Section 7

The 100-Year Plan for Sustainability

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Because we can now see a convergence of global rules creating peace, justice and prosperity within an economy that is stable and fair, we are capable of creating a long-term plan for the environment that can promote both human prosperity and ecological sustainability.

We must do this because our air, our water, our energy and our resources come from everywhere on the planet.

For our examples, we will turn to those who already know sustainability, the tribes who lived with the land for 10,000 years before we arrived.  Lakota, Apache, Leni Lenape, it is now time for us to learn from you, and I ask you to step forward and speak.  We will now borrow from your wisdom and declare that we must see 100 years ahead toward a future of planet-wide environmental sustainability.

So I set forth today our national goal of a 100-Year Plan for global environmental sustainability, that we will craft in the next few months.

Organic Food Production

We will start by moving gradually away from hazardous chemicals and towards what US consumers overwhelmingly want already, and that is completely organic food production in the United States.

National Water Contingency Plan

Next, we will triple water use efficiency in United States through a coordinated National Water Contingency Plan that will adapt to global climate change.  As we just saw in the drought-devastated states of the Southeast, massive droughts will become more common with global warming, so that a key provision of our new National Water Contingency Plan will be to provide National Farm Crop Insurance.

I have directed the Secretaries of State and Interior, and the Administrator of the USEPA to begin implementing these two initial steps where possible by my Executive Order, and my administration will present legislation to Congress to further implement them.

And my fellow Americans, we must stop buying cheap junk.  We are buying cheap junk whose resources deplete our ecosystems, whose production pollutes our world, and whose disposal clogs our landfills.  Although I am willing to consider other means with Congress, I will propose that inefficient, throwaway goods be taxed based on their resource inefficiency, and that recycling should become commonplace. 

Americans deserve products that last, and Americans must produce them. This will be good for American businesses.

By being efficient, Americans will save money. By doing this, we will also reduce our use of materials until our demands on the world are within its capacity to sustain us, just as the North American tribes have long understood.