I entered my testimony for the State Democratic Platform hearing:
http://massdemsplatform.blogspot.com/2009/01/environment.html#comments

ENVIRONMENT

“At every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different.” -- Roberto Unger

1. We recognize that atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), currently at 387 parts per million (by volume) carbon dioxide equivalent (ppmv CO2-e), have already exceeded danger level, and A STATE OF EMERGENCY exists now to return quickly to 300-325 ppmv CO2-e, the level that could allow restoring Arctic sea ice to its area 25 years ago[1]. Even at 350 ppmv CO2-e there is still a 7% risk of exceeding 2 degrees Celsius warming over preindustrial level[2] - the red line of global catastrophic climate change according to IPCC[3], that will likely lead to further, uncontrollable and irreversible climate change due to positive feedback loops of the climate systems. Below 300 ppmv CO2-e is the known historically safe concentration during many past glacial cycles that will keep the Arctic ice cap in the summer, and prevent triggering knock on effects of further warming.

2. We recognize that the current policy targets of reducing GHGs emissions 80% (relative to various reference points including 1990 levels) by 2050, can not even achieve stabilization of GHGs below 450 ppmv CO2-e[4], which has a 26-78% chance of EXCEEDING 2 degrees Celsius warming over pre-industrial [2]. Such targets are UNACCEPTABLY TOO RISKY, given that coral reefs worldwide are expected to be wiped out with a 2 degrees Celsius warming[5], and particularly given the now clear evidence that at < 1 degree Celsius warming today, we are already on the precipice of climate catastrophe, with the Arctic heading towards ice free summer in 2013 - eighty years ahead of predictions, with methane (a GHG 25x more potent than CO2) bubbling out of Arctic sea beds and from Arctic lakes that kept it ice-free, due to warming ocean and thawing permafrost, with glaciers worldwide drying up and threatening water supply and food production of 1 billion people in Asia alone, and with drastically increased extreme weather incidences and forest fires, as well as species extinction rates.

3. We recognize that returning to near 300 ppmv CO2-e requires a WORLDWIDE MOBILIZATION and a concerted, sustained effort for years to come. If we succeed, this will be the turning point of humanity's evolution towards cooperation for the common good, and to live in peace with nature and with each other, ending an era marked by global instability, and abundant conflict. There is already a growing global movement of emergency mobilization[6]. The world needs US leadership in this shift.

4. We recognize that returning to near 300 ppmv CO2-e requires an immediate halt on all new coal fired power plants construction, extraction and use of all other high emission fossil fuel sources (e.g., tar sand and oil shale), and a rapid phase-out of existing coal and other fossil fuel sources, and replacement with renewable, carbon neutral energy technologies that are readily available and simply awaiting political will for rapid deployment.

5. We recognize that returning to near 300 ppmv CO2-e requires immediately ending RAMPANT DEFORESTATION, which is happening primarily in developing countries, and contributing to 12-25% of annual global man-made GHG emissions. We consider it vital for the United States to lead the global community in reaching an effective, equitable, just and fair international agreement by December, 2009 in COPENHAGEN, that unites and obligates all of humanity in our common goal of preserving our home planet in a livable state. To that end, the US must lead developed countries in accepting responsibilitiyfor our historically predominant emissions, and accepting our greater capacities, committing to financial and technological transfers that will help enable developing countries to achieve similar GHG reductions even as they lift their populations out of poverty. A simple, fair and transparent metric for implementing this spirit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreements is laid out in the Greenhouse Development Rights framework.[7]

6. We consider it vital for the United States to lead by example, and to pass federal legislation that will ensure GHGs ELIMINATION TARGETS consistent with returning to near 300 ppmv CO2-e before mid-century. This not only includes all strategies of EMISSION reductions such as conservation, efficiency, renewable energy deployment, sustainable land use policies, public transportation, building codes, etc., but also, due to the high level overshoot of safe GHG levels at present, various DRAWDOWN strategies must be considered seriously, especially because the reduction of global cooling aerosol pollutions by phasing out fossil fuel will lead to unmasking of the true extent of global warming rapidly. Particularly promising and safe are natural strategies that employ plants to draw down carbon, and storing the carbon quasi-permanently in some form.E.g. the holistic soil management system developed by Allan Savory [8]

7. We recognize that, just like climate feedback mechanisms, ecosystem collapses can occur in a non-linear, abrupt fashion once destabilization has proceeded sufficiently. Species extinction rates are already many thousands of times above evolutionary background rates [9-12]. We must do everything we can to protect the biodiversity that is still left, since it is well established that biodiversity is directly related to the resilience of ecosystems.

8. We support local, small, sustainable, organic farm models that employ rotational farming practices and holistic soil and pest management, and oppose subsidies and incentives for agrobusinesses relying heavily on petro-chemical fertilizers, pesticides/herbicides and GMO crops that withstand higher doses of pesticides/herbicides, and on factory feedlots that cause huge greenhouse gas emissions (due to animal waste piles not naturally broken down, and loss of energy in food production by feeding ruminant animals with high energy input grains rather than low energy input grass, the latter also happens to be their natural, healthier diet), as well as soil degradation and water pollution (from animal waste/nutrient runoff).

9. We declare that SUSTAINABILITY, NOT SUPERFICIAL ECONOMIC GROWTH/DEVELOPMENT, is of true value to our society. Once passed the natural capacity of resource supply and waste sinks, further "growth" only diminishes quality of life, not enhances it. Economic "laws" that tell us stimulating consumption promotes growth are not natural laws like laws of physics, but rather observed correlations based on a period of capitalistic free market that did not place a value on the sustainability of the environment and life supporting elements like clean air, water, soil, and robust ecosystems that are crucial for our own existence. That period was fleetingly short in human history, while its environmental damage is devastatingly apparent. We must measure all our future policies with how well they promote sustainability, particularly with regard to the climate emergency. Internationally, we must push for worldwide population stabilization through education, contraception and one/two child policy (depending on growth trend in each country, including the US). Domestically, we must replace fossil fuel based economic growth and stimulation of consumption, with sustainable, green, re-localized economy based on conservation, efficiency, clean renewable energy, sustainable, integrated, organic agriculture, small local businesses and cooperatives, and community financing, all of which bring good, secure, local jobs, redirect hundreds of billions of $$$ sent overseas each year for purchasing fossil fuels and instead investing in and keep money circulating in local communities made strong and resilient to global financial storms, improve health through healthier, fresher food and a cleaner environment, and keep us secure by removing the need for our military aggression in securing fossil fuel, and saves hundreds of billions of $$$ of military spending in the name of our "national interests" worldwide. Every $ invested in renewable energy sector creates 3x as many jobs as in oil and coal industries.

10. As for the cost of climate action, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change for the UK government, the 2009 McKinsey report, and the majority of economists who have examined the issue to any depth, have come to the consensus that decisive early action is far cheaper than late/no action, and in fact late action may be completely ineffective in mitigating climate catastrophe. The cost of decisive action have been estimated to be anywhere from 0.5% to several % of world's GDP. This is investment for a livable planet that is worth every penny, even if it turns out to be much more costly (the longer we delay, the more costly it gets). By comparison, during the last global mobilization of WWII, more than 30%, and in some cases, half of the economy was devoted to military expenditure.

11. We believe that governments at all levels need to launch a massive educational effort to ensure the population truly understands the gravity of the climate, ecological and sustainability emergency situation, and generate a positive political and cultural feedback support for decisive actions.

12. We believe that a CARBON TAX charged at the source or upstream bottlenecks of fossil fuels, where it is relatively straight forward to manage and most transparent[13], is the best way to avoid the severe caveats that have crippled the cap-and-trade system[14], including abundant evasion schemes and loopholes. The tax revenue will be mostly returned to consumers in equal portions per person, so that low carbon emissions are encouraged, and low income families tend to receive more than the carbon tax they pay. Some portion of the revenue should be used to fund renewable energy transitions. The tax rate should be periodically adjusted following close monitoring of emission reductions achieved.

13. We need to enact laws that strongly encourage MINIMAL PACKAGING, and packaging with bio-degradable (not just physically degradable) material. Recycling is important only after reduced consumption, and increased rate of re-use whenever possible, as recycled material almost always are lower grade than the original, and recovery rate can be low, while recycling cost (both monetary and environmental) can be significant.

14. (Modified from another user's comment:) "We urge the passage of a Producer-Take-Back bill requiring manufacturers to take back, at their own expense, all electronic equipment waste sold in Massachusetts, and prohibiting the export of such waste to foreign countries where proper recycling programs that reduce environmental pollution and health hazard to workers during the recycling operation can not be guaranteed." (E-wastes are causing huge pollution of air, water, and soil to many parts of Asia and Africa where crude sweatshops extract valuable chemicals from the E-wastes - often by straight burning - while many toxic chemicals are released. Polluted rivers run straight to the ocean and return the chemical favors to us in sea foods on our dinner plates.)

15. The larger issue of pervasive chemical pollution in our environment is evident in the fact that all of the hundreds of Americans tested were found to have many synthetic pollutants in their blood sample, including flame retardants, rocket fuel ingredients, plasticizers, adhesive chemicals, pesticides, etc.[15] Thousands of new chemicals are put on the market each year, joining the tens of thousands of existing chemicals, many of which persist in the environment and evades biodegradation, and even bio-accumulate. This poses a problem for the safe use of human/animal waste and even for composting. What is needed is a complete PARADIGM SHIFT in our policies towards synthetic chemicals, from "market it until PROVEN UNSAFE", to "market it only after proving beyond reasonable doubt to be safe".

16. Much less well known are the dangers to health and wildlife posed by the ever thickening electromagnetic (EMF) smog, particularly with the proliferation of wireless devices that operates at radiofrequency (RF) ranges of non-ionizing radiation, such as cell phones, cordless phones, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, etc. Ever larger amounts of data are transmitted through the air waves, submerging the entire population in ever increasing intensity of wave forms that did not exist in the environment in our evolutionary history. Human body is actually exquisitely sensitive to these frequencies, and there is growing evidence that suggest the huge amount of data linking EMF/RF exposure to biological/health effects may be due to the fact that the body actually uses these frequencies in the internal communication, and is therefore "interfered with" by the external signals. Whatever the explanation, evidence is strong that EMF/RF causes biological effects at intensities far below the current regulartory standards that only took thermal(tissue heating) effect into consideration[16-18]. Given that cancers and many other diseases take decades to develop, and given that many studies already point to alarming increases of brain tumor rates in long time cell phone users, it is imperative that we take the precautionary approach and adopt much much stronger guidelines - and actually provide funding for enforcement for a change, and scale back wireless deployment and use landlines whenever possible.

References:

[1] Hansen et al. (2008): "Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?" Open Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf
[2] Meinshausen, M. (2006): 'What does a 2°C target mean for greenhouse gas concentrations? A brief analysis based on multi-gas emission pathways and several climate sensitivity uncertainty estimates', pp.265 – 280 in Avoiding dangerous climate change, H.J. Schellnhuber et al. (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007): Fourth Assessment Report http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg2.htm
[4] World Resourced Institute (2008): "A Comparison of Legislative Climate Change Targets in the 110th Congress" Chart 2, lower panel. http://www.wri.org/publication/usclimatetargets
[5] Stern, N. (2006): The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, pp. 57, 80 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/stern_review_report.htm
[6] Climate Code Red http://climatecodered.net/
[7] The Greenhouse Development Rights framework (2008) http://www.ecoequity.org/docs/TheGDRsFramework.pdf
[8] Savory, A. "A Global Strategy for Addressing Global Climate Change" http://holisticmanagement.org.au/PDF/A+Global+Strategy+for+Addressing+Cl...
"On the 4.9 billion hectares that make up the world’s rangelands increasing soil organic matter by a mere 0.5 percent (easily achievable with his methods), amounts to approximately 720 gigatons of CO2e removed from the atmosphere. For comparison, the annual total emissions from all sources for the year 2000 was an estimated 44 gigatons."
[9] Pimm, S. et al. (2006): "Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions" PNAS July 18, 2006 vol. 103 no. 29 10941-10946
[10] UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, (2005) "25% of mammals and 30% of amphibians are threatened, and 25% birds already extinct."
[11] http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/07/03/fewerbirds_ani.html?category=an... "more than two-thirds of all species of non-bacterial organisms are likely to become extinct during the course of this century"
[12] http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Largest_mass_extinction_in_65_million_years_...
[13] Heap et al., Option: 13 (2008). http://option13.org/Option13.pdf
[14] http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/false-solutions/
[15] Environmental Working Group "The Environment: BodyBurden" http://www.ewg.org/featured/15
[16] http://freewebs.com/maggiezhou/wirelessharm.htm
[17] The current issue of Pathophysiology, Available online 13 March 2009, is dominated by a host of articles pertaining to the human body's sensitivity to electromagnetic/radio frequency signals in the environment (such as from cell phones, cordless phones and power lines), e.g., genotoxicity (DNA damage), effects on the brain from cell phone radiation, and links to Alzheimer's disease, dementia and breast cancer.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_tockey=%23TOC%2...
[18] Last Sep, the European Parliament voted 522 to 16 to recommend tighter safety standards for cell phones. Current standards are many magnitudes higher than levels where many biological/health impacts are observed. http://marketwire.com/mw/rel.jsp?id=901580