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But ultimately, we need to have a system of public funding, and the way that can be affordable is by making the public airwaves free for public purpose. The minute you do that, the bottom falls out of campaign funding. It’s no longer needed, and they can raise all the money in the world that they want, but they don’t have an advantage for it. We could solve this problem in a heartbeat, but you can’t solve it unless you also democratize the airwaves and make them a tool for democracy and for educating the public about things that matter, like elections. The minute you do that, the funding campaigns go away. It’s totally within arm’s reach.
Many climate scientists have pointed out that we are already “locked in” to a certain amount of climate change. So, I’m wondering how the ideas like adaptation and resilience to climate impacts fit into the Green New Deal promise? Why do you believe a Green New Deal is the answer to many of the nation’s economic and social crises?
I transitioned into doing climate work because from my knowledge of science and how you read the data, I certainly share the perspective that we can’t take a single day for granted—that we have to work as fast as humanly possible to completely zero out climate emissions, but we have to do more than that as well.
Restoring ecosystem resilience is part of the Green New Deal, which we don’t often talk about because we’re usually focused on the headlines: energy, transportation and food. Those are the big three for climate emissions, and they’re critical for economic security, so that’s kind of where the focus is, but [the Green Party] equally talks about so-called “pink jobs:” the jobs of meeting human needs.
We also talk about the jobs of ecosystem needs and restoring ecosystems, in the same way that the New Deal had a big conservation component to it. There’s a big component of [restoration] as well in the Green New Deal.
We look at restoring shorelines, restoring deltas, restoring forests, restoring grazing systems and so on, because once you begin to do that, you incredibly magnify everything else that you do [in regards to mitigating the impacts of climate change]. To zero out climate emissions, you also have to accelerate natural carbon sequestration through ecosystems. That’s the only way to do it reliably. There are many forms of [restoration] which also create jobs and save us humongous amounts of money in the long haul.
The Green New Deal virtually pays for itself just in terms of the health savings alone because what injures the health of the climate also injures human health. We’re so accustomed that we don’t recognize it, but our major health epidemics—from asthma, cancers, heart disease, lung disease and learning disabilities—have enormous ties to air pollution that results from fossil fuels. This has been documented by a whole variety of studies.
It was also documented by Cuba when their oil pipeline went down. Without changing their health care system, when they zeroed out their fossil fuel emissions, Cuba got healthy. It was not only reduction of emissions; it was also that they transitioned to a sustainable and healthy food system, and a sustainable and healthy transportation system, and those are essentially the underpinnings of modern disease—between pollution and a poisonous, predatory food system and passive transportation.
If those things are done well, the need for our health care system—which is really a sick-care system—is enormously reduced, and there are some really fabulous numbers around that. We spend around $3 trillion a year in sick-care expenses, triple what we spend on our military-industrial-security complex. But 75 percent of our health-care burden is related to chronic diseases that are largely preventable by doing what it takes to fix the climate. So this is a win-win scenario. It’s a good-news story.
Can you discuss the lawsuit initiated by the Libertarian Party against the Commission on Presidential Debates, and how the Green Party became involved in that suit after you were arrested for simply showing up at the presidential debates in 2012?
[Editor’s note: After Truthout sat down with Stein for this interview in February, Our America Initiative announced in April that it would pursue a separate lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates on behalf of 2012 presidential and vice presidential candidates from independent third parties.]
The Libertarians initiated this case, and then they brought [the Green Party] into it—so the Libertarians, Greens, Gary Johnson, myself, my running mates and probably others as well. They kind of initiated this whole process and they’ve put together a wonderful plan, which we’ve been collaborating on. [The Libertarian Party] reached out to Rocky Anderson, a former presidential candidate himself, who was also locked out [of the presidential debates], who is a very credible, reputable constitutional lawyer. [The Libertarian Party has] another constitutional lawyer, [Bruce Fein,] from the Reagan administration, who served as an assistant attorney general. [The two lawyers] are very highly regarded and come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, not opposite exactly, but there’s a big space between them.
They have a very interesting and credible legal strategy, which hasn’t been tested before, but is thought to have a reasonable chance in court. We are well aware of [the fact that] what happens in the court can in turn depend on what happens in the court of public opinion, and this is an issue that Americans are really, extremely pissed off about—about not having choices and not being informed about the choices they do have. So, I think all bets are off as to what’s going to happen.
In my home state of Massachusetts, we have fought this battle and we actually won it a couple times, and when we did, it wasn’t over because they have ways to suppress your voice even when you’re in the debate. But if we maintain the same kind of organization and offensive strategy, we’ll be ready to take that on as well.
It’s not impossible. What are the odds? It’s hard to say. It would have been considered a “black swan” event—statistically very unlikely. But I think we’re in an age of the statistically unlikely. We are at an extreme aberration of history right now, and it’s only going to get more extreme. We’re in uncharted territory right now.
What do you have to say to those who are skeptical of the system no matter who’s in charge, to those who believe it’s the system itself that can’t deliver the change we need?
Well, if [the Green Party] were to get in [to the presidency], it would be proof in the principle itself, that we can do things like what Denton did [in banning fracking]. Who would have thought?
The predator state, the economic and political elite got so sure of themselves that they started doing very unstrategic things. It was total overkill, and that’s kind of where we are politically right now. When you look at the amount of money that’s being poured in, how incredibly toxic it is, and how incredibly pissed off and alienated people are by the attack campaigns and all of that, it’s really driving people out of their court. So, our objective is to let people know there’s somewhere to go to. You don’t have to just throw in the towel, abandon ship, jump into the ocean and drown. There’s a lifeboat to come to.