mission to planet earth

[goodhue]

http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/kucinich101503.asp

Kucinich: We need a mission to planet Earth. And that mission to planet Earth is a mission that includes sustainability, the development of new energy technologies, and the conservation of our resources -- and we can then move successfully toward the creation of a 20 percent portfolio by 2010.

But there's another critical area here, which is peace. War is not sustainable. So my policies would end once and for all the war against Iraq by ending the occupation, by getting the United Nations in and the U.S. out, and by getting the United States to rejoin the world community in the cause of international cooperation.

In that way we set the stage for a new world, where the United States participates by saving the global environment. When we think about the environment, we have to take the broadest approach toward saving the planet itself. And that means we have to get rid of all nuclear weapons. The United States must get rid of all nuclear weapons, and as president, I will lead the way toward nuclear disarmament internationally, and I'll lead the way by signing the biological weapons convention and the chemical weapons convention and the small arms treaty and the land mine treaty, join the international criminal court, sign the Kyoto climate change treaty, and take all those steps that affirm the integrity of the planet itself. Because you cannot look at the environment in a compartmentalized way. The environment is everything and it includes all those claims for survival from people all over the world. We have to work to once and for all end war. And that's the dream of the Department of Peace, which is a bill that I introduced in the last two Congresses which now has 50 cosponsors.

Grist: So this is an extension of your original point that you want to have a holistic approach to sustainability.

Kucinich: Exactly. What differentiates me from all the other candidates is that I see the whole world as one, as being interconnected and interdependent. It's not to be divided along the lines of race, color, creed, or economic theory.

[Maple]

1. Sigh...

.