Proposed:

                                                                                    

A  Necessary Response to the Climate Crisis

 

We are approaching the climate tipping point. To avoid climate catastrophe we must put our democracy, our market system and our entrepreneurial acumen to work on reducing global carbon emissions 80% by the year 2020. Concentration of carbon in the atmosphere must quickly be returned below 350 parts per million. If we don’t, we face, at minimum, a rise in global temperature of two degrees Celsius which could usher in a new climate regime with catastrophic consequences for humans and global ecosystems.

 

We must take the lead in building a global economy based on high efficiency, renewable resources, reforestation, and healthy ecosystems guided by ecological consumption taxes.  We must implement a global Marshall Plan supporting technology and income transfers needed for achieving global sustainability. Ecological consumption taxes will replace income taxes, support the renewable transformation, and make economic growth mean ecological improvement not ecological destruction. 

 

We must stop building any more coal plants and quickly shut down all existing coal and fossil fuel plants and replace them with an integrated energy system relying on high efficiency standards, renewable resources, distributed generation, and electric vehicles. We must replace all gas and diesel transport with grid tied electric vehicles. Significant amounts of carbon must be removed from the atmosphere by improving agricultural practices and expanding the world's forests. We all must play a part in transforming a self-destructive industrial business as usual to a  sustainable and prosperous ecological civilization.