Decisive action to avert climate-generated chaos is long overdue. At the same time, our nation’s dependence on oil must be broken if we are to have a viable economy and avoid increasing energy insecurity and the associated threats to peace and justice. We therefore support an emergency mobilization of resources to ensure rapid progress toward a postcarbon energy economy in which renewable energy provides the overwhelming bulk of our energy needs, and results in a just and sustainable economy. Some specific policy measures that can further this goal are:

• Immediate adoption of binding international treaties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt deforestation with an overall commitment to reduce global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses to no more than 350ppm (CO₂ equivalent).

• Setting emissions targets based on science, with proper safety factors to protect against the risk of climate catastrophe, with a starting target of 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts over a twelve-year period.

• Making energy conservation, not energy production, the first priority of energy policy. Financial supports should be enacted to ensure that energy conservation/efficiency measures with an expected payback time of less than 20 years will be implemented on an expedited timetable.

• Commitment to a “green economy” with economic initiatives to create community-based green jobs in Massachusetts. We should ensure that low income groups are early beneficiaries of, and full participants in, the job growth that will occur as we transition to an economically sustainable economy.

• A carbon tax as part of a comprehensive revamping of economic incentives in the energy arena.

• Programs to ensure a rapid expansion of the use of wind, solar, and geothermal energy, accompanied by the decentralization of energy production and the construction of a “smart” electricity grid with energy storage.

• Comprehensive land use reforms and relocalization of economic activities leading to sustainable communities whose economies will not collapse in the face of oil supply disruption or the inevitable escalation of oil prices.

• The phased closure of coal-burning power plants.

• The banning of of biofuels derived from food crops or from crops grown on land whose clearing contributed to deforestation.