Inaugurate Change | WorldChanging
November 09, 2008 12:10PM
Dear President-Elect Obama,Source: WorldChangingWe encourage you to ...
- Set a national greenhouse gas cap, fortified by an aggressive auction-and-dividend approach, so that the proceeds of the auction of carbon permits are returned to the people of the U.S. to offset any rising energy expenditures.
- Launch a national smart growth campaign, ordering all federal agencies to examine their policies' effects on the built environment and funding only infrastructure projects which stop sprawl and promote compact community and transportation choices. Preferentially support location-efficient mortgages and urban development bonds. [Smart Growth America]
- Set national building standards that will require all buildings to be carbon neutral by 2030. [Architecture 2030] Promote national policies reducing water waste and expanding green infrastructure. Greatly expand weatherization and retrofit support, helping to spur a green jobs boom among urban youth. [Green For All]
- Redirect all funding and support for fossil fuels into clean energy capacity. Underwrite investment into the infrastructure of the future, promoting smart grids and pushing the deployment of plug-in electric cars. Commit to meeting former Vice President Gore's challenge to provide all electricity in the U.S. from clean sources by 2020. [We Campaign]
- Rewrite the Farm Bill, to support smaller-scale family farms, local food, organic and heritage farming and the rapid reduction of the use of fossil fuels and irrigation water, as well as the rapid improvement of food quality in schools and low-income food programs. [The Food Declaration]
- Manage public lands and waters with carbon sequestration and biodiversity as primary goals, while supporting companies and workers transitioning to sustainable forestry, fishing and ranching. Direct agencies to work with states to promote large migration corridors linking biodiversity hotspots, and to anticipate the effects of climate change.
Sign on to Inaugurate Change.
curmudgeon
I'm simply amazed at the hypocrisy of NDP, Liberal and Green party-types, who--claiming to be pro-environment--push for mass immigration. The staggering urban sprawl problem is caused by the intake of over a quarter million immigrants a year, period. No amount of fanciful New Urbanist planning will arrest the loss of farmland and greenspace caused by a bulging population, mostly fuelled by immigration. Aside from ethno lobbies (like Olivia Chow's constituents), the real push for mass immigration comes from Canada's powerful housing and development industry. All of this talk of addressing labour shortages and the pension system are bogus. Canada needs a hard cap on immigration and population, like proposed in the UK.
We can't be a safety valve for the developing world. Countries like India and Pakistan need to adopt responsible population-control policies and not offload their population surplus on North America. The environmental movement also needs to get a spine--not like the Sierra Club, who accepted over U.S.$100M (from David Gelbaum), to NOT discuss immigration. Aside from the sprawl problem, we have immigrants unable to function in either of our official languages, gangs (e.g., the aptly-named Fresh Off The Boat Killers), hitherto unknown social ills like honour killings, clitorectomies, and khat and doda addicts.
What we need IS an uncensored debate on immigration.
Adam C. Sieracki