(For March 6, 2018 Colorado Precinct Caucus Platforms)
Prepared by the Fort Collins Sustainability Group
Fort Collins Community Action Network
P.O. Box 400 Fort Collins, CO 80522
Ph. 970-419-8944
http://fcsg.fccan.org
Platform Elements:
1. Accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels by achieving 100% of electric energy from renewables by 2030, while creating millions of living wage jobs nationwide and investing in those communities harmed by fossil fuel development.
2. Revolutionize electrical and transportation infrastructure by investing in state-of-the-art renewable energy, public transportation, energy grids, and electrical storage systems.
3. Resume international leadership and re-join the Paris Climate Agreement.
4. Recognize the global consensus on climate science by increasing funding for, and restoring credible leadership to, science-based agencies.
5. Protect irreplaceable environmental resources by banning drilling in coastal areas and public lands, including the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
6. Recognize the Mission 2020 goals of the G20 world leaders, based on the need to “bend the curve” of increasing greenhouse-gas emissions downwards by 2020. *
Rationale:
Healthy communities, sustainable economies, and future generations depend on a healthy environment and functioning ecosystems. Both are being severely degraded and stressed by climate change impacts. Scientists are virtually unanimous that climate change is real, caused by human activity, causing devastating problems in the United States and around the world, and accelerating. The 2017 National Climate Assessment Report, the most comprehensive assessment of climate science in the world, confirms that global warming is impacting every region of the U.S., including both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, and is getting worse. We see evidence of climate change all around us in Colorado: shrinking snow-packs that melt earlier and put our water supply and outdoor recreation economies at risk; mountain forests dying from drought stress and pine beetles once controlled by deep winter cold spells; increasing severity and frequency of wildfires, heatwaves, floods and droughts; and tropical diseases such as West Nile that now occur regularly in Colorado. Nationally, coastal cities are flooded more frequently and face total inundation in the future. Severe weather events cause an increasing number of billion-dollar climate-related disasters every year. The Pentagon has identified climate change as a national security threat due to the risk to coastal military bases from rising sea levels, and because it is a “threat-multiplier” of global political instability. As a society, we have the knowledge, technology, and public support needed to mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, the political system has failed to address climate change effectively. As citizens, we must act boldly and quickly to create the political will to do so. We must demand science-based, socially just climate policies, and elect only those with the wisdom, courage, and moral compass to enact effective policies.
* C. Figueres et al, (June 28, 2017) “Three Years to Safeguard Our Future.” Nature News and Comment
