The Earth has suffered from many years of abuse, from many quarters around the world - but the abuse that this country has heaped on her, carried out under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, has been the worst of all. We need to restore the Earth in order for the human race to survive, let alone thrive, during the next century. Specifically, we need to restore the Earth's resources, her climate, and the life in her biosphere.
So if I'm a Green, why is the task of restoring the Earth my second issue, rather than my first one? Quite simply, because until and unless we repair the effects on this nation from the years of Republocrat mis-rule, we cannot restore the Earth:
Let's look at each of the three restorations I talked about in the first paragraph:
Restoring the Earth's resources
How do we even begin to restore the Earth's resources? Simple answer: we can't. We have plundered the Earth's natural resources to the point where some of those resources are gone - or nearly gone - forever. We're running out of natural gas; we've passed the point of "peak oil" production; and we've extracted so much coal that the only ways to get at what's left are to send people thousands of feet into danger beneath the earth and to destroy whole mountains to get at it.
Then what can we do?
The first step is to figure out ways to stop using those resources at such a catastrophic rate. That's going to require conservation - of oil, gas, coal ... all the Earth's non-renewable resources. There are two ways to approach that: we have to develop technologies that make more efficient use of the resources we have, and we have to actually use less of them. Up to now, there's been no reason to do either of those; but the world has changed. It's going to be cost-effective for every person and every business to do all they can to conserve existing resources, and that needs to be encouraged with whatever means prove most effective.
The next step is to pursue research and experimentation into technologies that will make the use of non-renewable resources unnecessary. What these will look like, we can't see from here; but that research needs to be a national priority.
Finally, there are some resources that can be restored or renewed. Our forests can come back, for example - and they must come back, because trees are the way the Earth cleans carbon dioxide out of the air, re-transforming it into oxygen for us to breathe. It is in our national - even global - interest to protect the forests we have now from clear-cutting for things like logging or cattle grazing, and to reclaim as much forest land as possible from other uses, as well. We don't need furniture or fast-food hamburgers nearly as much as we need to breathe.
I pledge to do all I can in the Senate to move national policy in the direction of resource conservation, preservation, and - where possible - restoration.
Restoring the Earth's climate
That the global climate is changing is irrefutable; that this change is for the worse is also irrefutable. Despite the Cheney/Bush administration's efforts to censor and suppress those facts, it is now very clear that we are the major cause of that change. By "we" I mean both humanity as a whole and the United States specifically; the U.S. has an obligation to begin at once to take all possible steps to mitigate or reduce our negative effect on the world's environment.
The first step I pledge to take is to work for the immediate ratification by the U.S. of the Kyoto Protocol on the environment, and then for effective action by this country to reduce the negative effects we are having on the world's climate.
Restoring the life in the Earth's biosphere
Our forests are dying from over-harvesting, clear cutting for new cattle-grazing land, and ground contamination. Our oceans, lakes, and rivers are so polluted from toxic waste that fish can't survive in them - and we can't drink from them. Our air is so befouled with industrial byproducts that people get cancer from just living close to a plant. Bees are vanishing from their hives, leaving our fruit and vegetable plants unpollinated and barren ... the list goes on and on.
The biosphere is in serious trouble. Hundreds of species of animals have become extinct in the past century; and the number of endangered animal species has risen from less than 300 in 1980 to over 1200 today (source: National Wildlife Federation) - and we can't even count the number of extinct and endangered plants. The loss of all those animal species diminishes us, not only because the loss of diversity makes all life on earth more precarious, but also because every species we lose deprives all life, including humans, of irreplaceable treasure. And who knows what medicinal value the plant species that are lost forever might have had for us?
Fixing all that is going to be an enormous task - one that may not even be do-able after this much abuse at our hands. It's for sure, though, that if we don't get started, it will be impossible to fix it.
My pledge here is as simple as it is radical: I pledge to get started.