“People, Planet, Peace”: Green Party 2024

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 17, 2024

“A Jill Stein Administration will advance the ecosocialist Real Green New Deal that the Green Party made its signature issue in the 2010s.” (Green Party Platform, below)

The Green Party’s candidate Jill Stein (with running mate Butch Ware) is taking climate more seriously than Kamala Harris. In the Presidential debate, Harris did not dare pronounce the climate-change issue as an “existential threat” as done by her boss, Joe Biden. No mention of a domestic CO2 tax; border tariffs to prevent “leakage”; or global climate governance either. No reference to California, the leading climate state with gasoline prices 50 percent higher, electricity rates double, the national average. And Harris even bragged out the increase in domestic oil and gas production, even though this positive development occurred despite, and not because of, Biden-Harris policy.

As it was, the debate indicated that “Climate change is no longer a standalone issue in politics.” But to one candidate it is, giving a choice to climate activists a choice in the upcoming election. Back-peddling Harris or front-peddling Stein?

“Today we face a worsening global climate crisis that threatens the future of human life on Earth,” the Green Party platform reads. Continuing:

2023 was the hottest year on record. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the past decade. This accelerating global heating is wreaking havoc on ecosystems, leading to bigger and deadlier fires, floods, megastorms, droughts, and heat waves. Environmental and climate injustice are disproportionately harming Black, brown, low-income, and Indigenous communities across the country and around the world.

Yet despite this existential emergency, the last few years have seen massive expansions in fossil fuel planning, infrastructure and production, with 2023 breaking the record for US oil production. The Wall Street parties, funded by corporate polluters, are driving us over the climate cliff.

Continuing:

We all have a human right to a livable planet with a stable climate, healthy food, clean air and water, and living soil. We need a real Green New Deal to transition rapidly from an economic system that is destroying our only home to a sustainable society built around human needs and protecting life on Earth. We need to act now so that our children and future generations can not only survive, but thrive.

Take this with a bag of salt. The record warming year was not predicted by climate models nor explained by greenhouse gas physics. The abrupt change is explained by natural factors that mainstream scientists are listing and trying to figure out. The “control knob” of CO2 on global climate change has, once again, fallen into uncertainty. In fact, the control knob is natural variability for weather statistics that may or may not set records.

Here is the Green Party platform in detail, and “ecosocialism” it is.

The Real Green New Deal

A Jill Stein Administration will advance the ecosocialist Real Green New Deal that the Green Party made its signature issue in the 2010s. 

It is imperative to distinguish the Real Green New Deal from the nonbinding “Green New Deal” resolution proposed in recent years. For instance, the nonbinding “Green New Deal” does not call for a ban on fracking or a prohibition of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Moreover, the inadequacy of the nonbinding “Green New Deal” to address climate and ecological crisis is further demonstrated by the following:

• Extends the timeline for zero emissions by 15-20 years to 2050 
• Redefines zero emissions to “net zero” to enable the continued burning of fossil fuels with false climate solutions like carbon capture and sequestration and direct air capture
• Replaces tenet of democratic public ownership and planning in the energy, transportation, manufacturing, and housing sectors with unreliable market-based incentives featuring public subsidies for private corporations
• Does not stipulate the phase-out of nuclear power – a scam which is dirty, dangerous, unaffordable, uninsurable and has no solution to the problem of toxic nuclear waste
• No mention of the need for deep cuts in military spending and operations to help pay for the Green New Deal and slash emissions in the process

In short, we need the economic democracy of an ecosocialist Real Green New Deal to plan and coordinate the complicated transition to 100% clean energy and zero emissions on the rapid timescale required to save our climate. An ecosocialist approach is also necessary to fairly compensate and center people – primarily, Black, Indigenous, and the poor, who were systematically excluded from the original New Deal – as well as redress the lasting impacts of profoundly racist policies that derived from it including, but not limited to, redlining – which acted as a catalyst for the legacy of environmental racism.  

Climate and Energy

• Declare a climate emergency utilizing presidential powers associated with the National Emergencies Act, Defense Production Act, and the Stafford Act, and issue executive actions to expedite national and international climate action. This would release $650 billion per year to support the manufacture of renewable energy and clean transportation technology, jump-starting the Green New Deal by generating millions of good-paying union jobs that green the economy – while improving the health of workers, ecosystems and communities. It also enables the reinstatement of the crude oil export ban overturned in 2015, comparable to closing 42 coal plants. It also enables suspension of the operations of all offshore leases and reduces fossil fuel exports, imports and investments in overseas fossil fuel projects.
• Create an Office of Climate Mobilization to coordinate policy changes and other needed interventions to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately achieve climate justice
• Achieve 100% clean renewable energy and zero-to-negative carbon emissions by no later than 2035
• Ensure all climate solutions are global in scope
• Fund full climate reparations to developing nations as part of a Global Green New Deal
• Reduce the size and budget of the military, as hyper-militarized foreign policy and military-dependent domestic economy are major contributors to the climate emergency, while also ensuring the military transitions to green energy
• Codify and implement the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice and require all federal agencies to be trained in, and implement  the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing 
• Ensure a Just Transition for workers shifting from the fossil fuel and other extractive and polluting industries to alternative work of their choosing
• End all forms of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry
• Prioritize disadvantaged and other environmental justice communities with 60 percent of green investments and climate justice projects
• Take the energy industry into public ownership using a democratic federated structure, with municipal and regional utilities
• Take all railroad systems into democratic public ownership, including freight, commuter, and high-speed rail
• Build an electrified coast to coast high-speed rail and local Solutionary Rail
• Provide clean baseload power using responsibly sourced energy storage technologies that capture renewable energy surpluses
• Fully fund and strengthen the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior and superfund site cleanup
• Support a Constitutional Green amendment to guarantee the right of all people to clean air, land, and water
• Invest in renewable energy infrastructure across the nation, including wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, battery and energy storage, and green hydrogen for limited uses where appropriate
• Build a nationwide, publicly-owned smart electricity grid
• Ban all forms of fracking, mountaintop removal, tar sands mining, and new fossil fuel infrastructure
• Establish a moratorium on funding, constructing, and operating false climate solutions including carbon capture and sequestration, carbon offsets, cap and trade, biofuels, hydrogen combustion, “renewable natural gas”, waste incineration, and other forms of geoengineering
• Phase out nuclear power, a dirty, dangerous, expensive, and uninsurable unneeded technology, and ensure no new nuclear energy facilities are constructed
• Incentivize circular economies and zero-waste manufacturing 
• Invest in geothermal energy infrastructure
• Prioritize energy efficiency and conservation, require new buildings to demonstrate zero emissions by 2035 and retrofit existing buildings as part of a larger plan to phase out all existing gas hookups
• Subsidize installation of heat pumps to replace fossil fuels for heating and cooling
• Expand and transform the American Climate Corps into a public agency that employs millions for ecosystem restoration, climate damage mitigation, and renewable energy development
• Rescind toxic provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act including those that provide subsidies, direct payments, and other forms of financial assistance to the fossil fuel industry, and provisions to fast-track the Mountain Valley Pipeline
• Rescind permits for the Line 3, Line 5, and Dakota Access Pipelines, and implement an immediate and permanent ban on all Liquefied Natural Gas exports and infrastructure projects
• Establish a Federal commission to deliver justice for residents of Cancer Alley, including recompense for all residents impacted by decades of environmental racism
• Address the crisis of contaminated water supplies with national efforts to remove lead, PFAS, and other toxins from our water

So will the Green Party figure in this year’s election? They are on the ballot (below) in most states with others expected to follow.