(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . We're All On A Ghost Ship -- Strike for the Planet week 85 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-09-21 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. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference! This is the letter for week 85 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 Have you learned the lessons of this pandemic? This week we discover we’re all on a GHOST SHIP. Don’t see the connection yet? Read on… Do you remember the Ghost Ship fire? That fire happened because an old warehouse was being used in dangerous ways, filled with all kinds of inappropriate materials, and stuffed with too many people.1 The location’s misuse was fueled by greed and grandiosity, and the authorities entrusted with protecting the health and safety of all involved were negligent and underfunded.2 What does the Ghost Ship have to do with climate change? The earth is being exploited in dangerous ways, filled with all kinds of inappropriate materials3, and stuffed with too many people.4 The misuse of the Earth is fueled by greed and grandiosity, and the authorities entrusted with protecting the health and safety of all involved are negligent and underfunded. So how do we avoid dying on a burning Earth? This is not a rhetorical question. We have made the planet into a Ghost Ship and the fire has started. If we’re going to have any chance of surviving, we have to act. The part that’s scorching us now is the pandemic. Have you learned the lessons of this pandemic? Are you prepared for the catastrophe that’s coming just behind it? Lessons you have to learn from the pandemic A half-assed response to a crisis accomplishes nothing.5 “Consumers” are not citizens.6 Consumers will only act for their own immediate gain; citizens will act for a common good. Clearly capitalism, the creator of “consumers,” is fuel for the fire. The science is real and doesn’t care about your ambitions, timelines, or issues.7 Messaging and information matter. When only oligarchs get to tell the story of life on earth now, we’re in trouble.8, 9 Racism kills.10, 11, 12 Ecosystems can change FAST.13, 14, 15 Survival is not guaranteed.16 We’re out of time.17, 18, 19, 20, 21 Still not convinced? Do you need a male voice of authority in a national publication in order to listen? Fine. Because Erik Kobayashi-Solomon said almost exactly the same things in Forbes.22 Do you remember the Ghost Ship fire? I do. I had a former student and a then-current student die in that fire, and two more then-current students were among the 5 survivors who just barely made it out. I remember the devastation in the halls at school, and I’ve seen some of the long-term damage this event has done to many, many people. And this was just a fire in a warehouse; it wasn’t an entire planet on fire. People die when we ignore the obvious and postpone acting on what needs to be done. San Francisco can and must act now! The building is on fire. There are, at most, 4 weeks left in which to start the necessary big actions if we’re going to survive.23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 In a little over a year and a half, we have lost 10 years time in which to act. The U.S. has now been out of the Paris Agreement for 35 days, and every day out is making our situation worse. ACT NOW! FOOTNOTES 1. Accessed 8 December 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20170105174837/http://www.oaklandghostship.com/ . 2. Benjamin Wallace-Wells. “What Happened, Exactly, In Oakland’s Ghost Ship Fire?” The New Yorker. 13 December 2016. https://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/what-happened-exactly-in-oaklands-ghost-ship-fire . 3. Ciara Nugent. “2020 Marks the Point When Human-Made Materials Outweigh All the Living Things on Earth, a New Study Finds”. Time. 9 December 2020. https://time.com/5919294/human-materials-biomass-2020/ . 4. Gioietta Kuo. “Overpopulation and water scarcity leading to world future food crisis”. Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere - Stanford. 12 July 2020. https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/overpopulation-and-water-scarcity-leading-to-world-future-food-crisis/ . 5. Take a look at this brutal timeline of Trump’s response to the virus on U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s website (Doggett is a Texas pol). Accessed 8 December 2020. https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-trump-s-coronavirus-responses . 6. Kate Yoder. “People didn’t used to be ‘consumers.’ What happened?” Grist. 7 December 2020. https://grist.org/climate/people-didnt-used-to-be-consumers-what-happened/ . 7. Wilson Wong. “Former Alabama state senator dies of Covid at 78, warns in last words, ‘We messed up’”. NBC News. 7 December 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-alabama-senator-dies-covid-age-78-his-last-words-n1250236 . 8. Jeff Madrick. “Why the Working Class Votes Against Its Economic Interests”. The New York Times. 31 July 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/books/review/the-system-robert-reich-break-em-up-zephyr-teachout.html . 9. The Book Brigade. “Terror, Love, and Brainwashing”. Psychology Today. 2 February 2017. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-author-speaks/201702/terror-love-and-brainwashing . 10. The Conversation. “County-Level Racism Associated With Increased COVID-19 Cases and Deaths”. U.S. News & World Report. 7 December 2020. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-12-07/county-racism-associated-with-increased-covid-19-cases-and-deaths . 11. Tonya Russell. “Racism in care leads to health disparities, doctors and other experts say as they push for change”. The Washington Post. 11 July 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/racism-in-care-leads-to-health-disparities-doctors-and-other-experts-say-as-they-push-for-change/2020/07/10/a1a1e40a-bb9e-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html . 12. Mustafa Santiago Ali. “Environmental racism is killing Americans of color. Climate change will make it worse”. The Guardian. 28 July 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/climate-change-enviromental-racism-america . 13. Shanna Hanbury. “Climate tipping point ecosystem collapses may come faster than thought: Studies”. Mongabay. 11 May 2020. https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/climate-tipping-point-ecosystem-collapses-may-come-faster-than-thought-studies/ . 14. Robert Hunziker. “Abrupt Ecosystem Collapse”. Counterpunch. 15 April 2020. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/15/abrupt-ecosystem-collapse/ . 15. David Breshears, Laura López-Hoffman, and Lisa Graumlich. “When Ecosystem Services Crash: Preparing for Big, Fast, Patchy Climate Change”. 18 November 2010. PMC/The Natioinal Institutes of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357807/ . 16. See Strike letter week 84 for more details. 17. Jeff Goodell. “How Climate Change Is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era”. RollingStone. 7 December 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/climate-change-risks-infectious-diseases-covid-19-ebola-dengue-1098923/ . 18. Bob Berwyn. “Unchecked Global Warming could Collapse Whole Ecosystems, Maybe Within 10 Years”. Inside Climate News. 8 April 2020. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08042020/global-warming-ecosystem-biodiversity-rising-heat-species/ . 19. Courtney Lindwall. “U.N. Report: A Million Extinctions and Ecological Collapse Are on the Way”. NRDC. 13 May 2019. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/report-million-extinctions-and-ecological-collapse-are-way . 20. Candace Butera. “Flooding, Heat Waves, And Destabilized Ecosystems: Here’s What The Next 100 Years Of Climate Change Could Bring”. Pacific Standard. 9 March 2018. https://psmag.com/environment/climate-change-timeline . 21. Jeroen Ingels et al. “Antarctic ecosystem responses following ice-shelf collapse and iceberg calving: Science review and future research”. Wiley Online Library. 5 October 2020. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.682 . 22. Erik Kobayashi-Solomon. “What A Pandemic Can Teach Us About Climate Change”. Forbes. 24 March 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkobayashisolomon/2020/03/24/what-a-pandemic-can-teach-us-about-climate-change/?sh=d5bf64937799 . 23. Matt McGrath. “Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months”. BBC News. 24 July 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736 . 24. Heather Smith. “Climate Change: Even Worse Than We Thought”. Sierra. 8 October 2018. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-change-even-worse-we-thought-ipcc-report . 25. Michael Grose and Julie Arblaster. “Just how hot will it get this century? It’s worse than we thought”. Phys Org. 18 May 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-hot-century-worse-thought.html . 26. Amelia Urry. “The scientist who first warned of climate change says it’s much worse than we thought”. Grist. 22 March 2016. https://grist.org/science/the-scientist-who-first-warned-of-climate-change-says-its-much-worse-than-we-thought/ . 27. Rafi Letzter. “Today’s Climate Change Is Worse Than Anything Earth Has Experienced in the Past 2,000 Years”. Live Science. 25 July 2019. https://www.livescience.com/66027-climate-change-different.html . 28. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/ . 29. Peter Castagno. “Biodiversity Loss Worst in Human History — 1 Million Animal Species Risk Extinction”. Citizen Truth. 6 May 2019. https://citizentruth.org/biodiversity-loss-worst-in-human-history-1-million-animal-species-risk-extinction/ . 30. Kristen Callihan. “Earth’s Currently Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Is Worse Than We Thought”. OutwardOn. 7 August 2017. https://www.outwardon.com/article/earths-currently-ongoing-sixth-mass-extinction-event-is-worse-than-we-thought/ . Before (just one part of the maze that was the Ghost Ship) [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/21/2193531/-We-re-All-On-A-Ghost-Ship-Strike-for-the-Planet-week-85 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/