Layton goes green with NDP platform (Canada)

[Minstrel Boy]

Layton goes green with NDP platform
by Darren Yourk
Globe and Mail, March 31

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton coloured his party's election platform green Wednesday, hailing his party as the choice for voters serious about fighting climate change and cleaning the air.

Mr. Layton said the NDP's environmental platform is a real plan to create jobs with renewable energy, while still meeting Canada's Kyoto commitments on climate change.

...

The party released a number of proposals on climate change, including using all funds from the government's sale of its Petro-Canada stake -- expected to be about $2.8-billion -- to create a new Crown corporation for renewable energy with innovation centres in solar, tidal, wind and geothermal energy across Canada.

The party is also proposing a Climate Change Exchange, which would auction off emission credits for corporations with a decreasing number of credits available, creating market incentives to pollute less.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040331.wlayton0331/BNStory/National/

From the NDP media release:

The NDP also unveiled innovative ideas to achieve clean water, clean up toxics and respect Canadians’ right to know what they eat:

· Implementing a public infrastructure program with a focus on drinking water and waste water treatment.
· Creating a federal department of water stewardship to develop common standards, and to implement a ban on the bulk export of water.
· Applying the polluter-pay principle and creating jobs by cleaning up toxic sites.
· Overhauling the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to reverse its current focus on voluntary action, and replace it with mandatory pollution prevention.
· Supporting farmers trying to reduce dependence on pesticides, and supporting municipalities in legal battles with chemical corporations.
· Implementing a moratorium on new genetically engineered crops, and respecting Canadians’ right to know what they eat through mandatory labelling of GMOs.
· Passing a true endangered species law that protects species’ habitat and gives scientists, not politicians, the power to determine whether a species is at risk.

http://tinyurl.com/yrdxo

[Screaming Lord Byron]

1. I hope those people who are considering voting Green take notice.

We need those people on side.

[Minstrel Boy]

2. The Green Party of Canada - what's its deal?

It might seem to some as a "purer" left alternative to the NDP, but I wouldn't place it left of the NDP in any respect. It's not, for instance, a socialist party. In my admittedly limited understanding, its economic vision is more libertarian. Also, I believe its new leader is something of a social conservative.

The former Green leader has joined the NDP, as have other senior members, because they trust Jack's environmental record and like his vision. Hope that sinks in with prospective Green voters.

[Noon_Blue_Apples]

3. I've decided

I'm with you

Bill in Beeton

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. Very good news. Damn good. Thanks.

[blackwalnut]

4. Excellent!

That is really inspiring. I hope democrats (and others for that matter) on this side of the border take up the same environmental platform that Layton has.

Though our democrats have always been far, far greener than our Republican conservatives(generally), they haven't made much of a stand for labeling GM crops in the foods we eat, or placing the issue of contamination of non-GM crops by GM ones as a major issue in their campaigns. But as time goes on, this will probably change. Kerry obviously makes high scores on the environmental front, but there is still room for improvement.

Another issue that gets little attention are the big financial institutions like the World Bank. Greenpeace has called it "The World's most environmentally destructive lending organization." Yet, predictably, I cannot recall one major news story from the major news outlets -- much less a regular one -- that deals with the World Bank's policies at all. (And this is true during my entire 46 and half years on this earth!)

Our problem is a media that refuses to report on so many things, or at least do so on a regular schedule, or to go into enough details. What we have in the media, however, while sometimes helpful, isn't enough. It reports on the environment -- for which I am very grateful -- but it needs to go further!!(!!!!!!!!!)

On genetic engineering, I feel compelled to post this excerpt from the following web site (http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/Redesigning.htm):

Erwin Chargoff, an eminent geneticist who is sometimes called the father of modern microbiology, commented:

…The principle question to be answered is whether we have the right to put an additional fearful load on generations not yet born. I use the adjective 'additional' in view of the unresolved and equally fearful problem of the disposal of nuclear waste. Our time is cursed with the necessity for feeble men, masquerading as experts, to make enormously far-reaching decisions. Is there anything more far-reaching than the creation of forms of life?… You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosals; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life. Once you have constructed a viable E. coli cell carry a plasmid DNA into which a piece of eukaryotic DNA has been spliced, it will survive you and your children and your children's children. An irreversible attack on the biosphere is something so unheard-of, so unthinkable to previous generations, that I could only wish that mine had not been guilty of it.11

It appears that the recombination experiments in which a piece of animal DNA is incorporated into the DNA of a microbial plasmid are being performed without a full appreciation of what is going on. Is the position of one gene with respect to its neighbors on the DNA chain accidental or do they control and regulate each other? … Are we wise in getting ready to mix up what nature has kept apart, namely the genomes of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.

The worst is that we shall never know. Bacteria and viruses have always formed a most effective biological underground. The guerrilla warfare through which they act on higher forms of life is only imperfectly understood. By adding to this arsenal freakish forms of life-prokyarotes propagating eukaryotic genes-we shall be throwing a veil of uncertainties over the life of coming generations. Have we the right to counteract, irreversibly, the evolutionary wisdom of millions of years, in order to satisfy the ambition and curiosity of a few scientists?

This world is given to us on loan. We come and we go; and after a time we leave earth and air and water to others who come after us. My generation, or perhaps the one preceding mine, has been the first to engage, under the leadership of the exact sciences, in a destructive colonial warfare against nature. The future will curse us for it.12