(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Recipe For Disaster -- Strike for the Planet week 116 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-27 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 116 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 It’s usually a bad thing for politicians when they make the news This week’s topic: Recipe for Disaster San Francisco is behind on everything Blackwater recycling? The state’s been pushing it1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and SF isn’t doing it.6 Moving to all electric? Berkeley did it first and only then did SF sort of follow behind, and only after massive shaming from the SF environmental community.7, 8 A locally controlled grid? Despite being a goal for decades it is still a pipe dream.9, 10, 11 Even our most touted environmental efforts are more likely to have happened by mistake.12 Which means things will get ugly real soon Inaction and inadequate action cause disasters that generate news stories. Do you want a preview of what the reporting of a preventable catastrophe in SF will look like? Let’s use a Florida news article, with appropriate substitutions, to get a glimpse of your potential future press. Anything added or altered from the original article is in brackets. Majority of [SF] board squabbled [and] dragged out plans for [years] The president of the board [was frustrated] over what she saw as the sluggish response to reports [of] major structural [challenges that faced San Francisco.] “We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning,” she wrote. “This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members [supervisors, department heads, scientists, etc], circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board [and city], but it describes a board [and city] that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish. Debate over the cost and scope of the work, along with turnover, dragged out preparations for the repairs [mitigation efforts, responses to climate change, and implementation of survival strategies] for [around 20] years, according to previously unpublished correspondence, board minutes and [public] records. Restoration work [climate mitigation and lowering SF’s carbon footprint work] had not yet begun when building[s] partially collapsed [the water vanished, smoke blanketed the city causing long-term health impacts, flash floods destroyed homes and infrastructure, a heatwave killed hundreds, etc]. Despite increasingly dire warnings from [the IPCC, Greta Thunberg, every environmental group operating in SF, CA, the US, and the world, science, and your own eyes], many [home and] condo owners, [politicians, supervisors, bureaucrats, rich “disruptors” and large corporations] balked at paying for the extensive improvements, which ballooned in price from about [$x] to more than [$x3] over the past [20] years as the building[s, biosphere, and ability of the planet to support life] continued to deteriorate, records show. “The question is, ‘Why did it take [20] years to get this point?’ ” a former board member said in an interview with The Washington Post. “It took a lot of time to get the ball rolling, and of course there was sticker shock. Nobody truly believed the building, [city, or world] was in imminent danger.” As recently as April, residents appeared divided — with dozens signing a letter that questioned the details of the proposed spending. “We cannot afford an assessment that doubles the amount currently being paid,” the group wrote. In a 2018 email, an official praised the board for getting a jump-start on [climate change]. “They have decided to start the process early which I wholeheartedly endorse and wish that this trend would catch on with other [municipalities].” But what may have looked like a running start soon became a slow walk. “A lot of this work could have been done or planned for in years gone by. But this is where we are now,” current board president [wrote] in a letter [that] warned damage to the [planet’s] support system was accelerating. In a follow-up note, before a meeting about the repair costs, [the board president] wrote: “I ask everyone to try to remain calm. I know there is a lot of anxiety and there are many questions. It’s a lot of information and a lot of money. We will continue to do our best to address everyone’s concerns.” “I want you to know that the numbers we are hearing so far are much higher than the original estimate. However, the project is also much larger . . . The damage is more extensive than it was when first looked at, and prices have gone up.” Do you want this article to be written about you? The original article is available here13, if you want a closer look, but the parallels should provoke anxiety, at least. The costs of your slow and insufficient actions will be so much greater than the costs of a collapsed condo. Even if you don’t care about your constituents, children, the poor, historically disadvantaged communities, women, or other living species, surely you care about your political careers. This is not the kind of press to generate if your goal is higher office. You’re out of time. Act. The new normal for the west resembles an oven.14 Heat is killing hundreds just on the west coast, and will get worse.15 Silence is extinct.16 Monsoons cause flashflooding17 and flashfloods lead to landslides, especially in burn areas.18 This is ecocide.19 Act! FOOTNOTES 1. “AB-2282 Building standards: recycled water systems”. California Legislative Information. Accessed 13 July 2021. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB2282 . 2. “AB-836 California Building Standards Commission: recycled water: nonpotable water systems”. California Legislative Information. 26 March 2021. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB836 . 3. Matt Simon. “A massive water recycling proposal could help ease drought”. Grist. 10 July 2021. https://grist.org/science/a-massive-water-recycling-proposal-could-help-ease-drought/ . 4. “California Senator Proposes Water Reuse Bill”. Water Quality Products Magazine. 6 February 2018. https://www.wqpmag.com/water-reuse/california-senator-proposes-water-reuse-bill . 5. Yoram Cohen. “Graywater - A Potential Source of Water. UCLA Institute of the Environment. Fall 2009. https://www.buildingincalifornia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/RC-Graywater-Fall2009.pdf . 6. With the exception of Supervisor Mandelman’s purple pipes for greywater recycling, and I don’t hear a lot about that either. 7. Susie Cagle. “Berkeley became first US city to ban natural gas. Here’s what that may mean for the future”. The Guardian. 23 July 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/23/berkeley-natural-gas-ban-environment . 8. Such as 350 SF and the Sierra Club and 1000 Grandmothers, etc. 9. Lily Jamali. “San Francisco Maneuvers To Buy Local Grid Owned By PG&E”. NPR. 20 May 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/20/724921410/san-francisco-maneuvers-to-buy-local-grid-owned-by-pg-e . 10. Marisa Endicott. “Grids and Greed: An Expert Breaks Down Where PG&E Went Wrong and What It—and California—Needs to Do Now”. Mother Jones. 16 October 2019. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/california-wildfire-pge-power-shutoff-steven-weissman-expert-solutions-what-now/ . 11. Lynda Gledhill. “State fights ‘hostile takeover’ of electrical grid/System operator to appeal U.S. order to disband”. SFGate. 8 August 2002, updated 28 Jan 2012. https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/State-fights-hostile-takeover-of-electrical-2785832.php . 12. Such as the city-wide composting program in which, legend has it, SF as a county was suddenly on the hook with the other counties in the state for reducing the amount of green waste sent to landfill but, as the only urban county in the state, SF didn’t have the luxury of diverting yard or agricultural waste to make up the mandatory percent reduction. Newsom, with his background in the restaurant business, thought of food waste and so started diverting restaurant food waste to composting. It was initially a major concern among the restaurants but went smoother than anyone expected and so got expanded to residential composting as well. Tl;dr — Residential composting in SF happened by accident and was not due to some green ah ha! moment. 13. Beth Reinhard, Tik Root, Brady Bennis, and Jon Swaine. “Majority of Florida condo board quit in 2019 as squabbling residents dragged out plans for repairs”. The Washington Post. 1 July 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/majority-of-florida-condo-board-quit-in-2019-as-squabbling-residents-dragged-out-plans-for-repairs/2021/06/30/43592282-d98e-11eb-ae62-2d07d7df83bd_story.html . 14. Maanvi Singh. “American west stuck in cycle of ‘heat, drought and fire’, experts warn”. The Guardian. 13 July 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/12/wildfires-california-oregon-drought-heat-fire-cycle . 15. Sarah Kaplan. “Climate change has gotten deadly. It will get worse.” The Washington Post. 3 July 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/07/03/climate-change-heat-dome-death/ . 16. Eliot Stein. “The world’s most endangered sound”. BBC. 13 July 2021. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210712-the-worlds-most-endangered-sound . 17. Judson Jones and Hannah Gard. “Monsoon is set to unleash flooding rains in drought-stricken Arizona”. CNN. 13 July 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/weather/arizona-rainfall-monsoon-drought-flood/index.html . 18. Erin Ross. “Why a blast of rainfall on Oregon’s new forest fire scars could trigger landslides”. OPB. 17 October 2020. https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/18/oregon-wildfires-landslides-soil/ . 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