HOME

ELECTIONS

PLATFORM

PRESS
RELEASES

ABOUT

COMMITTEES

STATES

CAUCUSES

NEWSCENTER

DONATE

VOLUNTEER

TAKE ACTION

REGISTER

ONLINE STORE

GREENLINE:

Subscribe to GreenLine to receive our email newsletter and other updates from GP.org.

GREEN LINKS:

Greens Worldwide
Global Greens
European Fed. of Green Parties
(Campaign Site)
Fed. of Green Parties of the Americas
Campus Greens Additional Links

Sitemap

III. Ecological Sustainability
H. Agriculture

Nature is our life support system. Our well-being and survival depend on our stewardship of nature in all its forms. The crops we grow or gather, the livestock we raise or hunt, and all those living things that we harvest from the seas, rivers and lakes, are our renewable resources that we bring to market for human consumption.

The development of machinery, technology and science has created a great distance between the production of food and the people who consume it. Food production is largely taken over by corporate agribusiness that puts profit over preservation of nature’s resources and consumer health and safety.

We need a new regulatory and oversight agency with adjudicative powers mandated to inspect, and control all food production from seed to harvest to processing to labeling and distribution

We support the following:

1. subsidies that encourage more small farms, family farms, producer and consumer cooperatives and community kitchens.
2. End the subsidies of agribusiness like Monsanto and Cargill.
3. Shift price supports to organically grown food rather than to chemically produced food grown with artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
4. Phase out the use of fertilizer made of sewage sludge or hazardous wastes, and irradiation in food production.
5. Phase out “factory” farms - growing animals in confined spaces with confined feeding operations.
6. Mandatory, full-disclosure of food and fiber labeling. Labels must identify GMO, use of irradiation and pesticides, and country of origin.
7. We support rotational gazing, cover-crop rotations, nitrogen-fixing systems and the replacement of fossil fuel by renewable energy as it is developed.
8. We oppose the forced distribution of GM (genetically modified) seeds and growth of GM crops. The consequences of their use has not yet been adequately researched to prove their advantage over natural/diverse crops.
9. We support the seeding, growing, harvesting and marketing of Hemp. Hemp has no drug or medicinal use; it is easy to cultivate, fast growing and has many commercial uses - none of them harmful in any way.
10. We support true cost pricing in food production. Damage to health and the cost of pesticides, antibiotics, soil erosion from over cultivation, water pollution from drainage of factory farms and long distance travel to bring food to market, all comprise the true cost price of food production.. Locally grown food that is organic, non-factory and not genetically-modified gives us better food and costs less than highly processed food.

I. Forestry and logging

Nature’s green cover is essential to sustaining life on the planet. Part of our stewardship of Nature is protection and sustaining the world’s forests.

The cutting of rain forests for lumber and clearing forests for agriculture in many parts of the world threatens the climate and environmental health the planet. Multi-national corporations have little or no regard for their stewardship obligation.

We support the following:

1. Overhaul state and US Forest Service to empower them to protect and use our forests to ensure their sustainability. Forests are a renewable resource that will not be renewable if not properly protected.
2. Prohibit logging roads, paid for by taxpayers, in forests that have been declared wilderness.
3. Ban any harvesting of Ancient Forests.
4. Tax the sale of raw wood, pulp, chips, carts, slabs abroad to restore the making of wood products here in America. and restore the jobs to make them.
5. Subsidize local watershed-based mills.
6. Use goat or sheep grazing to control undergrowth, rather than herbicides.
7. Legalize the growing, harvesting and marketing of Hemp and all its products.
8. Support indigenous forest people and protect their gathering practices for food and medicine.
9. Halt the destruction of rain forests in third world countries and forgive the debts of those countries. .
10. Require labeling that identifies the nature of and origin of lumber products.

J. Ethical Treatment of Animals

It is our moral obligation to treat wild and domestic animals that we hunt, use for research, use for testing, or grow to eat with care and non-cruel operations. Exploitation and affliction of animals defies our stewardship obligation to care for nature’s resources - animal and vegetable.

1. The National Institutes of Health that does research on preventive medicine and biomedical research should use its funds on clinical, epidemiological and cell culture research, not on live animals.
2. Phase out use of animals for consumer product testing; psychological testing, dissections, weapons development and any military programs.
3. The Endangered Species act should be expanded to protect wild species such as wild horses, and to prevent cock fights and puppy mills, and to strengthen the prohibition on import of exotic animals.
4. States and cities should subsidize spay and neuter clinics.

K. Ocean Protection

Mining the ocean of its many products without limit or care is destroying the huge resource to the world that the oceans are.

We support the following:

1. US government sign the Laws of the Sea Treaty that shares ocean resources.
2. National Oceans Protection Act that bans offshore drilling from 50 up to 175 miles from US shores.
3. Ban drift-net fishing and long-line fishing and ban import of ocean fishing that uses such practices.
4. Ban ocean transportation of nuclear and toxic wastes.
5. Map undersea toxic dump sites and investigate methods for rendering them harmless.
6. Phase out US factory trawlers and subsidize community-based, sustainable fishing
7. Ban import of coral products and destruction of breakwaters.
8. Continue ban on international whale trade and all sea life threatened with extinction.

L. Biological Diversity

Ecological systems are interlocking and interdependent from the bottom of the food chain to the top. Nature’s survival strategy allows adaptability which itself results in biological diversity.

Our stewardship requires that we not disrupt ecological systems to the degree that they cannot renew and maintain themselves Our protection of this biological diversity, while using it requires that we not disrupt them to the degree that they cannot sustain themselves.

1. We oppose US demands at the Convention on Biological diversity (1992) to give biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries control over their intellectual property and technology transfer rights.
2. We oppose monopolistic production of high-tech hybrid seeds that take away the farmers right to grow his own crop using his own seeds and replacing diversity with monoculture.
3. We oppose international trade agreements (NAFTA, GATT, WTO) that protect corporate control of the intellectual property of genetic material, hybrid seeds and proprietary products.