HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda 4-e - Resolution Requesting That Representative David Price Endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Resolution for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal 1
ORANGE COUNTY
BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT
Meeting Date: January 22, 2019
Action Agenda
Item No. 4-e
SUBJECT: Resolution Requesting That Representative David Price Endorse Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez's Resolution for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal
DEPARTMENT: Board of Commissioners
ATTACHMENT(S): INFORMATION CONTACT:
Commissioner Mark Marcoplos
1) Four Pillars of Green New Deal (from Donna Baker, 919-245-2130
the Green Party of the United States
Website)
2) Draft Resolution
PURPOSE: To consider a draft Resolution Requesting That Representative David Price
Endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Resolution for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal.
BACKGROUND: At the December 3, 2018 BOCC regular meeting, Commissioner Mark
Marcoplos petitioned the Board to consider approving a resolution in support of the Green New
Deal at the Board's next regular meeting. Because a short timeframe did not allow the Board to
consider the resolution at the December 11, 2018 regular meeting, it is presented for Board
consideration at this meeting.
The Green New Deal is a four part program for moving America quickly out of crisis into a
secure, sustainable future. Inspired by the New Deal programs that helped the United States
out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Green New Deal will provide similar relief and
create an economy that makes communities sustainable, healthy and just.
The four pillars of the Green New Deal, as outlined on the Green Party of the United States
website, are:
• The Economic Bill of Rights
• A Green Transition
• Real Financial Reform
• A Functioning Democracy
Additional information from the Green Party of the United States website on the four pillars is
provided at Attachment 1.
Attachment 2 is a draft resolution for Board consideration declaring that a climate emergency
exists and requesting that Representative David Price join with the growing number of his
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Congressional peers and endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's resolution for a select committee
on a Green New Deal.
FINANCIAL IMPACT: There is no immediate financial impact associated with the Board
considering the resolution. There may be future financial impacts to the County as it relates to
the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as potential financial impacts with efforts to
reduce those emissions as well as other proposed actions outlined in the Green New Deal.
SOCIAL JUSTICE IMPACT: The following Orange County Social Justice Goal is applicable to
this item:
• GOAL: ESTABLISH SUSTAINABLE AND EQUITABLE LAND-USE AND
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES
The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of people of all races, cultures, incomes
and educational levels with respect to the development and enforcement of
environmental laws, regulations, policies, and decisions. Fair treatment means that no
group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental
consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or
policies.
RECOMMENDATION(S): The Manager recommends that the Board consider the draft
Resolution Requesting That Representative David Price Endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's
Resolution for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal.
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Attachment 1
From the Green Party of the United States Website
THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL
I—THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS
Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds
of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic
Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:
1. The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs
by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative
replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which
are "stored" in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.
• Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic
decisionmaking to fairly implement these programs.
• Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not
impact decision-making.
• We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living
wage for every American willing and able to work.
2. Worker's rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to
organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.
3. The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-
All program.
4. The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system
from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of
unaffordable college education.
5. The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and
evictions. We will:
• create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and
either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a
mortgage, rent homes to the occupants;
• expand rental and home ownership assistance;
• create ample public housing; and,
• offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain
decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
6. The right to accessible and affordable utilities—heat, electricity,phone, internet, and public
transportation—through democratically run,publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for
profit.
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7. The right to fair taxation that's distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition,
corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they
can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.
II—A GREEN TRANSITION
The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the
old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically
viable and socially responsible. We will:
1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses
and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth
created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich
absentee investors.
2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end
industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in
sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as
organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.
3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16
million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and"complete
streets"that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable
organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.
III—REAL FINANCIAL REFORM
The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both
our democracy and our economy. It's time to take Wall Street out of the driver's seat and to free
the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real
Financial Reform will:
1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student
debt burdens.
2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit
creation. This means we'll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and
place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
3. Break up the oversized banks that are "too big to fail."
4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We'll use the
FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after
failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
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6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative
investment banks.
7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as
non-profit utilities.
Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable,
and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.
IV—A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY
We won't get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real,
functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new
politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:
1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations
are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living,breathing human beings
—not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.
2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s proposed"Right to Vote
Amendment,"to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.
3. Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:
• guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;
• require that all votes are counted before election results are released;
• replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions;
• celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;
• bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is
barred from the polls;
• do away with so-called"winner take all" elections in which the "winner" does not have the
support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and
proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;
• replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal
access to the airwaves;
• guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;
• abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President;
• restore the vote to ex-offenders who've paid their debt to society; and,
• enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in
Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.
4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal
preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This
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review will put at its center the"democracy question"—that is, what level of government is most
open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.
5. Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation(like the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting)to provide publicity, training, education, and direct
financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government
agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media
and local print media.
7. Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:
• repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that
violate our civil liberties;
• prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local
police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech; and,
• ending the war on immigrants—including the cruel, so-called"secure communities"program.
8. Rein in the military-industrial complex by
• reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world;
• restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense; and,
• creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.
Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the
peaceful,just, green future we all deserve.
RES-2019-002 Attachment 2 DRAFT 7
ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
RESOLUTION REQUESTING THAT REPRESENTATIVE DAVID
PRICE ENDORSE ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ'S RESOLUTION
FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE ON A GREEN NEW DEAL
WHEREAS, on October 8, 2018, the United Nations released a special report, criticized
by many leading climate scientists as overly conservative, which projected that limiting
warming to the unsafe 1.5°C target this century will require an unprecedented
transformation of every sector of the global economy over the next 12 years; and
WHEREAS, on November 23, 2018 the Federal Government issued a climate study
detailing the massive threat that climate change poses to the American economy and
underscoring the need for immediate climate emergency action at all levels of
government; and
WHEREAS, the death and destruction already wrought by global warming of
approximately 1.1°C above late 19th century levels demonstrates that the Earth is
already too hot for safety and justice as attested by increased and intensifying wildfires,
floods, rising seas, diseases, droughts and extreme weather; and
WHEREAS, restoring a safe and stable climate requires a "Climate Mobilization" at all
levels of government on a scale not seen since World War II to reach zero greenhouse
gas emissions across all sectors at emergency speed, to rapidly and safely drawdown
or remove all the excess carbon from the atmosphere, to end the 6th mass extinction of
species, and to implement measures to protect all people and species from the
increasingly severe consequences of climate change; and
WHEREAS, to address the nation's urgent climate change needs and impacts,
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a "Green New Deal"; and
WHEREAS, the proposed Green New Deal would be a sweeping overhaul of the
economy that includes equity and justice in its solutions and has the following goals:
1. Dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new
production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand
through renewable sources;
2. building a national, energy-efficient, "smart" grid;
3. upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy
efficiency, comfort and safety;
4. eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and
other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities
across the country;
5. eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from repairing and improving
transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure to
ensure universal access to clean water;
6. funding massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases;
7. making "green" technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major
export of the United States, with the aim of becoming an international leader in
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helping other countries transition to completely greenhouse gas neutral
economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal.
WHEREAS, justice calls for climate resilience that addresses the specific experiences,
vulnerabilities, and needs of marginalized communities within our jurisdiction, who must
be included and supported in actively engaging in climate resilience planning, policy,
and actions; and
WHEREAS, actions to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and/or drawdown
greenhouse gases may be taken in ways that also improve resilience to the effects of
climate change, and vice versa; and
WHEREAS, justice requires that frontline communities, which have historically borne
the brunt of the extractive fossil-fuel economy, participate actively in the planning and
implementation of this mobilization effort at all levels of government and that they
benefit first from the transition to a renewable energy economy; and
WHEREAS, fairness demands the protection and expansion of workers' right to
organize as well as a guarantee of high-paying, high-quality jobs with comprehensive
benefits for all and many other tenets of a Green New Deal effort as the mobilization to
restore a safe climate is launched;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of
Commissioners declares that a climate emergency threatens our county, region, state,
nation, civilization, humanity and the natural world;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of Commissioners
requests that Representative David Price join with the growing number of his
Congressional peers and endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's resolution for a select
committee on a Green New Deal.
This the 22nd Day of January 2019.
Penny Rich, Chair
Orange County Board of Commissioners