“I affirm our responsibility for the environment.”
The privileged place of human beings in the natural order means we have a special responsibility to care for the rest of the world. As our platform preamble says, “we must share and protect natural resources and the environment, as held in trust for the benefit of all inhabitants of the world, present and future.” Pollution of our air, water, and land is the most serious violation of our responsibility for the environment and is often a direct threat to human lives as well. Government should strictly regulate against pollution, and require polluters to pay the cost of clean-up, health impacts, and other damages to communities impacted by pollution. Climate instability at least partially caused by the human production of carbon emissions may be less apparent, but it is nevertheless a very real problem according to scientific consensus.
We regard this as a humanitarian crisis that must be addressed without delay by the world’s wealthiest nations, including the United States, with measures such as rolling back government support of fossil fuels, support for research and production of clean and renewable energy sources, support for more public transportation, and preservation and cultivation of more green spaces in our communities. We recognize the natural world as having intrinsic value. We cannot begin to measure the delicate balances of ecosystems disrupted when we alter the natural world without good cause or the beauty lost to over-development.
We support conservation efforts to preserve these unfathomable goods for today and tomorrow. At the same time, the American Solidarity Party does not view human beings as posing an intrinsic threat to the environment. We reject the notion that there is an overpopulation crisis. We believe that human beings are fully capable, through ingenuity and cooperation, of building a society that supports human flourishing and natural beauty that is permanently sustainable. This will require, however, challenging our society’s consumeristic mentality and changing policies that prioritize wealth and material goods.
We invite you to read our Platform to learn more about specific policies that we support as part of our commitment to our responsibility for the environment.https://solidarity-party.org/platform/
