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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	515
Proposal	PLATFORM: Chapter III, Introduction
Presenter	Platform Committee presenter, Maryland Green Party sponsor
Floor Manager	David Strand
Phase	Closed
Discussion	07/26/2010 - 08/08/2010
Voting	08/09/2010 - 08/15/2010
Result	Failed
Presens Quorum	31 0.6666
Consens Quorum	65 0.6666 of Yes and No Votes

Background

GPUS Bylaws Article IX. Platform states:

9-1.1 The GPUS Platform represents policies upon which most Greens would agree and serves as a basis for Green Presidential and Congressional campaigns. The Platform may only be amended as provided by this Article.

9-1.3 In even numbered years in which there is no Presidential Nominating Convention, the National Committee shall be the decision-making body responsible for amending the platform. The process shall be as established in the GPUS Rules and Procedures.

9-1.4 Amendments to the Platform may be submitted for consideration by any accredited state party or caucus, or any committee whose Mission Statement authorizes it.

Proposal

Replace the existing introduction text with the following:

The human economy is a subset of the environment. To be sustainable, all human activity must be in harmony with ecological principles, the foremost of which is that everything is ultimately recycled.

Our industrial economy has disregarded basic ecological fundamentals, considering nature to be an inexhaustible source of raw material for our consumption. We have considered nature something inert, to be exploited, and that any problems caused by industrialization can be cured by further technological advances.

We are living with the consequences. Atmospheric levels of global warming gasses are reaching a tipping point beyond which irreversible warming is unavoidable. Fresh water supplies are being strained through climate change and overuse. Arable land is disappearing to deserts and growing urban centers. Our oceans are dying.

Humans have discovered the ability to modify the genes of living organisms, but still show an inability to work with the ecosystem rather than against it. For example, plants are genetically modified so that they can withstand ever greater amounts of insecticide and herbicide which in turn poison our rivers and bays. The full impact of these new discoveries is yet to be understood.

The economy of the United States and the idealized lifestyle of its citizens are based on the assumption that hydrocarbons will remain in abundant supply while their replacements are developed. Complacency allows citizens and industry to delay transitioning away from our energy guzzling, car based lifestyle to a more resilient community based economy, one that is able to operate without oil, coal or natural gas. The transition to renewables has been a response to oil price spikes rather than a well thought out effort to achieve sustainability.

In the face of these challenges, the Green Party is optimistic that the United States economy can transition to one that is more resilient and in harmony with the biosphere. The Green Party is committed to a “zero waste” economy that reuses every possible resource rather than sends it to a landfill. We believe that our system of factory farming must be replaced with sustainable, organic farming. We believe that we can eliminate our dependence on hydrocarbons.

With our emphasis on grassroots democracy we will challenge the grip of the energy, agribusiness, and other industries that have blocked progress toward sustainable lifestyles. We will work toward an economy that tunes human industry to the biosphere so that all humans will live with the ecosystem rather than exploiting it."

Resources

none

References

Visit the Platform Committee webpage for this proposal at: http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/comments/?p=446.

On the webpage, you can see various formats of the proposal created by the GPUS Platform Committee and the amendment proposal sponsors including the 2004 and 2010 texts side-by-side. You can also read and respond to comments from Greens around the country, including many who are not on the Green National Committee.

Here is the 2004 text of the section being amended:

2004 Original Language

The human community is an element of the Earth community, not the other way around. All human endeavors are situated within the dynamics of the biosphere. If we wish to have sustainable institutions and enterprises, they must fit well with the processes of the Earth. The ideology of industrialism, in both capitalist and communist countries, insists that modern society lives on top of nature and should rightly use and despoil the rest of the natural world as we desire – because any loss of the ecosystems is merely an “externality” in economic thought and because any problems can be addressed later by a technological fix. We are now living through the painful consequences of that arrogant, ignorant perspective. Many of our children suffer from accumulations of mercury and other toxins in their neurological systems, environmentally related cancer is on the rise, and our air and water are increasingly polluted. Meanwhile, our ecosystems are being compromised by the spreading presence of genetically engineered organisms.

Our houses and buildings, manufacturing processes, and industrial agriculture were all designed with the assumption of an endless supply of cheap and readily available fossil fuels. Pollution and despoiling the land were not part of the thinking. The Green Party, however, is optimistic about the alternatives that now exist and that could be encouraged through tax policy and the market incentives of fuel efficiency. We also challenge the grip of the oil, automotive, and automobile insurance industries that have managed to block or roll back progress in public mass transit. The gutting of subsidies for the railroads has meant not only fewer passenger routes but also the addition of thousands of large freight trucks on our highways, decreasing public safety and increasing pollution. We are committed to extending the greening of waste management by encouraging the spread of such practices as reduce, return, reuse, and recycle. We strongly oppose the recent attempts to roll back the federal environmental protection laws that safeguard our air, water, and soil.

The health of the life-support systems – the ecosystems on our continent – is of paramount importance. Inherent in the efficient dynamics of those ecosystems is a vital profusion of biodiversity. Therefore, the Greens call for a halt to the destruction of habitats, which are being sacrificed to unqualified economic expansion. We humans have a moral responsibility to all of our relations, many of which are facing extinction because we carelessly and permanently halt their long evolutionary journey.

The Green Party also supports the spread of organic agriculture and the careful tending of our nation’s precious remaining topsoil. We support planetary efforts to slow the ever-increasing numbers of humans pressuring the ecosystems, and we especially support the reduction of consumption of the world’s raw materials by the industrialized Northern Hemisphere. We are appalled by our country’s withdrawal from serious efforts to limit greenhouse gases that are contributing mightily to global climate disruption. The Green Party strongly urges the United States to adopt an actively responsible position in this crisis and to take significant action to address the problem.

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