(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Climate Strike -- Keep Your Eyes On The Prize (week 50) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-11 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 50 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. Meanwhile… STRIKE FOR THE PLANET What are we striking for? Survival. This week, please KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE. SF has faced disasters in the past, sometimes more than one at a time. 1906 earthquake and fires 1918 Spanish flu epidemic 1970s Jonestown and Milk/Moscone assassinations 1980s AIDS 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake 2017 and 2018 smoke out 2019-2020 COVID-19 pandemic droughts (1864, 1924, 28-35, 47-50, 59-60, 76-77, 86-92, 06-10, 11-17) This is what we set up in response. Earthquakes : fire boats, NERTs, high power water lines, emergency gravity-feed cisterns, annual city-wide earthquake practice, earthquake building codes, mandatory retrofitting, and much, much more. : fire boats, NERTs, high power water lines, emergency gravity-feed cisterns, annual city-wide earthquake practice, earthquake building codes, mandatory retrofitting, and much, much more. Epidemics and pandemics : city-wide responses, a strong Health Department, working closely with local medical community and researchers, a focus on data and science, spending money for mitigation and solutions, strong community engagement, and much more. : city-wide responses, a strong Health Department, working closely with local medical community and researchers, a focus on data and science, spending money for mitigation and solutions, strong community engagement, and much more. Terrorism : City Hall is still too physically porous, SF has used terrorism as an excuse for other agendas before 1 , and the JTTF and SFPD are very distrusted (with good reason) by the community. 2, 3, 4, 5 We are very unprepared in this category. : City Hall is still too physically porous, SF has used terrorism as an excuse for other agendas before , and the JTTF and SFPD are very distrusted (with good reason) by the community. We are very unprepared in this category. Pollution : a plan for public respite facilities, and work with community organizations to ensure everyone gets information. We are not very prepared in this category either. : a plan for public respite facilities, and work with community organizations to ensure everyone gets information. We are not very prepared in this category either. Droughts : emergency regulations — some now permanent — in a messy system where theft is rewarded, bioswale creation, and a gradual move toward sustainability, but it’s too little and often still based on forecasting for water that climate change clearly says won’t be here. SF is only preparing for short-term drought, not long-term change into permanent drought conditions.6, 7 This is what’s coming that we’re not ready for. land loss from flooding, high tide events, massive storm surges, and liquifaction massive, decades-long drought massive pollution events (air, water, soil, general environmental) climate refugees food shortages and food supply problems lack of medical equipment, drugs, and facilities heat events the very real likelihood of having two or more disasters occur simultaneously (akin to what will be starting very soon in the midwest where COVID-19 will coincide with massive spring flooding8). So we have some infrastructure for dealing with emergencies and experience in planning for them: Use them now! Strengthen SF’s Dept of Resilience and Capital Planning. They would be the logical group to organize and oversee SF’s plans. SF must be proactive, not reactive, if we are to survive. Organize and focus the Department of Emergency Management, SFFD, SFPD, SF Health Commission, and all the various emergency task forces into one working group focused on our survival. This group must include community organizations and scientists. Update SF’s Preparedness Plan, the Hazard Mitigation Plan, and the Emergency Response Plan. Change the Recovery Plan to a Goal Plan — we can never recover the world we’ve destroyed, but we can try to salvage a livable planet out of the mess. Act like the disaster is happening now, because it is. Climate change and mass extinction are millions of times more expensive than COVID-19, even in SF. What we’re doing to the planet is more costly than anything else we’ve done before. The science9, 10,11 and the economics12, 13, 14, 15, 16 of this statement are not in question. If you think COVID-19 is costly, wait till you see what’s coming. Plan now while we still can. Mitigate now while mitigation is still possible. Act now while actions can make a difference. This is the biggest emergency we’ve ever had to deal with. Where is our: SF native tree urban forest, countywide black water recycling, all electric and clean energy transportation, work getting rid of plastics (you’ve really fallen down on this one lately — plastic is never an answer, it is always a problem 17 ), ), switching to all local carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy, and resilience and self-sufficiency? They all tie together, and make a huge difference in SF’s ability to weather this pandemic and everything else that we’re going to face from now on. This is the 50th week I’ve been striking. There are only 38 weeks left.18, 19 Act for SF. Now. FOOTNOTES 1. Zachary Crockett. “The Worst Act of Terrorism in San Francisco History”. Priceonomics. 27 October 2014. https://priceonomics.com/the-worst-act-of-terrorism-in-san-francisco/ . 2. Ryan Devereaux. “FBI and San Francisco Police have been lying about scope of joint counterterrorism investigations, document suggests”. The Intercept. 1 November 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/11/01/fbi-joint-terrorism-san-francisco-civil-rights/. 3. Rev. Dr. Amos Brown. “San Francisco Is Ferguson Too”. HuffPost. 15 April 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/san-francisco-is-ferguson_b_9696768 . 4. Jaxon Van Derbeken. “SFPD withheld doubts on crime lab from auditors”. SFGate. 25 April 2010. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SFPD-withheld-doubts-on-crime-lab-from-auditors-3191219.php . 5. Michael Barba. “Implicit bias trainer finds ‘extreme’ degree of anti-black sentiment within SFPD”. SF Examiner. 12 February 2020. https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/implicit-bias-trainer-finds-extreme-degree-of-anti-black-sentiment-within-sfpd/ . 6. Sunanda Creagh. “20 years on, climate change projections have come true”. The Conversation. 9 December 2012. https://theconversation.com/20-years-on-climate-change-projections-have-come-true-11245 . 7. Aylin Woodward. “A troubling new map shows what your city’s climate may look like in 60 years. San Francisco may feel like Los Angeles, and New York may be more like Arkansas”. Business Insider. 13 February 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-map-what-cities-will-feel-like-60-years-2019-2?op=1 . 8. Carl Meyer. “COVID-19 and flooding, an ‘emergency manager’s nightmare’ on the horizon”. Canada’s National Observer. 20 March 2020. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/20/news/covid-19-and-flooding-emergency-managers-nightmare-horizon . 9. Adam Frank. “Coronavirus and Climate Change: The pandemic is a fire drill for our planet’s future”. Think: NBC News. 27 March 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coronavirus-climate-change-pandemic-fire-drill-our-planet-s-future-ncna1169991 . 10. Sarah Zielinski. “Plague Pandemic May Have Been Driven by Climate, Not Rats”. Smithsonian Magazine. 23 February 2015. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plague-pandemic-may-have-been-driven-climate-not-rats-180954378/ . 11. Kurtis Alexander. “As humans move into animals’ territory, contagions like coronavirus risk being transmitted”. San Francisco Chronicle. 7 April 2020. https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/As-humans-take-animals-territory-greater-risk-15185576.php . 12. Helen Avery. “Pandemics — another reason to stop financing deforestation and climate change”. Euromoney. 11 March 2020. https://www.euromoney.com/article/b1kq3swwgsxfr1/pandemics-another-reason-to-stop-financing-deforestation-and-climate-change . 13. Dana Nuccitelli. “Climate change could cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions a year by 2090”. Yale Climate Connections. 29 April 2019. https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/04/climate-change-could-cost-u-s-economy-billions/ . 14. Eric Roston. “The Massive Cost of Not Adapting to Climate Change”. Bloomberg. 9 September 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-09/the-massive-cost-of-not-adapting-to-climate-change . 15. Ed Hirs. “Pay Now Or Pay Later: The Certain Cost Of Climate Change”. Forbes. 23 September 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2019/09/23/pay-now-or-pay-later-the-certain-cost-of-climate-change/#d862f85323c4 . 16. Julia Rosen. “From ruined bridges to dirty air, EPA scientists price out the cost of climate change”. Los Angeles Times. 8 April 2019. https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-climate-change-costs-billions-20190408-story.html . 17. Angela Betsaida B. Laguipo. “Coronavirus can live on common surfaces for nine days - how to kill it”. News Medical Life Sciences. 11 February 2020. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200211/Coronavirus-can-live-on-common-surfaces-for-nine-days-how-to-kill-it.aspx . 18. “Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting”. United Nations. 28 March 2019. https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm . See the action timeline in the report. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/11/2185627/-Climate-Strike-Keep-Your-Eyes-On-The-Prize-week-50 Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/