Climate change poses one of the gravest threats to the world’s food supplies, including to our farms and ranches here in Colorado. Our farms, our food system and the economic activity they support, all rely on a sustainable and reliable climate. And agriculture and our food system both also make substantial contributions to the problem driving this crisis: greenhouse-gas pollution.
We, the undersigned, call on elected officials to join with their colleagues to support and to enact policy to boost rural-based climate action including conservation-smart agriculture, community-scaled renewables, and watershed protection and restoration.
The undersigned join the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance to support policies that 1) shift how we power our farms, ranches, homes, and businesses and 2) expand practices on farms and in land-use that boost ecosystem services and nature-based solutions to remove carbon pollution and build greater climate resiliency.
There is no more time to delay. Our future in the U.S. Southwest demands action from policymakers today. We must:
1. Reduce and eliminate carbon pollution, across all sectors with utmost urgency, toward zero.
2. Adapt critical systems to prepare for climate change already here and worsening.
3. Protect, boost and restore natural systems that remove carbon from, and store it out of, the atmosphere.
Therefore, we join together to compel our elected officials and the governments they serve, to act boldly and in an urgent, coordinated and "all-hands" manner to address the Climate Emergency now bearing down on western Colorado and the world.
