Resolution on Global Climate Change
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including more than 2000 scientists world-wide in the most rigorously peer-reviewed collaboration in world history, is warning that the burning of fossil fuels and release of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere is significantly intensifying global warming; and
WHEREAS, rapid global warming is causing devastating ecological instability as temperature changes outpace the capacity of plant and animal species to adapt; and is contributing to instability in agricultural production, and to increasing breeding rates and ranges of insects and micro-organisms that cause human disease; and
WHEREAS, rapid global warming is accelerating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets world-wide at rates faster than predicted by scientists, as evidenced by the current break-up of the Greenland ice sheet, and creating conditions for more frequent and intense storms and rising sea levels threatening to endanger and displace hundreds of millions of people; and
WHEREAS, positive feedback loops, including forest fires caused by increased temperatures releasing additional carbon dioxide and thawing of tundra releasing methane (another potent greenhouse gas), have the potential to further increase rates of global climate change; and
WHEREAS, the Kyoto Protocol objectives are now insufficient to the magnitude of the growing climate crisis, and scientists warn that modest changes in greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries could be swamped by emissions by rapidly developing countries, recommending an urgent global greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 70%; and
WHEREAS, technologies already exist to begin a rapid decrease in carbon emissions through implementing conservation and energy efficiency measures, and building renewable energy infrastructure; and
WHEREAS, economies around the world could be revitalized and enhanced with high quality and meaningful jobs in developing, manufacturing, installing and maintaining renewable energy infrastructure; and
WHEREAS, responding to the global climate crisis would also result in achieving the energy independence increasingly promoted by both Democratic and Republican elected officials;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, our U.S. Representative Rick Larsen and U.S. Senators Cantwell and Murray are urged to actively oppose any Energy Appropriations Bills that do not include a massive and urgent shift of subsidies from fossil fuels to energy conservation and efficiency, and to renewable energy, including solar, wind, tidal, micro-hydro and non-GMO biomass fuels; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, our U.S. Representative Rick Larsen and U.S. Senators Cantwell and Murray are urged to actively write, support and promote legislation to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 5% per year, first through implementing energy conservation and efficiency measures, and then by building renewable energy infrastructure; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, our U.S. Representative Rick Larsen and U.S. Senators Cantwell and Murray are urged to write, support and promote legislation to implement a massive shift of renewable energy technologies to the world¹s most rapidly growing economies dependent on coal, especially India and China, and to countries that currently derive their economic stability from fossil fuel production, especially countries of the Middle East which are especially suited to solar energy development; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, our U.S. Representative Rick Larsen and U.S. Senators Cantwell and Murray are urged to write, support and promote legislation to implement solutions to global warming in proportion to the magnitude of our energy crisis, such as supporting the bipartisan H.R. 507 (Oct. 2005) “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the ‘Man on the Moon’ project to address the inevitable challenges of ‘Peak Oil’”; and
THEREFORE BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that our elected representatives in the Senate and the House of the State of Washington are hereby directed to write and promote legislation for the immediate implementation of a Washington State Greenhouse Gas Action Plan, taking into account the practices and recommendations of other states which have already implemented such a plan.
(Date Passed 04/08/2006 by Whatcom County Democrats)
