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Climate Strike -- What Have You Done (week 56) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-18  

This is the letter for week 56 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…

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.

STRIKE FOR THE PLANET

What have you done to deal with the greatest threat ever to face our species?

You understand you have to act now, immediately, right? No? Let’s look at the news.

The most recent news:

Hurricanes are getting stronger. 1

Multiple simultaneous disasters is our new normal. 2, 3, 4

Heat is making CA much drier much faster than predicted. 5

Fatal heat and humidity combinations are being seen decades before predicted. 6

Parts of earth are already too hot for human life. 7

The health risks from modern meat-animal farming are substantial and growing. 8

There will be no more fish as of 2048 9 , though the rate of this extinction is accelerating. 10

, though the rate of this extinction is accelerating. Financial experts say climate chaos will cause financial collapse. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Environmental injustice is rising fast. 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

And so are the oceans.23, 24

There’s more, of course. There’s always more; this was just what came up in the last week.

But there are also a wide range of ways to make this all so much better, ways that are cheap or save substantial amounts of money, that create jobs, that aren’t hard, that increase our chances of surviving, and that use science we already know.

So let’s look at what needs to be done and what you’ve done so far.

Consider this a job performance review, or a report card.

What Needs To Be Done What You’ve Done So Far make a plan with specific actions and deadlines to meet the Paris Agreement goals made a plan that assumed continued “economic growth” to succeed and would not meet the Paris Agreement goals even if everything works perfectly declare a comprehensive (climate and extinction) environmental emergency declare a climate emergency provide transparent, accessible, comprehensible information on what needs to be done, what has been done, and how to achieve what remains to be done, including who is responsible (with contact information) and regularly scheduled updates SFEnvironment became the de facto clearinghouse for all information, but with minimal budget, no teeth, and little to no chance of interacting with policy making. Functionally, SFEnvironment is a Potemkin village. be at 100% renewable energy by 2020, as per Newsom’s 2010 initiative the current plan aims at 100% renewables by 2030 and includes large hydro as renewable drastically reduce water use, extensively plant water-saving (native) plants, and recycle blackwater bioswales are being built though it’s unclear if any new projects will happen; the percentage of native landscaping is extremely low, especially of trees; there is no plan for the likelihood of Hetch Hetchy water becoming greatly reduced or inaccessible; there is no enforcement of ground permeability regulations on private property; there are no plans to replace flush toilets where possible; and there is no blackwater recycling at all except in Salesforce Tower (and only for non-potable uses) protect the shoreline through extensive native plantings (underwater, tidal, and on the land), and ensure adequate water flow to preserve and enrich the aquatic biosphere as our best defense against rising ocean levels and pollution seawalls produce erosion, not protection; SF’s native planting efforts are minimal, almost all on land, and almost entirely volunteer efforts; and SF joined a lawsuit against increasing water flows to the lower San Joaquin River and southern delta at a time when our river ecosystems and fish are facing extinction stop all new use of plastics, and recycle or replace all plastics currently in use revoked the plastic bag ban even though science absolutely doesn’t support plastic bag use as being cleaner or safer re. coronavirus transmission; has not dealt with the lack of legitimate international recycling markets make SF as local, self-sufficient, and resilient as possible have an office of Resilience and Capital Planning; support and promote farmers’ markets; have very little urban farming or support for urban farming, recycling in SF, composting in SF, etc — SF continues to ship our waste resources away, and to depend on people bringing things to us reduce locally created particulate pollution to zero biodiesel produces particulate pollution; there is nothing to transition home heating by fireplaces to electricity aggressively work to reduce the urban heat island effect on an on-going basis; increase SF’s albedo nothing, and downtown construction is significantly increasing the problem act for social and environmental justice our homeless population is huge and about to get much, much bigger (see Hasan Minhaj at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPFPBzr7FgY for a primer); the gentrification of SF is on hyperspeed right now and about to get much, much worse; and the most “affordable” housing is in toxic stews, radioactive dumpsites, awash in air pollution, or all of the above eliminate light and sound pollution continue to install and allow lighting that splashes everywhere all the time; have no consistent agency or mechanism for dealing with sound pollution, and have nothing in place for underwater sound pollution (which is biologically damaging) create an extensive network of connected native animal and green pathways the connections that are happening are few in number, almost exclusively volunteer driven, privately developed, and inadequately robust; there seems to be no plan empower the people of SF to act catering to rich developers, profiteers, and corporations, giving them power over the people who live here on what happens here and how here looks and develops (from the micro to macro levels) divest from all biosphere-destroying activities, invest in green works not divesting (SFERS), not investing

That’s a lot of bad and very little good.

The answer to the question at the top — What have you done to deal with the greatest threat ever to face our species? — is obviously not much and nowhere near what’s needed for SF to survive.

So, based on your actions, how are you any different from the deniers?

Actions count.

You need to:

Implement countywide blackwater recycling;

Plant an SF native urban forest;

Move immediately to all electric and clean energy transportation, and that means shutting down some roads to car traffic permanently, now;

Eliminate all single-use plastics in SF and move toward eliminating all plastics that are not reusable, locally recyclable, and biologically safe;

Immediately require all local, carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy — eliminating all methane heating and cooking and assisting fireplace-to-electric heating is a no-brainer; and

Focus everything on making SF resilient and self-sufficient.

Otherwise you’re flooring the accelerator and driving us all off a cliff. Doing nothing is not an option for saving life on earth or building a political career.

And we only have 32 weeks left.25, 26

FOOTNOTES

1. James P. Kossin, Kenneth R. Knapp, Timothy L. Olander, and Christopher S. Velden. “Global increase in major tropical cyclone exceedance probability over the past four decades”. PNAS. 18 May 2020. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/12/1920849117 .

2. “Amphan: Heavy rains in India and Bangladesh as cyclone bears down”. BBC 19 May 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52734259?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/science_and_environment&link_location=live-reporting-story .

3. Navin Singh Khadka. “Social distancing: When extreme weather and coronavirus collide”. BBC News. 19 May 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52734229 .

4. Tony Lascari. “Midland floods after dams fail, record water level recorded”. San Francisco Chronicle. 20 May 2020. https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Midland-floods-after-dams-fail-record-water-15282714.php .

5. Jim Erickson. “But it’s a dry heat: Climate change and the aridification of North America”. University of Michigan. 19 May 2020. https://news.umich.edu/but-its-a-dry-heat-climate-change-and-the-aridification-of-north-america/ .

6. Kevin Krajick. “Potentially Fatal Combinations of Humidity and Heat Are Emerging Across the Globe”. Earth Institute / Columbia University. 8 May 2020. https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/05/08/fatal-heat-humidity-emerging/ .

7. Amy Norton. “Planet Already Seeing Temperatures Beyond Human Tolerability”. U.S. News & World Report. 8 May 2020. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-05-08/planet-already-seeing-temperatures-beyond-human-tolerability .

8. Robert Preidt. “Modern Livestock Farming Can Pose Public Health Risk”. U.S. News & World Report. 7 May 2020. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-05-07/modern-livestock-farming-can-pose-public-health-risk .

9. Karen McVeigh. “Russian supertrawlers off Scottish coast spark fears for UK marine life”. The Guardian. 13 May 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/13/russian-supertrawlers-off-scottish-coast-fears-uk-marine-life .

10. “Overfishing Statistics”. The World Counts. Accessed 20 May 2020. https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/oceans/overfishing-statistics .

11. Rhiana Gunn-Wright. “Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming”. The New York Times. 15 April 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/sunday/climate-change-covid-economy.html

12. Damian Carrington. “Firms ignoring climate crisis will go bankrupt, says Mark Carney”. The Guardian. 13 October 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/13/firms-ignoring-climate-crisis-bankrupt-mark-carney-bank-england-governor .

13. Chloe Taylor. “Environmental damage could lead to a new economic crisis, report says”. CNBC. 12 February 2019. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/environmental-damage-could-lead-to-a-new-economic-crisis-report-says.html .

14. Pedro Nicolaci da Costa. “Opinion: How climate change could trigger the next financial crisis”. MarketWatch. 22 April 2019. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-climate-change-could-trigger-the-next-financial-crisis-2019-04-18 .

15. Craig Collins. “Four Reasons Civilization Won’t Decline: It Will Collapse”. Counterpunch. 13 March 2020. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/13/four-reasons-civilization-wont-decline-it-will-collapse/ .

16. Jack Ewing. “Climate Change Could Blow Up the Economy. Banks Aren’t Ready.” The New York Times. 23 January 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/climate-change-central-banks.html .

17. Mike Scott. “Insurers Will Be Hard-Hit By Climate Change But They’re Not Investing In The Low-Carbon Economy”. Forbes. 31 May 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2018/05/31/insurers-in-the-front-line-of-the-fight-against-climate-change-shoot-themselves-in-the-foot/#295d098440fa .

18. Dino Grandoni. “The Energy 202: Public hearings on Zoom have Native Americans worried they won’t be heard on oil projects”. The Washington Post. 18 May 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2020/05/18/the-energy-202-public-hearings-on-zoom-have-native-americans-worried-they-won-t-be-heard-on-oil-projects/5ec15672602ff11bb1183c87/ .

19. Todd Epp. “Two tribal governments enforcing COVID-19 ‘road checks’”. DELO. 7 April 2020. https://kelo.com/news/articles/2020/apr/07/two-tribal-governments-enforcing-covid-19-road-checks/1004060/ .

20. “COVID-19 stoking xenophobia, hate and exclusion, minority rights expert warns”. UN News 30 March 2020. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1060602 .

21. Kyle Bagenstose, Sky Chadde, and Matt Wynn. “Coronavirus at meatpacking plants worse than first thought, USA TODAY investigation finds”. USA TODAY. 22 April 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/04/22/meat-packing-plants-covid-may-force-choice-worker-health-food/2995232001/ .

22. Jordan Davidson. “Navajo Nation Has Highest Covid-19 Infection Rate in the U.S.” EcoWatch. 19 May 2020. https://www.ecowatch.com .

23. Damian Carrington. “Polar ice caps melting six times faster than in 1990s”. The Guardian. 11 March 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/11/polar-ice-caps-melting-six-times-faster-than-in-1990s .

24. Nicola Davis. “Scientists confirm dramatic melting of Greenland ice sheet”. The Guardian. 15 April 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/15/scientists-confirm-dramatic-melting-greenland-ice-sheet .

25. See the Action Timeline in the report in “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 .

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