Green New Deal

The Maryland Green Party’s Green New Deal 


1: Locally-based Economics and Grassroots Democracy

  • Fund equitable public financing for state elections.

  • Curtail and end pay-to-play politics.

  • A thriving multi-party democracy where working class folks have a true voice; enact Ranked Choice Voting and third party ballot access

  • A carbon neutral economy capable of providing green jobs for all who need them.

  • Add a warning label to all campaign materials funded by the fossil fuel industry and other major climate-destroyer industries.

  • Promote community owned banks to provide investment capital to fund green jobs to struggling areas. 

  • Provide incentives for health care facilities. 

  • Ensure adequate schooling for all areas of the state.  

  • Promote locally-based, organic farming and urban gardening.

 

2: Social and Racial Justice

  • Reparations

    • Reparations mean repaying communities for harm caused by the state and providing the autonomy for these communities to build the just, green future they choose. 

    • Initiate Maryland Environmental Neighborhood Defense Corps to remediate all lead paint in Baltimore’s Black Butterfly and brownfield sites across Maryland while incubating democratically-owned green businesses.

  • Build bottom-up climate resilience. 

  • Empowerment of marginalized communities and a democratic economy.

 

3: Nonviolence:

Climate apartheid and injustice is a major root cause of violence in Baltimore and across the state. Climate justice demands demilitarization and investment in community-controlled public safety.

  • Maryland Must Stop Profiting from Climate Pollution by:

    • Ending tax breaks for corporate arms dealers.

    • Diverting funding from enforcement and incarceration to mediation and peace building. 

    • Enacting strict controls per and poly fluoroalkyl contamination.

    • Grassroots peacekeeping from individuals up, and across Maryland’s society.

 

4: Ecological Wisdom

The planet’s resources are finite. We must increase community wealth through greater equity, not unsustainable growth.

  • Mandate 100% truly renewable energy: 100 Percent Clean Renewable Energy by 2032.

  • Maryland must close all of its coal plants. 

  • End all animal agriculture subsidies and overfishing. 

  • End the use of toxic chemicals in our agriculture. 

  • Phase out factory farms. 

  • Encourage a plant-based diet.

  • Divest state pension funds from fossil fuel companies.

  • Protect Maryland's ecosystems and biodiversity, and restore our watersheds and landscapes to function as naturally as practicable.

  • Ban single use plastics. 

  • Begin the just transition to a green future now by all means necessary. 

  • Build a circular economy that recycles all valuable resources.

  • Build an economy powered not by endless growth, but by boundless equity.

 


See Also: Maryland Matters op-ed by Owen Silverman Andrews, co-chair of the Baltimore City Green Party, which prompted the first participatory public meeting to craft a Green New Deal for Maryland.