[GPSCC-chat] Fw: Mother Nature belongs at the bargaining table

[Caroline Yacoub]

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: shane que hee <squehee at ucla.edu>
Sent: Wed, December 5, 2012 2:10:32 PM
Subject: Mother Nature belongs at the bargaining table


Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:40:10 +0000
>From: Jill Stein <HQ at JillStein.org>
>Subject: Mother Nature belongs at the bargaining table
>
>
> 
>Dear Shane, 
>
>Earlier this week I heard the shocking report from the International Energy 
>Agency that we'll have 3.5 degrees Celsius warming by 2040. This is the first 
>time that climate apocalypse has been acknowledged -- by a reputable, 
>conservative scientific group -- to be happening in our lifetimes.
>
>Today, an opinion article I authored began appearing in newspapers across the 
>United States. I've included the my article below. Please share it with your 
>friends and family. As Rosa Clemente has said, building momentum for the Green 
>New Deal and the Green Party is not just an alternative, it is the imperative.
>
>Â ~ Jill Stein
>
>
>Mother Nature belongs at bargaining table
>
> By Jill Stein. Distributed via OtherWords, a syndication service, this article 
>is currently running in newspapers across the United States.
>
>Throwing the nation over the climate cliff will make our current fiscal 
>challenges look like a minor bump in the road.
>
>As the highly scripted stagecraft of the presidential campaign fades from the 
>headlines, there's a new show in Washington. �Fiscal Cliff� stars President 
>Barack Obama, who urges Republicans and Democrats to agree on a �grand 
>bargain� that would soften the economic shock of the impending 
>across-the-board tax and spending cuts. But that bipartisan handshake would be 
>nothing to celebrate.
>
>Here's why: Both parties are intent on imposing an austerity budget bloated with 
>military spending and private-industry health insurance waste. That would be a 
>raw deal for the American people.
>
>It's a sign of Washington's rightward drift that a Democratic president has 
>offered to put Social Security on the chopping block, even though it hasn't 
>contributed one dime to the deficit. And Obama has offered to cut Medicare 
>rather than pursue an improved �Medicare for All� insurance system that 
>could save trillions over the next decade by eliminating the wasteful 
>bureaucracy and medical inflation inherent in our private health insurance 
>system.
>
>Equally troubling, both parties are ignoring another problem that's truly 
>critical: the climate cliff.
>
>Our planet is rapidly approaching a geophysical tipping point at which the 
>consequences of climate change, such as the disappearance of polar ice caps and 
>the melting of frozen methane deposits, trigger an unstoppable acceleration of 
>warming. Once that happens, it will render our climate incompatible with 
>civilization as we know it.
>
>Throwing the nation over the climate cliff will make our current fiscal 
>challenges look like a minor bump in the road.
>
>Mother Nature must also have a seat at the negotiating table as our leaders hash 
>out their supposedly grand bargain. In a nation already reeling from droughts, 
>wildfires, and superstorms, budget priorities must reconcile the climate and 
>economic imperatives. After all, they're ultimately one and the same.
>
>Our current drive to expand oil and gas drilling on U.S. soil is part of a 
>bipartisan energy policy that's doing nothing to reduce unsustainably high 
>carbon emissions. Showpiece programs to encourage renewable energy alternatives 
>like solar and wind can't avert climate disaster unless they're going to replace 
>fossil fuels.
>
>The $15 billion a year that Obama wants to invest in renewable energy is a small 
>fraction of what's being spent every month on the latest Wall Street bailout. 
>Any boost the environment might get from his administration's showpiece 
>renewable energy programs is more than cancelled by its promotion of dirty 
>energy that runs from natural gas fracking to coal and nuclear reactors, and an 
>expansion of oil drilling in our national parks, offshore, and in the Arctic.
>
>We can avoid both the fiscal and climate crises only if we democratize our 
>priorities and put the public interest ahead of the profiteering elite. One 
>blueprint for this is the Green New Deal, which served as the mainstay of my 
>presidential bid as the Green Party's nominee. Our plan would launch an 
>emergency program to create 25 million jobs in green energy, sustainable 
>agriculture, public transportation, and infrastructure improvements. It would 
>also cut spending, making big tax hikes unnecessary.
>
>Our Green New Deal would be funded by a combination of waste-cutting and 
>targeted fair-tax reforms. These include scaling back the Pentagon's bloated 
>budget to year 2000 levels.
>
>A �Medicare for All� health insurance system would provide health care to 
>everyone, while eliminating the massive private health insurance bureaucracy and 
>reducing the medical inflation that's straining federal, state, and household 
>budgets alike.
>
>Our proposed tax reforms would extend the Bush tax cuts for 90 percent of 
>Americans. It would rein in Wall Street speculation with a small (0.5 percent) 
>tax on financial transactions, generating $350 billion annually. Capital gains 
>would be taxed as income, and income would be taxed more progressively, with 
>multi-millionaires and billionaires paying in the 50-80 percent range, just as 
>they did before the tax giveaways of recent decades.
>
>If we are to have an economy that serves the people and creates a livable planet 
>for the future, we must insist on nothing less than a grand bargain that is 
>truly worthy of the name.
>
>Jill Stein won half a million votes as the Green Party's presidential nominee in 
>2012. http://JillStein.org
>
>Distributed via OtherWords, a syndication service, this article is currently 
>running in newspapers across the United States.
>________________________________
Please take an immediate step by making a donation: 
http://www.jillstein.org/donate
>Authorized and paid for by Jill Stein for President
>PO Box 260217, Madison, WI 53726-0217
>http://www.JillStein.org 
>
>
>
>-=-=-
>Jill Stein for President · United States 
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