Andrew Yang on Environment Democratic Presidential Challenger & Tech CEO

Eliminate the penny to speed up economy & save environment

YANG: I mean, they're relatively minor in the scheme of American life, but I'm going to use the penny as an example. Did you know it costs more than one cent to produce each penny? It's bad for the environment. We're spending $25 million on producing pennies more than they're worth. And who wants to get stuck behind that person in line? I don't. So getting rid of the pennies would actually help speed up our economy and save our environment.

Q: So what happens if you owe 16 cents?

YANG: I don't know. Other countries have done the same thing. Things get priced in fives and zeros. It'd be like 15 cents, 20 cents.

Reformulate GDP to account for clean air & clean water

YANG: The first thing I would do is rejoin the Paris Accords. And then I would we redefine our economic bench marks actually to include environmental sustainability. Because right now, the trap that Democrats are in is that, we're being told that moving towards a green economy is bad for jobs, it's bad for business, and that couldn't be further from the truth. We actually need to redefine our economic measurements to include clean air and clean water and let America.

Q: How do you change that?

YANG: Well the great thing is we made up GPD almost 100 years ago, really. And even the inventor of GPD at the time said this is a terrible measurement for national well-being and we should never use it as that. Let's upgrade it with a new score card that includes our environmental sustainability, health and life expectancy. [Then we won't] fall into this false dichotomy that what's good for the planet is bad for the economy.

Clean water is a fundamental human right

And this is, again, the problem with having the almighty dollar running our society, where people look up and say, "oh, replacing the pipes is expensive." Are you kidding me? You know what is expensive? Poisoning our kids.

Constitutional amendment to safeguard environment

We need to start reverse the damage we're doing to our environment. It's not enough to do less of the bad, we have to do some of the good.

Help farmers modernize in sustainable way

YANG: We need to help farmers modernize their land use in terms of the environmental impact. We have to try and help farmers modernize and rotate plant crops and try and actually measure the impact they're having on the environment. If you are farming in a responsible and sustainable way, that we can actually make family businesses possible by supporting a food ecosystem that includes more farm-to-table dining.

Thorium-based nuclear plants are safe and reliable

Yang: "Yes. Nuclear energy has been shown to be very environmentally friendly and cheap. Any realistic plan to decarbonize needs to include nuclear power. Most people think of Homer Simpson when they think of nuclear power, but the truth is that we have much safer nuclear technology that doesn't result in unmanageable nuclear waste or a significant threat of meltdown. These thorium-based nuclear plants use an abundant natural element that could provide hundreds of years of power to the United States with little environmental impact."

Nuclear isn't perfect, but it's a solid solution for now

As President, I will work to make it easier for new nuclear plants to open up in appropriate areas to increase the amount of nuclear energy America uses.