(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . You've Made Your Choice -- Strike for the Planet week 158 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-15 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 158 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 Lack of action produces the same results as bad intentions The topic this week: You’ve Made Your Choice Not acting is a choice “Criminal omission is based on the theory that failure to perform a legal duty when one has the capacity to do so is a substitute for the commission of a defined offense when the harm done is the same. The causation requirement is essential to proving criminal omission. Sources of legal duty are duty based upon … (5) the voluntary assumption of responsibility, (6) creation of peril, and (7) rescue responsibility.”1 You have chosen not to act Even if you knew nothing about the environmental issues facing San Francisco in 2019, you’ve been thoroughly educated in them for the past 3 years. You have been given information on the dangers. You now possess massive amounts of relevant, local information relating to the specific environmental perils facing San Francisco and ways in which those perils can be reduced or eliminated. So what have you done? declared a climate emergency worked on banning small gas-powered motors, such as leaf blowers been asked to at least partially fund SF Environment 2 passed an all-electric ordinance for new buildings in SF And that’s about it. This is all nice little stuff and will make a little difference, but it would have made a lot of difference a decade or two ago. Meanwhile, you’re not doing now what has to be done now. You’re piddling while the planet burns. But you know that. You are choosing to act small and not at all. You are choosing not to act. Here are the current consequences of your choice not to act San Francisco is very behind on what needs to be in place to survive, especially regarding water and energy, then food, extreme weather, housing, and transportation. San Francisco has gross environmental inequities that are not being fixed, and is in the process of creating new inequities by building housing in areas that will be underwater (such as Treasure Island). All of these are huge problems, getting more difficult to tackle every day you put off acting. Here are the soon-to-come results of your choice not to act San Francisco is woefully unprepared for: the megadrought and concomitant reduction in electric power, the results of ongoing mass extinctions, the health impacts of fire season, increases in extreme weather (especially heat), economic upheaval, social upheaval, mass migration caused by climate catastrophes, food shortages, and catastrophic floods. You aren’t acting so San Francisco isn’t ready. And you still do nothing. You voluntarily assumed responsibility and have rescue responsibility But you act as if the destruction of human ecosystems on this planet is less important than catering to the immediate interests of the mega-rich and the state political machine. Omitting to act on this clear and present danger is criminal. Image: Wikimedia Commons, Joost J. Bakker FOOTNOTES 1. Abstract. Criminal Liability for Omissions - A Brief Summary and Critique of the Law in the United States . New York Law School Law Review Vol 29 Issue 1. 1984. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/criminal-liability-omissions-brief-summary-and-critique-law-united . [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/15/2210779/-You-ve-Made-Your-Choice-Strike-for-the-Planet-week-158?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web 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/