My Campaign’s Premise

1)    Use data science to combine government agencies to establish a Department of Sustainability (DOS)

2)    DOS will create sustainability labels for consumer foods

3)    Labeling will incentivize companies to PROFITABLY pay workers higher wages AND make their businesses environmentally friendly

4)    Labeling will enable all consumers to make decisions to support more sustainable companies

5)    The more sustainability information used to make the simple labels will inform higher stock market prices for more sustainable publicly listed companies

6)    Start by subsidizing USDA organic certified farms to make organic produce and organic food companies more competitive

7)    Use my political campaign to unite Californians across political the spectrum around revitalizing rural economies by getting suburban and urban food buyers to support sustainable agriculture

DOS would be responsible for collecting and analyzing the required information for a new consumer label from existing government sources across agencies. The label would inform consumers about how well that food product performs on important sustainability metrics compared to their direct industry competitors. The label would have simple metrics that rate:

• How well that company's employees are paid,

• How well that company pays different demographics for example by genders, minorities, LGBT, or disability,

• The environmental friendliness of that product,

• The overall environmental friendliness of that company, and

• Generally, a company that ethically achieves those goals meets the expectation of good corporate governance.

This system is significantly better than the current environmental, social, and governance investment standards because it would be official government information that adds greater transparency how businesses all of kinds can be more environmentally sustainable while closing wage gaps.