The Eco–Action Committee of the United States’ Green Party helped organize the Greens for local and national events. From April to June 2021, the party held a number of events to help bring awareness to numerous environmental issues in the United States.
The EcoAction Committee
The Eco–Action committee is made up of thirty-six members from over fifteen different states across the U.S. Members are appointed by state’s Green Parties and by national GP caucuses. One of the main duties of the committee is to inform and advise Green Party candidates of ecological issues. Members also aim to promote ecological wisdom, environmental justice, sustainability and responsible governmental stewardship of the Earth and its inhabitants.
Below is a recap of all of the events and news that the Eco–Action Committee has produced in Spring 2021.
Updates on the Green New Deal
The Eco–Action Committee seeks to review issues related to enacting an Eco-socialist ‘Green New Deal‘. The Green New Deal aims to switch to 100 percent clean renewable energy by 2030 as well as zero greenhouse gas emissions. It also details an economic bill of rights that includes single-payer health-care, living wage jobs for all, free education, and affordable housing.
Eco-Action endorsed the ClimatePresident.org campaign in hopes of getting Biden to declare a climate emergency and to issue executive orders on a host of climate issues. The campaign focuses on shifting away from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. Biden did execute a series of Executive Orders on climate. While the orders show improvements, the Greens note in a press release that there are still many missing components. Most notably, the call to stop extracting fossil fuels.
The Eco-Action Committee has also supported the BuildBackFossilFree, Stop line 3, and Stop the Money Pipeline campaigns.
Earth Day to May Day
Eco-Action helped organize events and protests between Earth Day to May Day. These were a ten-day period of events that brought awareness to ecological and economic justice. The events highlighted the need for interconnected action on climate, BLM, economic justice, military, racial justice, worker rights, immigrants, LGBTQ and other Green issues. The committee also helped initiate a forum along with the Peace Action Committee on Climate and the Military.
Food Justice Webinar
On June 6 2021, Eco-Action hosted a webinar on food justice and sovereignty. The event was held as a lead up to the upcoming UN Summit on Food which will take place July 26th to July 28th 2021. The event held eight guest speakers. Different themes were covered; including food democracy, factory farming, cultural relations to food and veganism to name a few.
Recap of the Biden Earth Day Summit
On April 22nd 2021, President Joe Biden hosted a 2-day summit to gather world leaders and CEOs to discuss climate change. Eco-Action helped issue a GP release before the summit. The press release details why Biden’s Earth day goals are not strong enough to solve the climate emergency. On June 1st 2021, over a month after the summit took place, the global Greens held a digest of Biden’s earth day summit. The Forum was moderated by, Davene Chávez, of the Green Party of Mexico and by the group ‘Young Greens of the Americas’. Leaders in Green politics and scientists from across the world were invited to present. They critiqued and gave suggestions as to how the summit could have been improved.
The Climate Problem Presented by CryptoCurrency
The Co-Chair of the Eco-Action Committee spoke on June 5th 2021 at a rally in upstate New York which opposed the reopening and expansion of an old coal power plant. The plant is scheduled to reopen in order to burn fracked gas to support the energy needed for cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are virtual currencies, which means they exist only online but have become a major contributor to GHG emissions. In order to solve the complex mathematical equations that protect the digital currency from fraud, hundreds of millions of computers are put to work. In New York, these operations use warehouses full of computers which are expected to grow in coming years. The power needed to run all of these computers further jeopardizes New York’s electricity grid. The webpage that provides details for the event explains that “this relatively new and little understood industry uses the same amount of energy as some entire countries“. The environmental impact of this industry greatly affects BIPOC communities which are often located near these fossil fuel power plants.
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