Environmental Integrity Includes Respecting Rights of Nature AND Care for Essential Life-Supporting Ecosystems
The “environment” is our home. Extraordinary levels of environmental stewardship will trump less critical needs. Our economy is a subset of the environment. So our economic policies will respect the environment and not treat it merely as a resource for plundering.
My administration’s environmental policy will be driven by recognition that:
- Earth’s ecosystems are our life-support system
- nature has rights
- other species have as much right to be here as humankind
- human expansion results in habitat destruction and species extinction
- the cost of failing to protect nature will exceed the cost of responsible stewardship
- Earth has a carrying capacity and we exceed it at our peril
- the geographic area of the U.S. has a carrying capacity and we have no right to exceed it
- the economy is a subsystem of the biosphere, so economic policy will not ignore environmental priorities
Our environmental priorities will include:
- Rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (see Climate policy)
- Protection and promotion of biodiversity and rights of nature
- Clean, healthy air, land and water
- Dark skies and quietude
- Responsible agricultural practices (see Food and Agriculture policy)
- Responsible population contraction policy (see our National Ecological Overshoot Project)
We will respect the natural world and the entire web of life on Earth.
We will uphold, defend and strengthen the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
We will uphold, defend and strengthen the Clean Water Act.
We will uphold, defend and strengthen the Endangered Species Act.
We will work to quickly put a stop to further habitat destruction and species extinction.
We will eliminate environmental sacrifice zones that disproportionately impact certain populations
We will not approve another project that mines, transports or burns fossil fuels, including natural gas.
We will clean up extractive industry, working to
- Minimize extraction, maximize application of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle through our National Overshoot Project
- Require best practices
- Require full mitigation
Peer-reviewed science will guide our policies.
More about our conservation policy
LEARN MORE
Biodiversity and species protection – Center for Biological Diversity
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List