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 120 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
Reality check time.
This week’s topic: The IPCC Report
In case you need a reminder, IPCC stands for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN organization charged with collecting, evaluating, and presenting the science on climate change to the UN and to governments of all levels all over the world.
The IPCC just issued their Sixth Assessment Report.1 They wrote it for you; you need to understand what it says.
Here’s what the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report says
From the headline statements — the science to back up each of these is in the report:
- Humans cause climate change, its impacts are obvious and observable everywhere, and the current scale of change is beyond anything our species has ever faced.
- We’re on track for a 3°C (5.4°F) average global temperature increase.2
- The hotter it gets, the bigger the changes including heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, intensity of storms, snow and ice loss, etc.
- The ability of ocean and soil carbon sinks to make a positive difference is rapidly waning.
- We’ve already irreversibly changed the ocean, ice sheets, and sea levels.
- Really bad outcomes, such as ice sheet collapse, abrupt ocean circulation changes, and compound extreme events cannot be ruled out.3
- It’ll take 20 years to see improvement if we cut to at least 0 GHG emissions immediately. Negative carbon emissions would be better.
Here’s why you should care
If you go to the Regional fact sheet for North and Central America4 you’ll find that under all global warming scenarios SF’s mean average temperature goes up. There’s an increase in drought and fire, an increase in extreme precipitation events, an increase in river and pluvial flooding, and an increase in the number of days of extreme heat.
If you go to the Regional fact sheet for urban areas5 you’ll see that the urban heat island effect raises nighttime temperatures; this is a health risk.6 Hotter weather will produce more air pollution in cities, the sea level is rising and flooding will increase, and there will be more deadly heat events.
Here’s what you can do about it right away
- Divest —Fossil fuel companies, BlackRock, any bank that invests in mines or fossil fuels, companies that use palm oil or cause deforestation, PG&E, etc. Roughly 100 companies are responsible for over 70% of global emissions; stop doing any business with them.7
- Sue — You need to raise money to fix the infrastructure to give SF a fighting chance for survival? There are a lot of companies that have gotten rich polluting our ecosystems and stealing resources from the commons. Sue them. It’s climate reparations.
- Mandate — No gas infrastructure, all green building materials, blackwater recycling, high albedo, living roofs, permeable surfaces, heat pumps, mandatory greenery, etc. You’ve got 119 prior Strike letters that list what’s needed in SF.
- Implement — Put your money where your mouth is. Don’t just pass a resolution; pass an ordinance. Don’t just pass a law; make sure it’s enforced. Don’t just wave your hands if some department isn’t doing what they should be; call them on the carpet, cut off their funding, replace people, get up in their business because it’s your business to do so.
- Educate — Talk to people! You’re politicians, that’s supposed to be your strong suit. Explain to them what’s happening and what you’re doing about it and why.
And do all of these at the same time.
And here’s why you have to do something about it
“We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.”8
Adaptation and mitigation reduce suffering; the longer you wait to act, the greater the suffering will be. There is a lot of suffering you can reduce or eliminate if you act.
Here’s why you should be terrified of not acting
The science in the Report is already old by the time it’s considered by the IPCC; science is methodical and that often means slow. The 234 scientists who worked on this assessment skewed toward the conservative; in science, that means that they tend to downplay findings that deviate from expected norms. These two things together mean the situation is already worse than what’s in the assessment.
The conclusion? You have to act NOW
Politics are not reality. The planet burning? That’s reality. Climate refugees, megadrought, mass extinctions, ocean acidification, the dying cryosphere, sea level rise, the decaying Gulf Stream, pandemics — that’s reality. Physics is reality. Politics not in the service of reality is a combination of privilege, theft, and garbage.
Greece is burning9, Oregon is burning10, California is burning11, the smoke is crossing the country.12 SF’s survival requires immediate action?13 You’ve taken oaths to act for the good of SF. So act!
The costs of climate change are huge14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and the damages are getting worse.19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 You have to fight for the people of SF now. Try to accomplish something while it still matters.
FOOTNOTES
1. “ARC Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis”. IPCC. 9 August 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/.
2. For reference, an average 5° F temperature drop caused the last ice age.
3. Ah, irony. As the IPCC was publishing this, a study came out detailing huge problems with the Gulf Stream (Damian Carrington. “Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse”. The Guardian. 5 August 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse.), another came out showing how big Greenland’s ice sheet collapse is (Oliver Milman. “Greenland: enough ice melted on single day to cover Florida in two inches of water”. The Guardian. 30 July 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/30/greenland-ice-sheet-florida-water-climate-crisis.), and we’re living through wildfires caused by drought caused by climate change causing evacuations that are spreading a Covid variant during a pandemic — by definition, a compound extreme event.
4. “Regional fact sheet — North and Central America”. IPCC. 9 August 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/factsheets/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Regional_Fact_Sheet_North_and_Central_America.pdf.
5. “Regional fact sheet — Urban Areas”. IPCC. 9 August 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/factsheets/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Regional_Fact_Sheet_Urban_areas.pdf.
6. Jonathan Belles. “Why Nighttime Temperatures Are Also Dangerous During Heat Waves”. The Weather channel. 9 August 2019. https://weather.com/safety/heat/news/2019-07-19-nighttime-heat-wave-deadly-dangerous.
7. Paul Griffin. “The Carbon Majors Database”. CDP Report. July 2017. https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240.
8. John Holdren said this at the release of the Fourth Climate Assessment Report. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/world/30climate.html.
9. “More Than 1,000 Evacuated Due To Wildfires in Greece”. NBC News. 7 August 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da42HHYAPkA.
10. Amir Vera and Deanna Hackney. “91 wildfires are now burning across the US, with Oregon’s Bootleg Fire growing to over 400,000 acres”. CNN. 1 august 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/01/us/us-western-wildfires-sunday/index.html.
11. Dave Mistich. “California’s Dixie Fire Is Now The 2nd Largest In State History”. NPR. 8 August 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/08/1025928690/californias-dixie-fire-is-now-the-2nd-largest-in-state-history.
12. Paulina Firozi. “Smoke from Western wildfires has made it all the way to New York, D.C. and North Carolina”. The Washington Post. 21 July 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/21/bootleg-fire-merge-air-quality-haze/.
13. 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/.
14. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/.
15. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/.
16. 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/.
17. 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.
18. 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/.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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/.
23. 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.
24. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
25. 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/.
26. 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/.
27. 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.
28. Zoya Teirstein. “2020 was the hottest year on record. We’ll remember it as one of the century’s coldest.” Grist. 16 January 2021. https://grist.org/climate/2020-was-the-hottest-year-on-record-well-remember-it-as-one-of-the-centurys-coldest/.