(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Climate Strike -- CO2 pt 2 (week 35) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-25 You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event, in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. This is the letter for week 35 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 see topics for all the strike letters, see this story. STRIKE FOR THE PLANET 80% of the CO 2 humans have added to the atmosphere has been added since 19501 — we broke it, we mend it! This week’s topic is CO 2 , part 2. In order to avoid the worst consequences of human greed and opportunism, we must: sequester the carbon we have already dumped into the atmosphere, and halt all current and future dumping of carbon into the atmosphere. Business as usual is actively destroying the planet’s ability to sustain life; business as usual is both suicidal and ecocidal. It is not only not sustainable, it is insane. So what does the opposite of business as usual look like? How do we fix things? HOW DO WE GET RID OF THE CARBON WE’VE ALREADY CREATED? Carbon sequestration means locking carbon into compounds so it is both unavailable for chemical reactions and not released into the atmosphere (where it reflects infrared, heating the planet). That means atmospheric carbon needs to be gathered and bonded into liquid or solid forms. Liquid forms currently are not feasible.2 So let’s look at solid carbon sequestration. why carbon reduction alone isn’t enough, from UNEP 20173 Methods of carbon sequestration for SF include: planting a massive number of native trees fast (re- and afforestation) planting spongy ecosystems (marshes, estuaries, wetlands, inlets, kelp forests 4 ) planting on rooftops, sidewalk verges, and everywhere else with sequestering vegetation humification 5 calcite formation 6 So far, so good. We do this and get greenery everywhere, change how we deal with horizontal spaces, and finally start respecting the bay, but none of this is far outside “normal”. However the next, and vitally necessary part of getting rid of atmospheric carbon, is. HOW DO WE HALT ALL PRESENT & FUTURE CARBON WASTE PRODUCTION? Is a halt in all carbon waste production absolutely necessary? Yes. Even if we do everything right and cut our CO 2 production to 0 right now, the atmosphere will continue to heat for up to 40 years.7 While sequestration is vital to help with the carbon already in the air, if we’re pouring more CO 2 into the air, sequestration isn’t enough to deal with the problem. That means we also need to stop producing CO 2 . Now. What does that look like? There are a bunch of ways to bite into SF’s carbon problem. Remember, our major carbon emissions are in transportation, electric power, industrial, and residential buildings. So we can: use taxes and pricing to reduce demand (ex. congestion pricing, steeply progressive taxes on energy usage, etc.) start rationing (ex. from the easy, such as odd/even license plates being allowed on city streets on alternate days, to the difficult, such as allocating each resident a set amount of carbon waste per year 8 ) begin criminal prosecutions and seek convictions against polluters (ex. prosecuting polluting corporations under the laws that protect life, such as assault [240 PC], murder, child and elder abuse, poisoning [347 PC], criminal conspiracy, etc.) file lawsuits demanding huge, business-destroying settlements against polluters for destruction of the biosphere and degraded quality of life, for substantial losses to individuals and to the city and county of SF in health costs and storm damages and loss of land and infrastructure, and for false advertising, for example create a needs-based , not wants-based, economy in SF write and implement an SF Green New Deal eliminate all carbon-producing power in or used by SF (wind! 9 solar! 10 earth bores! 11 ) change the building codes so all buildings are dense, sufficiently elevated, and produce no impact in construction or everyday use outlaw all internal combustion engines or motors of any kind in SF rapidly transition all fuel stations to electric power stations for electric vehicles eliminate all CH 4 infrastructure and reduce CH 4 production from landfills and composting operations require SF officials to use videoconferencing, or train, bus (preferably electric), or sailboat for all official business travel UNCONVINCED? This is so drastic, surely it isn’t necessary? The American Geophysicist Union has their annual conference going on right now at the Moscone Center. Go talk to them. Take a look at the posters. Sit in on some of the sessions. Because that’s the science, and they are the experts. The AGU is in town through the 13th.12 OVERWHELMED? Does what we have to do sound scary? The problem is scarier. The problem is bigger than anything that our species has ever faced, but we can still do something about it if we act now. And we have to. None of this is going to change until we do something to make it change – and only if we act quickly will we be able to make any meaningful changes at all. Late actions, in this case, produce the same results as no action. What’s the timeline for action? It hasn’t changed, except we’re yet another week closer to too late. And we are increasing the amount of GHGs being dumped into the atmosphere. If we are going to hit zero emissions by 2030, we have to start acting immediately. Also realize we have to change the storyline now. No matter what we do, the climate will continue to get hotter because of the CO 2 already in the air. This gives the deniers an opportunity to destroy the biosphere if we let them. We must change the message, we must talk about this all the time, loudly and clearly, and that has to start immediately if we’re to have any chance of surviving this mess we’ve created. For week 3 of CO 2 : how to implement all this and get industry positively involved. 56 weeks left. FOOTNOTES 1. Jim Butler, Director NOAA’s ESLR Lab. From a talk he gave at The Exploratorium, San Francisco. 7 December 2019. 2. Michael Graham Richard. Important! Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Save Us. TreeHugger. 31 July 2006. https://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/important-why-carbon-sequestration-wont-save-us.html . 3. Residual Emissions and Carbon Dioxide Removal for Limiting Temperature Increase to 2°C. UNEP. 2017. https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/policy-digests/targeting-net-zero-emissions . 4. Patrick Cage. Kelp and Carbon Sequestration: Exporting Terrestrial GHG Accounting to the Deep Sea. GHG Management Institute. 6 September 2018. https://ghginstitute.org/2018/09/06/kelp-and-carbon-sequestration-exporting-terrestrial-ghg-accounting-to-the-deep-sea/ . 5. Adrian Ayres Fisher. Why Not Start Today: Backyard Carbon Sequestration Is Something Nearly Everyone Can Do. Ecological Gardening. 1 September 2015. https://www.ecologicalgardening.net/2015/09/why-not-start-today-backyard-carbon.html . 6. Henry Fountain. Iceland Carbon Dioxide Storage Project Locks Away Gas, and Fast. The New York Times. 9 June 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/science/carbon-capture-and-sequestration-iceland.html . Note: SF is not built on basalt, but the Sierra Nevada mountain range is. The question, besides safe transport, is long-term tectonic effects of this technology if we try it in the Sierra Nevada range. 7. Richard B. Rood. If We Stopped Emitting Greenhouse Gases Right Now, Would We Stop Climate Change? Science Alert. 5 July 2017. https://www.sciencealert.com/if-we-stopped-emitting-greenhouse-gases-right-now-would-we-stop-climate-change-2017 . 8. Saci Lloyd. The Carbon Diaries 2015 . Holiday House. 1 July 2010. 9. Vortex Bladeless Wind Energy. https://vortexbladeless.com . 10. Maria Gallucci. No land, no problem. Floating solar panels might be the next big thing. Grist. 2 December 2019. https://grist.org/article/no-land-no-problem-floating-solar-panels-might-be-the-next-big-thing/ . 11. Doug Dougherty. Geothermal Boreholes Are NOT Wells. Renewable Energy World. 29 November 2013. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/2013/11/29/geothermal-boreholes-are-not-wells/ . 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