Excerpts from the 2016 Platform of Party A Our agenda is high on job creation, expanding opportunity and providing a better chance at life
for everyone willing to work for it. Our modern approach to environmentalism is directed to that
end, and it starts with dramatic change in official Washington. We propose to shift responsibility for
environmental regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states and to transform the EPA into
an independent bipartisan commission... with structural safeguards against politicized science.
We will strictly limit congressional delegation of rule-making authority, and require that citizens be
compensated for regulatory takings We firmly believe environmental problems are best solved
by giving incentives for human ingenuity and the development of new technologies, not through
top-down, command-and-control regulations that stifle economic growth and cost thousands
of jobs.
Excerpts from the 2016 Platform of Party B
Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time. Fifteen of the 16 hottest
years on record have occurred this century The best science tells us that without ambitious,
Immediate action across our economy to cut carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases, all of
these impacts will be far worse in the future. We cannot leave our children a planet that has been
profoundly damaged... We will work to expand access to cost-saving renewable energy by low-
income households, create good paying jobs in communities that have struggled with energy
poverty, and oppose efforts by utilities to limit consumer choice or slow clean energy deployment
We will phase down extraction of fossil fuels from our public lands, starting with the most polluting
sources, while making our public lands and waters engines of the clean energy economy and
creating jobs across the country."
2. Use the quotes and your knowledge of U. S. Government and Politics to answer parts A, B, and C.
A. Describe the viewpoint about environmental regulation expressed in each platform.
B. Pick one of the platforms and describe whether it is more consistent with liberal or
conservative ideology.
C. Describe one other policy area where liberals and conservatives propose different
approaches