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Strike Glossary -- Strike for the Planet week 101 [1]

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

Date: 2023-10-10  

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 101 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 of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…

STRIKE FOR THE PLANET

Because some of us clearly aren’t talking the same language.

Words matter, so this week we’re doing a Strike Glossary.

We have to be talking about the same things in order to act on them.

So let’s go over the terms of engagement.

1.5°C

This is the global average temperature increase, above pre-industrial levels, that the IPCC1 considers survivable. Higher than this, vast areas become permanently uninhabitable2 and it gets worse from there.3 We are already 1.2°C over pre-industrial levels4 and temperatures are rising much faster than was predicted.5

Biosphere

This is the sum total of all the ecosystems of Earth; it is the life of the planet. The biosphere is a closed system (except for solar energy input: see Energy below); it is a giant, sealed terrarium. The biosphere is dying6, 7, and we are killing it.8

Blackwater recycling

Blackwater recycling recognizes water as a valuable resource (instead of as a media to be polluted and flushed “away”) by closing the loop.9, 10 This greatly reduces water usage11, recycles nutrients from blackwater12, and decreases the strain on the biosphere caused by human water wastage.13

Capitalism

This is a system that doesn’t pay its bills.14 Capitalism as it exists depends on theft of resources (such as labor15, minerals16, and life17) in order for the very few to accumulate and hoard the means for well-being by taking these from all other life on this planet.18, 19

Climate Chaos

Human-caused climate change is fueling disasters20, 21, greed22, war23, refugee crises24, and death.25, 26 And this is only the start of the negative impacts of climate change.27, 28

Constituents

A constituent is part of what composes or makes up a thing; a component; a person who authorizes another to act in his or her behalf, as a voter in a district represented by an elected official.29 Constituents are who you work for. The definition does not include corporations, industries, or Lobbyists (see below). Political representatives are supposed to respond to constituents, but they don’t.

Energy

The Earth is a closed system except for 173,000 terawatts of solar energy continuously hitting the planet.30 Only 1-2% of that energy is available through current photosynthesis.31 Even so, energy made using ancient photosynthesis (fossil fuels) produces a fraction of the amount of solar energy available.32, 33 Energy-production pollution, such as CO 2 , remains inside the system and accumulates.34

Environmental Racism

Racism is systemic when governmental, economic, cultural, educational, labor, and other systems routinely disempower one group or a set of groups in regards to a beneficiary group. Environmental racism is when systemic racism is used to disproportionately burden non-beneficiary groups with the health hazards of environmental destruction.35

Extinction

Extinction is when a species or a taxon loses the capacity to breed and recover. This occurs before the last individual has died. Extinction is normal36; mass extinctions are not. Mass extinctions are caused by unusual events or processes, with catastrophic results.37 We are in a mass extinction event now and we are causing it.38

Financial Jeopardy

Climate change is very bad for financial markets39, threatens national financial stability40, and may gut the insurance industry.41 The legal liability implications of climate change for governments and elected officials are growing.42

Lobbyists

Someone paid to convince politicians to act for corporations, industries, or capitalists against the needs and interests of their constituents.43 With lobbyists, it’s pay to play, all the way.44 They represent the forces politicians most often listen and respond to.

Megadrought

A megadrought is a drought lasting multiple decades. California is in the first years of a megadrought now. The severity of this megadrought corresponds to the worst prior megadrought in the region that we have data for. One prior megadrought lasted over 100 years.45

Polluters Pay Principle

This is the idea, as realized in legislation and tax law, that those who cause harm must repair the damage caused. It is financial Restorative Justice.46 It applies to environmental crimes and is not limited to human victims.47

Restorative Justice

This is a system where victims, offenders, and community meet to fix the harm caused by crime.48

Tipping Points

These are systems that store up change until a small added input triggers massive shift into a new system (or lack of system in the case of runaway change). A tipping point is tipped by the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.49 Climate change tipping points are interconnected and triggering one will likely cause a cascade of tipping point changes.50

Why are words important?

Because what you say makes a difference. You make measurable, immediate differences in our day-to-day lives all the time. Local government is where the decisions that effect us the most are made. Unfortunately, your words most often mean nothing good to your constituents except to promote environmental racism and climate chaos.

So please, at long last, choose to speak the truth and then act on it

SF can make the right choices, but will you?51 You’ve taken oaths to act for the good of SF. You say you are bound by the Precautionary Principle. So act already. Because the costs of climate change are huge.52, 53, 54, 55, 56

Your not acting is harming SF

It’s now or never; damage is already being done and it’s only going to get worse.57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66 You have to fight for the people of SF now while accomplishing anything is still possible!

FOOTNOTES

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch .

2. Fred Pearce. “What Would a Global Warming Increase of 1.5 Degrees Be Like?” Yale Environment 360. 16 June 2016. https://e360.yale.edu/features/what_would_a_global_warming_increase_15_degree_be_like .

3. “Why Is 1.5 Degrees The Danger Line For Global Warming?” Climate Reality Project. 18 March 2019. https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-15-degrees-danger-line-global-warming .

4. Laura Millan Lombrana. “Global Temperatures Already 1.2°C Above Pre-Industrial Levels”. Bloomberg Green. 2 December 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-02/global-temperatures-already-1-2-c-above-pre-industrial-levels .

5. Isabelle Gerretsen. “The state of the climate in 2021”. BBC. 10 January 2021. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210108-where-we-are-on-climate-change-in-five-charts .

6. Brandon Specktor. “The planet is dying faster than we thought”. LiveScience. 15 Janguay 2021. https://www.livescience.com/ghastly-future-global-crises.html .

7. Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass. “Our global fire crisis is the sign of a dying biosphere. But we can take action”. The Guardian. 8 December 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/08/our-global-fire-crisis-is-the-sign-of-a-dying-biosphere-but-we-can-take-action .

8. Robert Burrowes. “Killing The Biosphere To Fast-Track Human Extinction”. Modern Ghana. 30 November 2017. https://www.modernghana.com/news/819729/killing-the-biosphere-to-fast-track-human-extinction.html .

9. Gareth Evans. “Grey (and Black) Water Recycling Design”. Sustainable Build. 29 October 2016. http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk/grey-and-black-water-recycling-design.html .

10. “Blackwater Systems”. Aquacell Water Recycling. Accessed 31 March 2021. https://aquacell.com.au/commercial-water-recycling-systems/blackwater/ .

11. “Water Recycling Fact Sheet”. Australian Water. Accessed 31 March 2021. http://www.awa.asn.au/AWA_MBRR/Publications/Fact_Sheets/Water_Recycling_Fact_Sheet/AWA_MBRR/Publications/Fact_Sheets/Water_Recycling_Fact_Sheet.aspx?hkey=54c6e74b-0985-4d34-8422-fc3f7523aa1d .

12. Julia Rosen. “Humanity Is Flushing Away One of Life’s Essential Elements”. The Atlantic. 8 February 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/02/phosphorus-pollution-fertilizer/617937/ .

13. Edward Philips, Erin Quinlan, John Hendrickson, M. Chichra. “Meteorlogical influences on algal bloom potential in a nutrient-rich blackwater river”. Freshwater Biology. August 2007. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229738948_Meteorological_influences_on_algal_bloom_potential_in_a_nutrient-rich_blackwater_river .

14. Robert Raymond. “Humans Aren’t Inherently Destroying the Planet — Capitalism Is”. Truthout. 18 November 2019. https://truthout.org/articles/humans-arent-inherently-destroying-the-planet-capitalism-is/ .

15. Greg Grandin. “Capitalism and Slavery”. The Nation. 1 May 2015. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/capitalism-and-slavery/ .

16. David Love. “The Mining of Coltan: Chances are Your Smartphone Was Manufactured With African Blood”. Atlanta Black Star. 25 September 2017. https://atlantablackstar.com/2017/09/25/mining-coltan-chances-smartphone-manufactured-african-blood/ .

17. Zoë Schlanger. “A million plant and animal species are going extinct—and capitalism is to blame”. Quartz. 6 May 2019. https://qz.com/1612943/un-biodiversity-report-says-a-million-species-face-extinction/ .

18. “Global Inequality”. Inequality dot Org. Accessed 31 March 2021. https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/ .

19. George Monbiot. “The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen”. The Guardian. 7 November 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers .

20. Emma Newburger. “Disasters caused $210 billion in damage in 2020, showing growing cost of climate change”. CNBC. 7 January 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/climate-change-disasters-cause-210-billion-in-damage-in-2020.html .

21. UH News. “Climate change, bats linked to COVID-19 pandemic”. University of Hawai’i News. 5 February 2021. https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2021/02/05/climate-change-bats-covid19/ .

22. Laura Paddison. “Big Banks Are ‘Fueling Climate Chaos’ By Pouring Trillions Into Oil, Gas And Coal”. Huffpost. 24 March 2021. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/banks-fossil-fuels-finance-climate-change_n_605a45b8c5b6cebf58d28d52 .

23. Devon Ryan. “Stanford-led study investigates how much climate change affects the risk of armed conflict”. Stanford News. 12 June 2019. https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/12/climate-change-cause-armed-conflict/ .

24. John Podesta. “The climate crisis, migration, and refugees”. Brookings. 25 July 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-climate-crisis-migration-and-refugees/ .

25. Jen Christensen. “250,000 deaths a year from climate change is a ‘conservative estimate,’ research says”. CNN. 16 January 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/climate-change-health-emergency-study/index.html .

26. Justin Worland. “Climate Change Could Cause More Annual Deaths Than Infectious Disease by 2100”. Time. 6 August 2020. https://time.com/5876229/climate-change-death-rate/ .

27. Grist staff. “We broke down what climate change will do, region by region”. Grist. 29 November 2018. https://grist.org/article/we-broke-down-what-climate-change-will-do-region-by-region/ .

28. Stephen Leahy. “Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns”. National Geographic. 7 October 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/ipcc-report-climate-change-impacts-forests-emissions .

29. “constituent’. Dictionary dot Com. Accessed 1 April 2021. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/constituent .

30. David Chandler. “Vast amounts of solar energy radiate to the Earth, but tapping it cost-effectively remains a challenge”. Phys Org. 26 October 2011. https://phys.org/news/2011-10-vast-amounts-solar-energy-earth.html .

31. “Energy Efficiency Of Photosynthesis”. Britannica. Accessed 28 March 2021. https://www.britannica.com/science/photosynthesis/Energy-efficiency-of-photosynthesis .

32. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser. “Fossil Fuels”. Our World in Data. 2017. https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels .

33. “Energy From Fossil Fuels”. WOU. Accessed 1 April 2021. https://people.wou.edu/~courtna/GS361/Energy_From_Fossil_Fuels.htm .

34. Theo Stein. “Rise of carbon dioxide unabated”. NOAA Research News. 4 June 2020. https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated .

35. Peter Beech. “What is environmental racism?” World Economic Forum. 31 July 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/what-is-environmental-racism-pollution-covid-systemic/ .

36. ed. John Lawton and Robert May. Extinction rates . Oxford University Press. 1995. https://archive.org/details/extinctionrates00lawt/mode/2up .

37. Heather Scoville. “The 5 Major Mass Extinctions”. ThoughtCo. 8 January 2020. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-5-major-mass-extinctions-4018102 .

38. Frédérikk Saltré and Corey Bradshaw. “What is a ‘mass extinction’ and are we in one now?” Phys dot Org. 13 November 2019. https://phys.org/news/2019-11-mass-extinction.html .

39. Victoria Guida. “Janet Yellen: Climate change poses ‘existential threat’ to financial markets”. Politico. 31 March 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/31/yellen-climate-change-fsoc-478769 .

40. Lael Brainard. “Financial Stability Implications of Climate Change”. Ceres 2021 Conference. 23 March 2021. https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20210323a.htm .

41. Seth Rachlin. “How climate change is impacting the insurance industry”. Global Banking And Finance. 4 March 2020. https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/how-climate-change-is-impacting-the-insurance-industry/ .

42. Thomas Lennarz. “Climate Change Liability - New Litigation Risks”. CMS Law. August 2019. https://cms.law/en/int/publication/climate-change-liability-new-litigation-risks .

43. Bryce Covert. “The Government Listens To Lobbyists And The Wealthy, Not You And Me”. ThinkProgress. 12 April 2014. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-government-listens-to-lobbyists-and-the-wealthy-not-you-and-me-4f7078c88e9a/ .

44. Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez. “Corrupt SF Official Used Nonprofits to Funnel ‘Pay to Play’ Cash”. KQED. 24 September 2020. https://www.kqed.org/news/11839531/report-corrupt-sf-official-directed-nonprofit-to-pay-60k-to-organizations-under-fbi-investigation .

45. Jeff Beradrdelli. “Megadrought emerging in western U.S. could be the worst in 1,200 years, study finds”. CBS News. 17 April 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-drought-california-western-united-states-study/ .

46. Tejvan Pettinger. “Polluter pays principle”. Economics Help. 27 February 2017. https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6955/economics/polluter-pays-principle-ppp/ .

47. Aiden Stark. Environmental Restorative Justice . Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal. 15 May 2016, Vol 16, Issue 3. https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1364&context=drlj .

48. “What is Restorative Justice?” Centre for Justice & Reconciliation. Accessed 1 April 2021. http://restorativejustice.org .

49. Michael Marshall. “The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis”. The Guardian. 19 September 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/19/the-tipping-points-at-the-heart-of-the-climate-crisis .

50. Rosamond Hutt. “9 climate tipping points pushing Earth to the point of no return”. World Economic Forum. 5 December 2019. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/climate-change-tipping-points-earth/ .

51. Richard Procter. “San Francisco Knows How to Stop Global Warming — Will It?” SF Weekly. 11 September 2019. https://www.sfweekly.com/news/san-francisco-climate-change-emissions/.

52. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/ .

53. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/ .

54. Dana Nuccitelli. “New report finds costs of climate change impacts often underestimated”. Yale Climate Connections. 18 November 2019. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/11/new-report-finds-costs-of-climate-change-impacts-often-underestimated/ .

55. Rebecca Hersher and Nathan Rott. “What Are The Costs Of Climate Change?” NPR. 16 September 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913693655/what-are-the-costs-of-climate-change.

56. Samantha Fields. “Insurance increasingly unaffordable as climate change brings more disasters”. Marketplace. 31 August 2020. https://www.marketplace.org/2020/08/31/insurance-increasingly-unaffordable-as-climate-change-brings-more-disasters/ .

57. 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 .

58. 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 .

59. 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 .

60. 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/ .

61. 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 .

62. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/ .

63. 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/ .

64. 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/ .

65. Lauren Frayer. “Scores Are Feared Dead In India After Himalayan Glacier Breaks Away”. NPR. 7 February 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/07/965046888/scores-are-feared-dead-in-india-after-himalayan-glacier-breaks-away . It’s now looking like it was a landslide which makes the situation worse.

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