Politics & Globalization
International trade agreements force the U.S. and other participting countries to "harmonize" food and envrironmental safety standards to the lowest common denominator. Often these agreements are negotiated behind closed doors, shutting out Congress and the public, while granting corporations and trade associations a seat at the table. It's no surprise that these agreements give transnational corporations "special rights", allowing companies to challenge individual countries' environmental, worker and food safety laws and regulations.
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Rose and Ronnie· Joe volunteer© 2008
The Green New Deal has recently been promoted by a group of Democrats, including the inspirational Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I first came across it in a report in 2008 by the Green New Deal group, most of who are pictured below a decade later (hat-tip: Andrew Simms).
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"I really don't like their policies of taking away your car, taking away your airplane flights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California,’ or ‘you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!'” So bellowed President Donald Trump in El Paso, Texas, his first campaign-style salvo against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey’s Green New Deal resolution. There will surely be many more.
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The Trump administration has halted bans on toxic chemicals that are known to cause serious health threats. These moves, led by an ex-industry group executive now at the EPA, have allowed the continued use of products found to cause cancer, birth defects, and other ailments
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The Green New Deal (GND) twin resolutions, introduced February 7, 2019, call for all Americans to have access to healthy food, clean water and clean air. The GND also proposes to provide “economic security,” jobs and good wages to all who want to participate in the new green economy.
For consumers, healthy food (and clean water and clean air, for that matter) mean transitioning away from an industrial agriculture model that poisons our food and pollutes our environment.
For farmers, any promise of “economic security” must include the return to an economic agriculture model
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At a time of widespread environmental devastation, much of the U.S. political establishment appears allergic to large-scale public projects that would solve the climate crisis through directly challenging the economic status quo.
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The GND twin resolutions were unveiled yesterday. Already, some lawmakers and media outlets are calling the GND “unrealistic” and “unaffordable,” despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Powerful corporations—especially the fossil fuel, agribusiness, chemical and pharmaceutical industries—want to kill the GND before it can get off the ground.
The only way the GND will fly, is if we build a powerful social movement to lift it up.
So far criticism of the GND has focused not on whether we need a GND to head off our climate crisis, but whether it’s possible
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In the face of worsening climate chaos and massive economic inequities wreaking havoc on the nation, a broad coalition of social justice and environmental organizations and visionary politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are building momentum for a Green New Deal.
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On Tuesday, US Agriculture Department chief Sonny Perdue appointed Scott Hutchins, who once directed global pesticide R&D for Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva), as the department’s deputy undersecretary for research, education, and economics, and named Mindy Brashears, a Texas Tech professor who, over the last six years, has earned $320,000 in income from consulting and research work for the meat industry, as deputy undersecretary for food safety.
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A year ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked as a bartender in Queens. Now the 29-year old is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, the Democrats’ biggest rising star since Barack Obama. She has pushed a decade-old idea called the Green New Deal to the political fore, which has major implications for the food system.
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We never thought we’d see the day when the climate movement joined with the movements for food and farming, and economic and social justice, to put forward a comprehensive solution to the climate crisis that calls for both halting fossil fuel emissions and drawing down excess carbon from the atmosphere.
But . . . this day is dawning under the banner of the #GreenNewDeal (GND). And this week is your opportunity to get involved.
We’re joining two allied calls to action and we hope you will, too.
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