Want to know what all the #GreenNewDeal (GND) buzz is about?
Want to know why we’re mobilizing the food and farming movement to support the GND—and how you can help?
Find out by watching the GND livestream on February 5, and by reading my message below.
Leaders of the Sunrise Movement are asking people to attend or host a livestream watch party on February 5. OCA staff members have all signed up—and we hope you will, too!
Sign up to attend a watch party.
Sign up to host a watch party. It’s easy to do. There’s even a step-by-step guide. You can choose to make your party public so others can join, or private with just your friends.
Let us know if you plan to host or attend a watch party. We’ll email you additional materials about why the GND matters to the food & farming movement.
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Editor's Note: On February 7, 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the Green New Deal Resolution. You can read it here. Please ask your members of Congress to support this resolution by clicking here.
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) fully endorses the Green New Deal (GND) as the most promising policy-level vehicle for achieving the large-scale transition to an organic, regenerative
food and farming system, while at the same time cleaning up the environment, advancing social justice, restoring urban and rural food and economic security, and restabilizing the climate.
The Green New Deal (GND) sets an ambitious goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2030-2050, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. This is achievable only if the GND includes programs and policies that will rapidly scale up both the transition to renewable energy alternatives (in order to reduce/eliminate future emissions) and the transition to organic regenerative agriculture and land-use and land-restoration practices (in order to draw down and sequester carbon already in the atmosphere).
To achieve these large-scale transitions will require the public support and political will to confront the corporate dominance of our democracy, perpetuated by lawmakers who take campaign donations from the fossil fuel and industrial agribusiness industries.
Absent the necessary political will, we must build a massive, broad-based social movement if we hope to see the promise of the GND fulfilled. This movement must ensure that embedded within the GND’s final plan is a slate of programs and policies that recognize that the solution to global warming must also include programs and policies that will scale up regenerative farming and land use as a means of drawing down and naturally sequestering carbon in healthy soils.
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On behalf of their millions of members and supporters, 626 environmental organizations on Thursday demanded that U.S. policymakers "pursue visionary and affirmative legislative action" such as a Green New Deal to combat the "urgent threat" of the global climate crisis.
"As the world teeters on the brink of climate catastrophe, we're calling on Congress to take large-scale action," said Bill Snape of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which signed the letter (pdf) to lawmakers. "Americans want a livable future for their children, and that requires keeping fossil fuels in the ground while greening the economy on a wartime footing."
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"Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.” - Rebecca Solnit, writer, activist
It’s a miracle of nature. No matter how bitter cold the winter, spring rolls around again, without fail.
It’s in that spirit of spring and rebirth and regeneration that I write today asking for your support for one of our most critical projects: our collaboration with Regeneration International and other organizations to remake—to revolutionize—our food and farming system.
Your donation today will help fund a massive collaborative effort to build an organic and regenerative food and farming system. Can you help us reach our spring fundraising goal? You can donate online, by mail or by phone—details here.
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Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has introduced a regenerative and organic version of the Farm Bill.
The Food & Farm Act represents our best hope for saving our farmers, farms and soil. But this bill won’t stand a chance unless Congress gets behind it.
TAKE ACTION! Ask your Member of Congress to cosponsor the Food & Farm Act!
What happens when Monsanto doesn’t like what the World Health Organization (WHO) has to say about its flagship product, Roundup weedkiller?
The chemical company convinces U.S. lawmakers to hold a “smoke and mirrors” Congressional hearing, under the guise of “defending scientific integrity,” but really to undermine the unanimous determination by 17 international scientists, based on their analysis of independent, peer-reviewed science, that Roundup is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The hearing, which Monsanto asked Congress to hold, will be used to decide if WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC)—an unbiased scientific agency charged with protecting public health by warning the public about cancer-causing chemicals—will continue to receive federal funding.
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Vermonters are, literally, swimming in a toxic soup of glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller), atrazine, 2,4-D and other pesticides.
The use of glyphosate alone—just on Vermont dairy farms—jumped 27 percent between 2014 – 2017, according to new data released last month by Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
The “toxic stew” of pesticides polluting Vermont’s waterways includes 34 different products. In 2016, the most heavily used was glyphosate—62,458 pounds. That’s more than double the amount used in 2014.
That’s a lot of Monsanto Roundup weedkiller dumped in a state that ranks 43rd in size. It makes for one “dirty dairy” industry.
And Ben & Jerry’s—owned by the international consumer products conglomerate, Unilever—is one of, if not the biggest player in that industry.
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Henry Miller is at it again.
Miller is the well-known Monsanto mouthpiece who earlier this year was discredited by the New York Times for getting Forbes magazine to publish an “opinion” piece under his name—a piece that was ghostwritten by Monsanto.
Miller has just written a new hit piece on the organic industry.
That in and of itself doesn’t surprise us. What does surprise us is that Newsweek published the piece—despite knowing all about Miller’s shady ties to Monsanto.
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By now everyone’s heard of “fake news.” But there’s another equally insidious form of journalism: fake opinions.
Fake opinions are opinion pieces, or op-eds, published under the name of someone who purports to be an “independent” scientist, expert or academic, but who is actually spreading propaganda for companies like Monsanto—and usually being paid to do it.
Henry I. Miller, a well-known mouthpiece for Monsanto, is a master of fake opinions.
And Newsweek just published his latest.
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Welcome to Degeneration Nation 2018.
The frightening truth is that our “profit-at-any-cost” economy and global empire, run by and for the one percent and multi-national corporations, aided and abetted by an out-of-control Congress and White House, is threatening our very survival.
Our system of democracy, global co-existence, our physical and mental health, and the health of the living Earth—our climate, soils, forests, wetlands, watersheds, and oceans—is rapidly degenerating. The rhythms of nature—the atmosphere, the soil carbon cycle, the water cycle and the climate—are unraveling.
Will global civil society wake up in time, break down the walls and issue silos that divide us, connect the dots between all of our burning issues, and unite across borders in a common global campaign for survival and regeneration?
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