In 2022 we have a big opportunity to start implementing a comprehensive Green New Deal for DC. In revisiting this exciting prospect, we should take note of efforts elsewhere. 

The global vision expressed by C40, an international network of 100 mayors, seeks “to protect our communities and our ecosystems from climate change, secure a just transition away from fossil fuels, and build equitable, sustainable economies.”

In the Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up,” politicians chasing dollar signs tell voters to think about “jobs” and ignore all the evidence suggesting impending disaster because of their corporate-friendly decision-making. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald tells us to not look up at the county’s nation-leading toxic air quality and lung disease rates while referring to clean air advocates as “extremists.”

• Climate poses the greatest threat to the future of humanity

ALBANY, NY – The Green Party is the strongest political voice calling for real solutions to reduce the severity of climate change and to provide hope for a decent life for future generations. Democrats and Republicans at all levels – from the state to the White House and Congress – continue to protect the fossil fuel companies and their profits so the special interest campaign contributions keep flowing.

The EcoAction Committee of the Green Party of the United States held a webinar on why it supports the goal of Real Zero Greenhouse gas Emissions rather than Net Zero on Wednesday, December 15, 2021.

Featured speakers were David Schwartzman and Mike Ewall. David Schwartzman, a member of the DC Statehood Green Party, is a professor emeritus of biology at Howard University and the author of Life, Temperature, and the Earth. David and his older son Peter Schwartzman (Mayor of Galesburg IL, member of the Illinois Green Party) just had their paper published "Can the 1.5 °C warming target be met in a global transition to 100% renewable energy?" Their book website is theearthisnotforsale.org.

ALBANY, NY – 12/13/21 - The Green Party of New York (GPNY) said that the initial draft climate plan by the Climate Action Council falls far short of adequately responding to the Code Red for the Planet warning issued by the world’s scientists in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

• What did not make the COP-Out 26 report

1. Over 500 fossil fuel lobbyists were at COP 26, more than any other single delegation. consortiumnews.com

2. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautioned that promises emerging from COP 26 will "ring hollow when the fossil fuel industry still receives trillions in subsidies." UN.org; commondreams.org

• The Voice of Massachusetts Greens

COP-Out 26 and Environmental Survival

After 6 years of wrestling with the Paris Agreement to reduce fossil fuel consumption and in other ways stem the decline of life on Mother Earth, President Biden and his fellow leaders must again address the failure of major polluting nations to stem their toxic emissions.  The Green-Rainbow Party has joined with other environmental activists to condemn the high-sounding rhetoric and the absence of real actions. 

World leaders have gathered for COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to address the most fundamental issue facing countries across the globe: Climate change. COP stands for "Conference of the Parties" to the Kyoto Protocol.

It was in Kyoto in 2005 that industrialized nations, including the U.S., first committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. COP21 took place 10 years later in Paris. At that convening, all the parties agreed to keep the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

• We need an Ecosocialist Green New Deal, not another Biden capitulation

The Build Back Better Framework released this morning by President Biden is a total capitulation to conservative Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema.

The $6.1 trillion program Biden announced in his American Jobs and American Families plan has been cut to less than a third of what he proposed. Proposals that are overwhelmingly popular with the public like repealing the Trump tax cuts, paid leave, and Medicare negotiating lower drug prices with Big Pharma have been eliminated. What remains are social programs with lower benefits, privatized administration, and means testing that complicates administration and adds administrative costs. The climate spending that remains makes no mandates for greenhouse gas emission reductions and are mostly corporate welfare subsidies for the big fossil fuel and manufacturing corporations that dominate the solar and wind markets. These subsidies will continue the pattern of the past decade where renewables have only added to total energy production while fossil fuel energy has increased.

The Green Party of the United States today slammed President Biden and Congressional Democrats for apparently agreeing to slash funding for fighting climate change in their “Build Back Better Plan” to $30 billion a year. That figure amounts to 1/25 of the budget for the U.S. military, the world’s biggest consumer of oil.