@Cassiodorus

We have no time to solve the problem, which is capitalism. So let's pretend to solve the problem, because we have no time to solve the problem.

More like "let's buy the time to solve the problem that is end-stage capitalism".

All respects of this timing suck, no exceptions. That's why Al Gore called it "An Inconvenient Truth".

Now, if you have some sort of idea how to accomplish the simultaneous fixing of climate change and end-stage capitalism in the world we actually live and move and have our being in, I'm all ears.

#2 We have no time to solve the problem, which is capitalism. So let's pretend to solve the problem, because we have no time to solve the problem.

@Cassiodorus

@Cassiodorus But how specific is it?

Here's a taste.

Empowering Farmers, Foresters & Ranchers to Address Climate Change and Protect Ecosystems

Our current food system accounts for 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Not only can we drastically reduce on-farm emissions, farmers have the potential to actually sequester 10 percent of all human-caused emissions in the soil. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing are the industries most vulnerable to climate change. We need to incentivize farming systems that help farmers both mitigate climate change and build resilience to its impacts.

Agriculture has a huge potential to sequester carbon. We need to employ farms of all sizes and production models to transition to ecologically regenerative practices to combat climate change. According to research at the Rodale Institute, agriculture could sequester 37 gigatons of carbon annually worldwide. Sadly, just 10 percent of farmers receive 75 percent of agricultural subsidies in the U.S., and those subsidies don’t prioritize carbon sequestration or soil health. We need to start by supporting all farmers not just a wealthy few and incentivizing conservation not over-production.

• Incentivize farmers to develop ecologically regenerative farming systems that sharply reduce emissions; sequester carbon; and heal our soils, forests, and prairie lands.
• Help farms of all sizes transition to ecologically regenerative agricultural practices that rebuild rural communities, protect the climate, and strengthen the environment with an investment of $410 billion. This assistance will focus on both sequestering carbon and increasing resiliency in the face of extreme weather events. Funds will be used to offset the costs of enterprise-level changes and barriers to transition, including design, technical assistance, purchasing equipment, installing infrastructure, site remediation, contract termination, and repaying farm-debt.
• We will set aside $41 billion to help large confined animal feeding operations that have a large environmental impacts transition to ecologically regenerative practices.
• We will set aside $41 billion for socially disadvantaged and beginning farmers who have been historically underserved by USDA programs.
• Pay farmers to keep carbon in the soil. We will pay farmers $160 billion for the soil health improvements they make and for the carbon they sequester, which both mitigates climate change and helps farmers adapt to it.
• Research and development. We will invest $1.48 billion in research to develop new, region-appropriate farming techniques and seeds. In order to respond to climate change and heal the environment, we will need to invest in non-chemical intensive practices and seed varieties that are tailored to each region’s climate and soil.
• Fund farmland conservation. We will spend $24.85 billion to bolster existing programs like the Conservation Stewardship program, the Agricultural Conservation Easement program, and the Regional Conservation Partnership program that help farmers make conservation improvements on their farm. These programs have made demonstrated gains in environmental quality.
• Transition to organic farming. We will spend $500 million to help farmers that are enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) transition their land to new organic farmers. As CRP contracts end, we will help connect these farmers with new organic farmers who want to continue rigorous conservation practices on a working landscape.
• Renewable energy on the farm. Farmers should be able to grow and harvest renewable energy, in addition to their crops. We will invest $1.4 billion in the Rural Energy for America Program for clean energy options to both diversify income streams, save money, and eliminate fossil fuel dependence on farms.
• Enforce the Clear Air and Water Acts on large factory farms and ensure all farmers have access to the tools and resources they need to address pollution.According to the EPA Inspector General, the EPA has spent more than 10 years and $15 million failing to develop a reliable method for measuring whether factory farms are complying with the Clean Air act and other regulations of dangerous air pollution. Industrial animal feeding operations, and the millions of pounds of untreated waste they create, are a major source of air pollution and driver of climate change. We will end this weak oversight of factory farms and ensure every farmer has the resources to address all forms of pollution.
• Ensure all rural residents, including farmers, and farmworkers have the right to protect their families and properties from chemical and biological pollution, including pesticide and herbicide drift. Farm practices should not infringe on the ability of other farmers and neighbors to carry out the normal activities of farming and rural lifestyles. We will give rural residents legal recourse to sue farmers who pollute their property.
• Invest in family farms and rural communities — not corporate ownership.
• Break up big agribusinesses that have a stranglehold on farmers and rural communities.According to Food & Water Watch, “consolidation in the pork packing industry has contributed to the 82 percent decline in the number of hog farms in Iowa between 1982 and 2007.” In our country, just four companies slaughter 85 percent of beef cattle. USDA reports that between 2000 and 2015 “soybean sales from the largest four sellers rose from 51 to 76 percent.” Additionally, after the Bayer-Monsanto merger, the two largest conglomerates now control 78 percent of the corn seed market. If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would say, “break them up.” And, working together, that is exactly what we are going to do. This is consistent with our Revitalizing Rural America plan.
• Ensure farmers are paid a fair price for their products with tools like supply management and grain reserves. Supply management policies today promote over-production, which comes with harmful and unnecessary climate pollution emissions. We will discourage over production and ensure farmers receive a fair price for their products by matching the supply with demand using the EPA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy, which starts with source reduction. This will minimize the impact on the environment by not producing more food than is needed, and ensures we have a reserve of food in case of natural disaster or emergency.
• Re-establish and strengthen the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration. Lobbyists and the Trump administration have gutted GIPSA and blocked rules helping farmers. As the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition details, “the 2008 Farm Bill required USDA to write regulations to empower GIPSA to provide basic protections for farmers who do business with these companies. But when USDA tried to write the regulations, the meat and poultry industries launched a full-scale attack to get GOP lawmakers to pass appropriations riders to block USDA from finalizing those farmer protections.” Working together, we will restore the agency that enforces antitrust laws in the meatpacking industry – an agency that Trump eliminated.
• Ensure farmers have the right to repair their own equipment. In rural America today, farmers can’t even repair their own tractors or other equipment because of the greed of companies like John Deere. As noted in Wired Magazine, “Farmers can’t change engine settings, can’t retrofit old equipment with new features, and can’t modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own” without going through an authorized repair agent. When we are in the White House, we will pass a national right-to-repair law that gives every farmer in America full rights over the machinery they buy.
• Reform patent laws to prevent predatory lawsuits from massive agribusinesses like Bayer/Monsanto. We cannot continue to allow Monsanto to control 80 percent of U.S. corn and more than 90 percent of U.S. soybean seed patents — a situation that has only gotten worse after the Trump administration approved Monsanto’s disastrous merger with Bayer. We are going to reform our patent laws to protect farmers from predatory patent lawsuits from companies like Monsanto.
• Reform the agricultural subsidy system so more money goes to small and medium sized farms. We cannot continue to allow the top 10 percent of farms to receive 77 percent of all government subsidies — with much of this money going to absentee farm owners, who live in big cities, renting out their land.
• Strengthen organic standards. Currently, massive farms are able to claim organic status without meeting all of the requirements, forcing smaller producers out of the market. We will address this by starting with implementing two rules to require dairy production to be on pasture and require poultry to have outdoor access.
• Invest in historically underserved communities to grow the number of farmers of color. In 2017, 95 percent of all farmers accounted for were white, with black farmers reporting ownership declining at 10 times the rate it did for white farmers. That is in addition to black farmers losing 80 percent of their land between 1910 and 2007, in no small part due to systematic discrimination. Today, only about 5 percent of black farmers reporting earning over $50,000, compared to 15 percent of white farmers. Additionally, 52 percent of American women farmers said they felt gender discrimination. When we are in the White House we will eradicate discrimination in agricultural land and opportunities.
• In addition to the $41 billion he will invest in socially disadvantaged and beginning farmers as president, Bernie will:
• Help beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers get fair access to land and resources by providing $50 million for a Disadvantaged and Beginning Farm State Coordinator program. The coordinator will also help farmers access programs and fill out burdensome paperwork that can be a barrier to participation for small farms.
• Provide oral translation assistance at all USDA, FDA, and DOJ offices for non-English speakers. Farmers across the U.S. are prevented from accessing government resources because of language and literacy barriers. We will require USDA, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice to provide translation assistance need to help all farmers regardless of their primary language.
• Invest $1.12 billion in Tribal land access and extension programs. We will invest in programs to help Tribes and Tribal corporations access, acquire, and consolidate land on their reservations. We will also ensure federal resources to facilitate knowledge transfer, technical assistance, and educational activities on Tribal land.
• Invest $127 million in the Highly Fractionated Indian Land Grant Program to reunify divided and fractured ownership of tribal land.
• Invest $600 million in the Indian Tribal Land Acquisition Grant Program for Tribes and Tribal corporations to purchase land on their own reservations.
• Invest $400 million in the Federally Recognized Tribes Extension Program to provide educational outreach and research-based knowledge on Tribal lands through the USDA Extension program.
• Strengthen outreach to minority and socially disadvantaged farmers. The Farmer Opportunity Training and Outreach program helps coordinate USDA training and education for beginning, veteran, and socially disadvantaged farmers. The program has been historically underfunded, so we will spend $1 billion to expand it to ensure those who have been chronically underserved by the USDA have access to the resources they need to thrive.
• Create a pathway to citizenship for migrant farmworkers and end exclusions for agricultural workers in labor laws. We must ensure farmworkers have the right to overtime pay, strong safety protections, and the right to collectively bargain. Currently, farm workers are exempt from many labor laws that other workers have benefitted from for years. Farming is a dangerous and demanding profession. We need to protect these workers as we do others
• Reform H-2A agricultural work visas to substantially raise prevailing wages, allow workers to move between employers, increase enforcement and hold employers who mistreat workers accountable, and include a pathway to citizenship for those who want it.
• Connect consumers with local farms and healthy foods.
• Establish a victory lawns and gardens initiative through a $36 billion investment to help urban, rural, and suburban Americans transform their lawns into food-producing or reforested spaces that sequester carbon and save water. Lawns account for 40 million acres in America, and we spend tens of billions of dollars each year taking care of them each year. Let’s reinvest that money in climate smart practices that encourage everyone to be a part of the solution.
• Invest $14.7 billion in cooperatively owned grocery stores. Local groceries and co-ops are more likely to buy local products, which will help grow markets for farmers to sell their goods. We will also use these funds to bring grocery stores to food deserts ensuring all people have access to healthy, local food.
• Incentivize schools to procure locally produced foods. Institutional purchasing can be a huge boost to local producers and build local farm economies.
• We will give a meal incentive for schools that acquire at least 30 percent of their food from local sources.
• Invest $31 billion in local food processing, including slaughter and dairy processing. Rampant consolidation in processing has led to a lack of facilities for small-scale, local producers. Investing in local facilities will help smaller producers to compete with the Tyson Foods of the world.
• Allow meat slaughtered at state inspected facilities to be sold across state lines. State inspected slaughter facilities must meet or exceed federal regulations. Currently, imported meat must meet the same standards as meat from a federally inspected slaughterhouses and it may cross state lines. We need to level the playing field for locally produced meat.
• Bolster existing programs that help farmers process their products on farm with a $263 million investment. There are already some programs that support on-farm processing and farmers markets. We need to continue to support these efforts as we expand opportunities.
• Help states develop food recovery and composting programs with a $160 billion investment to help solve hunger. If food waste were its own country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the U.S. and China. Meanwhile, 40 million people in this country are food insecure. We need to give states the resources they need to reduce food waste and hunger in their communities.
• Enforce country of origin labeling.Unfair trade policy has let foreign countries overturn our country-of-origin-labeling laws even though 90 percent of the American people support country-of-origin labeling. We must respect the will of the people and allow them to know where their food is coming from.
• Incentivize community ownership of farmland. One of the barriers to being able to choose a career in ecologically regenerative farming is the cost of acquiring farmland. We want communities to be able to join together to own farmland to help people grow our local, ecologically regeneratively produced food and help solve the climate crisis and will provide government assistance to do so. We will support a robust future for rural America that will be essential to addressing the climate crisis. This is consistent with our Revitalizing Rural America plan.

And that's just the Ag part.

#4 to build the new infrastructure?

Here is the main concern: all of the reformist cheerleaders are out with their idea, which they all feel like Chris Columbus about having discovered -- a carbon tax! They'll offer an economic disincentive to buy gasoline, and magically all of the carbon corporations will surrender, and in their defeat they will all work together to graciously build the new infrastructure. Or at least that's what they imagine.

The Bernie proposal is a welcome alternative to what the pseudo-left imagines is its Great White Hope. But how specific is it?