Environmental Issues

Do you enjoy great live acoustic music in an intimate setting?

How about political parody and satire?

Want to mix and mingle and share conversation with other KPFT supporters in a fun, relaxed, and entertaining atmosphere?

And finally, would you like to help KPFT while enjoying all the above?

Then come to one of the TWO house concerts planned in our area,
featuring the entertaining and talented musician-songwriter political satirist
Roy Zimmerman
Roy makes us laugh at ourselves
and those with different political views

(If you are reading this on the PAA home page, click on the event title or Read More link below for details)

Houston's Second Annual Community GreenFest
is October 16th, 2010

Come join us at this community wide event:
October 16, 10 AM - 4 PM

Where:
Last Organic Outpost's
Emile Street Community Farm
711 N. Emile St. at Gunter St.
Map
This is about 1 mile east of downtown Houston.

This event is, as always, a collaboration of people and ideas.

See http://www.lastorganicoutpost.com/events.html for more details plus pictures of last year's Greenfest

If you vote in the Texas primary (or during early voting), be sure to come back to your individual precinct voting location (not an early voting location) for your precinct convention.

Precinct conventions start at 7:15 PM, or after the last person in line has voted, and are a great place to educate others about issues you care about, and get resolutions on them approved and sent up to the Senate District (SD) conventions and the state convention, so they'll get noticed by a lot more people.

Go to our resolutions list http://paa-tx.org/resolutions and pick out resolutions of interest to you -- just click on the titles of any of them. Download the pdf versions that are formatted for printing, and bring several copies of each to your precinct convention. If you want to write your own resolution on a topic we did not cover, refer to our Resolution-Writing Guidelines (see link at http://paa-tx.org/resolutions ) for suggestions on how to write a good resolution that is likely to be passed.

Some additional resolutions are also on the Burnt Orange Report web site http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/10038/2010-tdp-resolutions-thread -- please see these too.

If you don't vote in the primary, you are eligible to sign petitions to help get the Green Party on the ballot in Texas this year. For at least one state-wide office (Comptroller), there's no Democrat on the ballot, so this is not even a conflict for any Dem. See http://hcgp.org for details.

Representatives from a number of Houston organizations held a press conference and rally near Congressman Gene Green's east Houston office on May 11, after being prevented from holding a press conference on the property where his office is.

Poster of coal moratorium activities

A number of churches in the Houston area are having free showings of Al Gore's new movie An Inconvenient Truth, during the month of October.  See Houston Climate Protection for a list of the showings.

RESOLUTION - A PROGRESSIVE NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY

WHEREAS the future success of the State of Texas, as well as the U.S.A., is dependant on the long-term availability of affordable energy resources;

WHEREAS Texas created regional water and transportation plans for development of urban areas and adjacent rural counties;

• Texas is the home of many experienced scientists and engineers in hydrogeology, transportation, and public health;
• General property tax revenue is a major source of funds for public institutions of higher learning, public transportation, and management of the public drinking water supply;
• Surface and underground drinking water supplies are commonly polluted with urban and industrial wastes, that were released into the surface water or injected underground;

WHEREAS urban regions in Texas are consistently out of compliance with federal and state Ambient Air Quality environmental regulations;

• Air pollution aggravates both respiratory and cardiovascular related diseases, according to the scientific community, Texas Department of Health, and Texas Commission of Environmental Quality;
• Air pollutants are acknowledged by both the scientific community and the city, county, and state Departments of Health and Texas Commission of Environmental Quality as exacerbating both respiratory and cardiovascular related disease in the human population.
• Vehicles and industry are the leading sources of hazardous air emissions;
• Texas is the home of many experienced scientists and engineers in transportation, aerospace, and public health;
• General property tax revenue is the primary source of funds for public institutions of higher learning and regulatory agencies,

WHEREAS urban regions in Texas are consistently out of compliance with federal and state Ambient Air Quality environmental regulations;

• More than 5 million people in the urban regions in Texas live daily in poor to toxic air quality;
• Air pollution is known to aggravate respiratory congestion and impair the immune system in as little as seven (7) hours of exposure;
• Emissions from industry, dust, heavy vehicular traffic, and smoke comprise the factors contributing to poor regional air quality;
• Air quality management needs measurements and an appropriate baseline in order to monitor and enforce regulations;
• EPA, TCEQ, and cities have air monitors that measure specific pollutants.
• Health code regulations use an arbitrary basis/baseline for measuring emissions,
• Known toxic chemicals occur commonly at much higher levels in the atmosphere than health limits allow as a direct result of an arbitrary basis/baseline;

WHEREAS urban regions in Texas are consistently out of compliance with federal and state Ambient Air Quality regulations;

• Poor quality air has a direct effect on a community's health , particularly among individuals with chronic illnesses such as respiratory problems.
• Urban regions modify major transporation projects within the city;
• Vehicle air pollution (gas, particles and noise) is known to aggravate respiratory and cardiovascular related diseases;
• The law exempts roads from air monitoring; heavy vehicular traffic, long driving times, emissions from industry, dust, and smoke comprise the factors contributing to poor air quality;

WHEREAS urban regions in Texas are consistently out of compliance with federal and state Ambient Air Quality regulations;

• Vehicle air pollution is acknowledged as aggravating both respiratory and cardiovascular related diseases;
• Automobiles in counties, that not in compliance with ambient air quality regulations, are subject to an annual auto air emissions test and a fee for license renewal;
• Diesel trucks are exempt from the state's vehicle emissions test program for license renewal;

WHEREAS urban regions in Texas are consistently out of compliance with federal and state Ambient Air Quality environmental regulations;

• Air pollution aggravates both respiratory and cardiovascular related diseases, according to the scientific community, Texas Department of Health, and Texas Commission of Environmental Quality;
• Regulatory compliance needs to specify and monitor living public health measures that are enforcable for the federal and state air quality programs,
• Reasonable health measures includes incidences of aggrevation, inflamation, irritation, or burning of the skin, eyes, ears, nose, throat or lungs

These resolutions were all developed by the Environmental Initiative of the Houston Region Democrats.

Some were originally presented and passed by the Harris County Democratic Party Executive Committee in June 2005, in a form that dealt with Harris County.  Those resolutions were modified to address statewide issues and additional resolutions were added.

For information on these, contact Stephanie Hrabar, Ph. D.: shrabar{at}wt{dot}net, 713-683-0638.

To get a copy of this resolution formatted for printing, so you can take it with you to your precinct convention, click on the link in the Attachment box below.

WHEREAS, climate disruption of the magnitude now predicted by the scientific community will cause extremely costly disruption of human and natural systems throughout the world including: more intense hurricanes; increased risk of floods or droughts; sea-level rises that interact with coastal storms to erode beaches, inundate land, and damage structures; more frequent and extreme heat waves; more frequent and greater concentrations of smog; and

The two flyers here (see attachments below) are the ones PAA produced for the 2006 and 2007 Martin Luther King, Jr. parades and related events in Houston.

They contrast King's ideas with Bush's policies -- on peace, diplomacy, nonviolence, racial equality, the environment, civil liberties. They explain how 3 more years of Bush in the White House will shatter King's dream of a just society, and why we should push for impeachment.

"Free Diane Wilson" Poster from Code Pink for Diane Wilson, environmentalist and co-founder of Code Pink.  She''s in the Calhoun Co. jail, after beingat the Cheney/DeLay fundraiser.  She is now serving a sentence for a previous conviction for an action at a Dow Chemical plant, where she protested the company's connection to the Bhopal chemical disaster.

Note:  This is an old resolution that has been superceded by a new version.  See http://www.paa-tx.org/node/1495  

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT the Harris County Democratic Party supports:

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT the Harris County Democratic Party supports:

• Appropriate science-based air quality standards for the Houston Region that will result in safer indoor and outdoor air for all humans to breathe.
• Environmental assessments that include protection for human health based on appropriate health and life science peer reviewed studies.
• An environmental economic formula that includes an environmental assessment that will protect both public revenues and public health for publicly funded transportation and development

FACTS TO SUPPORT THE RESOLUTION:

To get a copy of this resolution formatted for printing, so you can take it with you to your precinct convention, click on the link in the Attachment box below.

Whereas coal-burning utilities contaminate lakes with mercury and present a health hazard to children and pregnant women; and