American Solidarity Party and the Environment

The American Solidarity Party believes that we are responsible for caring for God’s creation so that present and future generations can enjoy the benefits of a healthy environment, including clean air and water, and the rich biodiversity that is our heritage. The American Solidarity Party rejects the notion that environmental stewardship requires either diminished workers’ rights or population control. Maintaining our environment will require individuals, businesses, and local communities taking responsibility for their contributions; however, due to the national and global nature of our natural resources, we see an appropriate role for our federal and state governments in adopting and enforcing evidence-based policies regarding pollution, climate change, and alternative forms of energy.

We support the strengthening of public infrastructure and planning to ensure that no home in America lacks easy access to clean drinking water and fresh food.

We call for reviewing environmental laws to ensure that their impacts do not disproportionately impact the poor and marginalized. Poorer communities impacted by these measures need to be supported to protect vulnerable citizens. We support policies that implement equitable development in order to explicitly avoid gentrification while ensuring under-served populations receive environmental benefits. Resources such as community resilience mapping need to be made available to all localities to help them best assess and address their particular needs.

We cannot address our environmental issues without also addressing our overconsumption. We should teach habits of conservation to our children both at home and in our schools, and we should implement measures that show promise for effectively reducing consumption.

We oppose corporate manufacturing processes that lead to faster obsolescence and lower-quality products, especially in clothing and appliances. Such practices are large contributors to resource waste and landfill increase. We call for public support for landfills, subsidies for composting, and an end to the exportation of garbage and recycling to poorer countries.

We oppose neighborhood policies that incentivize chemical-saturated, water-intensive lawns or forbid outdoor clotheslines. We oppose the use of street lights so bright that they disrupt natural circadian rhythms or animal migration patterns and support Dark Sky initiatives.

We oppose federal subsidies for fossil-fuel exploration and extraction and call for such funds to be diverted to research into carbon sinks and non-geological carbon sequestration. We insist that the federal government must institute pollution taxes and low-price cap-and-trade systems in order to fund public investment into sustainable energy so that the energy industry will be funding its own transition to clean energy.

We support workforce-retraining programs and tax-incentivized hiring preference for workers adversely affected by the transition to green-energy production, and environmentally-friendly modes of production. We call for the transition to cooperative ownership of new, sustainable energy sources, with government infrastructure support for those that require it, such as nuclear. We call for an end to technology and green energy manufacturing processes involving the exploitation of lax environmental laws, labor, and natural resources in other countries.

We oppose the loss of wetlands via land-use change permitting development in such areas. We call for the creation of natural land trusts that will allow communities to control and utilize natural areas with minimal ecological disturbance. We call for states and communities to restore natural lands and to re-establish the concept of creation as a commons that we all have a right to roam and a duty to responsibly steward.

We call for a strengthening of our laws against environmental degradation, which steals from our common inheritance. We call for the ban of neonicotinoid pesticides, which destroy agricultural ecosystems and lead to declines in both native and domesticated honeybee populations, and for tax relief for farmers affected by the transition to common but less harmful pesticides.

We call for state and local initiatives to combat droughts by supporting water retention through natural means, such as improving soil water retention and groundwater banking, or through artificial means, such as water-retention ponds and water-retention facilities. We also support the use of greywater strategies supported by large-scale public infrastructure projects, where rainwater and non-drinking water sources are used for basic irrigation, toilet flushing, and other needs. We call for an end to federal and state water use laws that encourage and subsidize agriculture in unsustainable environments.

We support strengthening the specific rights of animals against abuse and neglect at the hands of those meant to steward them, recognizing them as more than inanimate property. We seek to regulate more strictly animal research, especially pound seizures. We call for stricter regulation of factory farms and stockyards, and the repeal of food-disparagement laws and so-called “ag-gag” laws that prohibit free speech regarding animal agriculture. We support local and family-owned farms and farming cooperatives as essential to ethical, sustainable, and humane consumption.