(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Climate Strike -- Money (week 10) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-26 You can make a difference in your town, in your city, on the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event! Reuse this information! This is the letter for week 10 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents to all the strike letters, see this story. STRIKE FOR THE PLANET because we have to stop destroying the biosphere now It won’t be cheap, easy, politically feasible, pro-capitalist, or any of the rest of the stupid excuses we’ve been fed about why not to take action and about why any change is impossible. Pay attention, panic, and act like our lives depend on what you do today – because they do. This week’s topic is MONEY. It’s ludicrous to invest SF’s money into businesses destroying SF’s future. Is SFERS still invested in fossil fuels? Plastics? Pesticides? Deforestation? Palm oil? Does SF own any assets that make money from destroying the planet, such as oil drilling? Does SF give tax breaks (aka money) to businesses that destroy the commons? Do you know what destructive practices SF funds are currently supporting? Does anyone? And is a fiduciary obligation met by destroying the ability of the planet to support life? This is why SF must divest immediately from all destructive, supposedly “economic” ventures. How? Ask: NYC, which divested from ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. NYC picked these companies because they’d all lied about CO 2 and climate chaos, and their lies have already cost New York billions in remediation. and climate chaos, and their lies have already cost New York billions in remediation. Amherst, Cambridge, Northampton, Provincetown, and Truro, MA who all divested pension funds from fossil fuel investments. Berkeley, which began divesting in 2013. Providence, RI, which began divesting in 2013. Santa Monica, which began divesting in 2013 and completed divesting in 2014. Washington D.C., which divested in 2016. In contrast, SF is still apparently looking into the possibility of divesting SFERS funds from fossil fuel companies, and has been looking into this possibility since 2013. Should we be worried divesting from eco-killers will hurt SF economically? MSCI looked at 6000 pension and hedge funds and found that, between 2010 and 2015, funds divested from fossil fuel companies outperformed funds containing fossil fuel investments. Morgan Stanley recognizes better returns from renewables than from fossil fuels, as well as the risks and costs associated with fossil fuel investments, and strongly recommends reducing exposure to fossil fuels in portfolios. Investing in soon-to-be stranded assets is bad investing (oil no one can drill, chemical corporations that can no longer poison the planet, “agriculture” that creates dead zones, etc.) If we’re going to survive, it won’t be by doing what we’ve been doing for the last 200 years, and that includes investing the ways we’ve been investing. Any cost-benefit analysis that ignores the fact that the earth has limited resources, ecosystems contribute enormous unaccounted-for value in system functions to sustaining the biosphere, and destruction of ecosystems and genomic variety is usually non-reversible, is as useful as doing accounting blindfolded while drunk and walking on the edge of a cliff. What to divest from? For a start: All dirty or non-renewable energy (this means nuclear power, too) All producers of persistent chemical pollutants All activities that cause species decline (as measured in biomass, numbers, health, and % of natural range inhabited) All producers of non-recycled materials (not recyclable, but actually recycled) All activities that turn ecosystems into yet more degraded, human-dominated habitat But divesting isn’t enough; SF must invest, too. Why? Because responsible investments do well economically. After all the planet’s resources have been pillaged, what’s left is to work with the planet. Responsible investment does that. It invests in life, not death and destruction. In that case, what should SF be investing in? Greening our current infrastructure – water, the electrical grid, transportation, green spaces In-city recycling – keeping resources here and available to SF Remediation – heat-island effect, albedo, humidity, planting for sea level rise, air flow Carbon sequestration – forestry, urban carbon farming, green walls and roofs, new concepts in what SF parks look like and do, working for the health of the bay and sea Building new infrastructure – water recycling, wind energy, geothermal heating and cooling, grey water cleaning eco-systems, composting and other non-water and non-chemically dependent toilet/sewage systems, connected green pathways The health and resiliency of the other bay area counties Education Battery technology (especially batteries that are biological, and not based on toxic or rare materials) Cradle to Cradle technologies The list above is just a start. The limits we face are time, imagination, courage, and conviction. But physics doesn’t care about any of those, and the laws of physics are bearing down on us hard and fast. Is it risky to engage in an entirely new investment philosophy? So far, flooding in the Midwest this year is likely to total more than $1 billion, and the flooding hasn’t ended yet. The Camp Fire cost insurers more than $11 billion, and that’s before the discovery of the extreme contamination of Paradise’s water with benzene, likely to cost another $300 million to clean up. What is the worth of the northern California salmon runs? What is the value of breathable air? 1 million species are teetering on the brink of extinction right now. We can’t afford not to act. 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