Green Party on Energy & Oil Party Platform

End nuclear power, offshore drilling, & fracking

• End the use of nuclear power. Nuclear energy is massively polluting, dangerous, financially risky, expensive and slow to implement.
• Our money is better spent on wind, solar, geothermal, conservation and small-scale hydroelectric.
• The Green Party stands for the enactment of bans on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil on the local, state and federal level and stands for bans on the disposal of wastes created by the fracking industry.
• Protect 40% of the world's oceans as marine preserves, especially near shore coastal habitats.
• Ban offshore oil drilling.
• Ban the siting of liquefied natural gas facilities off the U.S. coast.
• Ban ocean transportation of nuclear and toxic waste.
• Support the ban on international commercial whaling.
• Ban drift-net fishing and long-line fishing and phase out factory trawling.
• Support the Law of the Sea Treaty that establishes the global sharing of ocean resources.

Free mass transit; reduce energy use 50%

Adopt energy efficiency standards that reduce energy demand economy-wide by 50% over the next 20--30 years. The U.S. can make massive reductions in its energy use through a combination of conservation and efficiency measures. We don't actually need any additional power. Instead, we can and should reduce our consumption of power. Adopt a national zero waste policy. The less we consume and throw away, the less we will need to produce and replace.

Reorganize society to accomplish Green New Deal

The Green Party's Green New Deal is indeed more expansive, and a much more aggressive, socialist reorganization of society. The two plans have the same goal of 100% renewable energy by the year 2030, and they both call for universal health care and a federal job guarantee. But the Green Party's plan calls for tuition-free college, and publicly owned utilities. To pay for it, the Greens call for major progressive tax and financial reform, including a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers, and a reduction in military spending by 50%.

Greens say their Green New Deal is the only version that's going to reduce emissions to the degree scientists say is necessary to prevent climate catastrophe, because it's the only one that's truly socialist.

Natural gas does not result in climate justice

So few are fooled by this State of the Union because so many have been betrayed by those who sat in that congressional chamber the other night. When the President introduces a man horribly maimed after ten tours in Afghanistan, Washington wants us to understand that their plan requires our continued sacrifice. And they are right that it does.

Moratorium on new nuclear plants; retire existing ones

• The generation of nuclear waste must be halted. It is hazardous for thousands of years and there is no way to isolate it from the biosphere for the duration of its toxic life. We oppose public subsidies for nuclear power. Cost is another huge factor making it unfeasible, with each new nuclear power plant costing billions of dollars.
• The Green Party calls for a formal moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants, the early retirement of existing nuclear power reactors, and the phase-out of technologies that use or produce nuclear waste, such as nuclear waste incinerators, food irradiators, and all uses of depleted uranium.
• Greens support the use of hydrogen as an energy storage medium; however we oppose the use of nuclear technologies or carbon-based feedstocks for hydrogen production.

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050

Greens want to stop runaway climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least 40% by 2020 and 95% by 2050, over 1990 levels.
• Climate change is the gravest environmental, social and economic peril that humanity has ever met.
• Across the world, it is causing vanishing polar ice, melting glaciers, growing deserts, stronger storms, rising oceans, less biodiversity, deepening droughts, as well as more disease, hunger, strife and human misery. It is a tragedy unfolding in slow motion.
• Greens support science-based policies to curb climate change. We have an ambitious plan to make drastic changes quickly to avert global catastrophe.
• We will expend maximum effort to preserve a planet friendly to life as we know it by curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and actively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Support United Nations climate treaty

• Support a strong international climate treaty under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The United States must do far better than its offer in Copenhagen to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4% below 1990 levels.
• Enact a Fee & Dividend system on fossil fuels to enable the free market to include the environmental costs of their extraction and use. The fee will be increased by 10% each year that global atmospheric carbon dioxide content is greater than 350 ppm.
• To prevent perverse incentives arising from higher carbon prices, the Green Party mandates clean fuels in addition to pricing carbon. Otherwise dirty energy sources like nuclear power, biomass and biofuels that are not subject to carbon pricing will become economically competitive.

Moratorium on fracking; then regulation & full disclosure

• Enact a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") until its damaging effects on water and air quality are fully studied and understood.
• Permanently ban high-volume hydraulic fracturing in sensitive watersheds.
• Regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
• Require public disclosure of the chemicals used in fracturing fluids.

Oppose further oil and gas drilling or exploration

Commit to developing clean renewable energy technologies

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions now; more later

Greens believe the following are possible, if we are to make a start on protecting our global climate. It is imperative that we strive for no less:
• An early target must still be set to prevent emissions rising so far that future reductions become even more difficult.
• Allowing sinks and trading within the protocol will create such loopholes that no real reductions will occur.
• It is said that U.S. industries emit over 20% of greenhouse gases globally. As a nation, we must implement public and private initiatives at every level to support the “GLOBAL CLIMATE TREATY” signed at the “Earth Summit” in 1992, committing industrial nations within a time framework to reducing emissions to 1990 levels.
• GREENHOUSE GASES and the threat of GLOBAL WARMING must be addressed by the international community in concert, through international treaties and conventions, with the industrial nations at the forefront of this vital effort.