-collar, solar-thermal, carbon and resource tax-based economy to emerge. read more
Financial meltdown offers opportunities for green economic growth (entire article)
Current measures attempting to stem Wall Street hemorrhaging by the Bush regime act to privatize profits and socialize losses. The failed financial markets and broken government want socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor as patches and fixes. The entire financial structure has evaporated. Credit between banks and businesses vital to expansion and meeting payroll is frozen and curtailed. Rebuilding along the lines of the past greed-based, unregulated laissez-faire markets is not acceptable. Looking at this barren commerce landscape, opportunities now are beckoning for a environmentally sustainable, regulated, green-collar, solar-thermal, carbon and resource tax-based economy to emerge from the wreckage of failed markets, allowing the individual and relocalized communities to survive and prosper, stepping back from the abyss of today's precipice of complete financial, social and ecological ruin dwarfing the 1930's Great Depression.
To avert ever-escalating climate change-caused arctic glacial melt, desertification, drought, extreme weather and wildfires, rising ocean levels, plant and animal extinction, and human settlement dislocation, a collective effort on the scale of a Green New Deal is required immediately. We cannot expect the same financial and political mechanisms who brought us ecological and financial collapse to weigh in our effort to restore our survivability and sustainability. Consuming the planetary ecological services (as if the human species was entitled to use and lay waste to earth's resources) is directly related to unsustainable, unending accumulation of economic wealth that fuels environmental destruction. Conservation and frugality (making sacrifices and taking care of each other) will help define our transition in weaning ourselves off the oil standard and toward a 100% renewable energy economy to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The Federal Reserve's possible response of printing massive amounts of paper currency to infuse the lending system only leads to a deflated currency and runaway price and interest rate hyper-inflation. Once U.S. wealth is vaporized, civil insurrection, food and energy shortages will be met by martial law.
Nationalizing the Federal Reserve must make constituents beneficiaries not causalities of 'bail-out' plans. Today's unregulated economy based on the oil-standard, debt, interest and inflation is fueling skyrocketing prices which makes higher education, buying a house or a loaf of bread unaffordable by anyone. Deregulated markets have led to worthless paper backing securities falsely claimed to have had value by now failed mortgage lenders and security trades such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns (purchased by JP Morgan) all of whom must be held accountable for their full participation in the so-called sub-prime meltdown and provide relief to the millions of homeowners and pensioners unfairly treated by the privatized, unregulated banking industry. Any Congressional economic stimulus bill must be a funded mandate drawing from those responsible for the excesses of unregulated banking and oil concerns and directed toward investments in an economy based on 100% renewable energy source (wind, ocean, tidal, solar, geothermal).
To avert ever-escalating climate change-caused arctic glacial melt, desertification, drought, extreme weather and wildfires, rising ocean levels, plant and animal extinction, and human settlement dislocation, a collective effort on the scale of a Green New Deal is required immediately. We cannot expect the same financial and political mechanisms who brought us ecological and financial collapse to weigh in our effort to restore our survivability and sustainability. Consuming the planetary ecological services (as if the human species was entitled to use and lay waste to earth's resources) is directly related to unsustainable, unending accumulation of economic wealth that fuels environmental destruction. Conservation and frugality (making sacrifices and taking care of each other) will help define our transition in weaning ourselves off the oil standard and toward a 100% renewable energy economy to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The Federal Reserve's possible response of printing massive amounts of paper currency to infuse the lending system only leads to a deflated currency and runaway price and interest rate hyper-inflation. Once U.S. wealth is vaporized, civil insurrection, food and energy shortages will be met by martial law.
Nationalizing the Federal Reserve must make constituents beneficiaries not causalities of 'bail-out' plans. Today's unregulated economy based on the oil-standard, debt, interest and inflation is fueling skyrocketing prices which makes higher education, buying a house or a loaf of bread unaffordable by anyone. Deregulated markets have led to worthless paper backing securities falsely claimed to have had value by now failed mortgage lenders and security trades such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns (purchased by JP Morgan) all of whom must be held accountable for their full participation in the so-called sub-prime meltdown and provide relief to the millions of homeowners and pensioners unfairly treated by the privatized, unregulated banking industry. Any Congressional economic stimulus bill must be a funded mandate drawing from those responsible for the excesses of unregulated banking and oil concerns and directed toward investments in an economy based on 100% renewable energy source (wind, ocean, tidal, solar, geothermal).
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Meeting the global warming challenge
My architecture firm and my legislative agenda once I'm elected to the California state assembly share the same goal: To require all new construction and remodeling to meet the 2030 target of a graduated reduction of fossil fuel usage to zero by implementing innovative sustainable design and tax strategies, encouraging transit-oriented, pedestrian friendly, mixed-use development, generating on-site renewable power and/or certified renewable energy credits. The overall objective is to 'get off the grid' by achieving net-zero-energy performance.
The goals set in California were inspired by the 2030 Challenge goals, in which the nonprofit organization Architecture 2030 calls for no fossil fuel use for buildings by 2030. But California's goals are focused on net-zero-energy performance instead of fossil fuel use. CEC based its definition of net-zero-energy performance, and many of its recommendations, on a report by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which states that a goal of “no net purchases from the electricity or gas grid” may be met with energy-efficient design and “onsite clean distributed generation.” Neither agency explains how net-zero-energy performance would be calculated in a building needing to offset natural gas usage with renewable energy.
The goals set in California were inspired by the 2030 Challenge goals, in which the nonprofit organization Architecture 2030 calls for no fossil fuel use for buildings by 2030. But California's goals are focused on net-zero-energy performance instead of fossil fuel use. CEC based its definition of net-zero-energy performance, and many of its recommendations, on a report by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which states that a goal of “no net purchases from the electricity or gas grid” may be met with energy-efficient design and “onsite clean distributed generation.” Neither agency explains how net-zero-energy performance would be calculated in a building needing to offset natural gas usage with renewable energy.
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