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.
This is the letter for week 30 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.
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
because insisting climate and extinction fixes “take time” is stealing from the future until there is none left. We’re almost at that point.
That’s why this week’s topic is TIME.
How much time do we have left?
- Amazon – If the rainforest degrades into savannah, its ability to absorb carbon will be severely diminished with devastating results for the planet. That tipping point is estimated to be when deforestation reaches 20-25% of total tree cover. A July 2019 study puts current Amazon deforestation at 17% with deforestation rates accelerating.1
- Antarctica – A study published this month reports that the Antarctic ice sheets have been melting rapidly for much longer than scientist previously thought, meaning sea level rises will happen much sooner than previously estimated.2
- CH4 – A 1.5°C temperature increase compared to pre-industrial levels is enough to start a general permafrost melt.3 Currently the atmosphere holds 850 gigatons of carbon; there are 1,400 gigatons of carbon in the permafrost.4 And while methane only lasts in the atmosphere for roughly 12 years, it is 30X more potent at heat-trapping than CO2.5, 6
- CO2 – We’ve already passed one tipping point (we are now at higher CO2 levels than our species has ever experienced), and we are racing toward others that threaten clouds7, Arctic ice8, and carbon sinks.9
- Extinctions, Animal – One million animal species are in danger of extinction in the next few years.10
- Extinctions, Plant – 32% of all pre-industrial forests on Earth have been lost and the rate of deforestation is increasing.11
- Ocean biosphere – Coral reef death rates are far outpacing their growth rates12 and their timed gamete releases are now out of sync13, overfishing is crashing fisheries and their dependent food webs14, and California’s kelp is being destroyed by invasive purple urchins.15
- Ocean pH –The ocean is rapidly acidifying. This has myriad disastrous consequences, especially to organisms that create calcium carbonate shells.16
- Ocean plastics – Each of the ocean gyres is full of plastics with more flooding in daily, the plastics break down into smaller pieces and enter the food chain, the plastics absorb toxins and concentrate them in the food chain, plastic consumption fills stomachs and causes animals to starve to death, and plastic sinks to the ocean floors where it devastates even more fragile ecosystems forever.17
How must San Francisco respond to these deadlines?
- Amazon – Outlaw the sale and use of all endangered tropical hardwoods such as luan, divest from ALL involvement in corporations or practices that are destroying the Amazon, support those who are fighting for the rainforests, and shame and act against those who are not.
- Antarctica – Increase our city’s albedo, greatly increase our plantings (and plant only natives and near-natives), and IMMEDIATELY cut to zero all production in SF of greenhouse gases.
- CH4 – No natural gas infrastructure in all new buildings and get rid of natural gas in all old buildings.
- CO2 – Electrify everything now, municipalize our utilities, we need in-county (or in-state) recycling and reuse of everything, no private vehicles in SF, and build an electrical plane terminal at SFO.
- Extinctions – Plant natives and near-natives all over SF, create extensive wildlife corridors (on land, in the air, in streams and lakes, and in the bay and ocean), stop all use of pesticides in SF, and get our city’s lights off at night.
- Ocean – Plant natives all over SF, in our streams and lakes, and all along our coastlines; recycle all black water in SF, and outlaw plastics.
We CAN and MUST take action on the biggest crises our species has ever faced. We can take action as a city and have a real planetary impact. And, if we don’t take action now, the consequences of our inactions or our too late actions or our too little actions will destroy us.
Save the biosphere; offer expiring soon! Because it is literally almost too late (62 weeks left).
FOOTNOTES
1. Pam Wright. “Amazon Deforestation Is Fast Approaching a ‘Tipping Point,’ Studies Show”. The Weather Channel. 27 July 2019. https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-07-26-amazon-deforestation-accelerating-tipping-point.
2. W. A. Dickens, G. Kuhn, M. J. Leng, A. G. C. Graham, J. A. Dowdeswell, M. P. Meredith, C.-D.Hillenbrand, D. A. Hodgson, S. J. Roberts, H. Sloan, & J. A. Smith. “Enhanced glacial discharge from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula since 1700s associated with a positive Southern Annular Mode”. Scientific Reports. 24 October 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50897-4.
3. David Spratt. Climate Reality Check. March 2016. http://media.wix.com/ugd/148cb0_4868352168ba49d89358a8a01bc5f80f.pdf.
4. “Methane and Frozen Ground”. National Snow & Ice Data Center. 2019. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/frozenground/methane.html.
5. Princeton University. “A more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, methane emissions will leap as Earth warms.” ScienceDaily. 27 March 2014. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm.
6. Tarika Powell. “Methane’s 20- And 100-Year Climate Effect Is Like ‘CO2 On Steroids’”. Sightline Institute. 12 February 2019. https://www.sightline.org/2019/02/12/methane-climate-change-co2-on-steroids/.
7. Zeke Hausfather. “Extreme CO2 levels could trigger clouds ‘tipping point’ and 8C of global warming”. CarbonBrief. 25 February 2019. https://www.carbonbrief.org/extreme-co2-levels-could-trigger-clouds-tipping-point-and-8c-of-global-warming.
8. David Colgan. “Earth may be approaching a carbon dioxide threshold for melting ice in the Arctic”. Phys org. 13 March 2018. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-earth-approaching-carbon-dioxide-threshold.html.
9. Jonathan Hahn. “Climate Could Hit a Tipping Point Sooner Than You Think”. Sierra. 26 January 2019. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-could-hit-tipping-point-sooner-you-think.
10. Stephen Leahy. “One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns”. National Geographic. 6 May 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes-un-biodiversity-report-warns-one-million-species-at-risk/.
11. Alex Schwartz. “The UN’s devastating extinction report, explained in 5 charts”. Popular Science. 7 May 2019. https://www.popsci.com/un-extinction-report-stats-climate/.
12. “60% can disappear in the next 30 years…” The World Counts. 19 May 2014. http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Why-Are-Coral-Reefs-in-Danger.
13. Bayley Freeman. “Coral Spawning: Out of Sync and In Major Trouble”. Reef To Rainforest Media. 13 September 2019. https://www.reef2rainforest.com/2019/09/13/coral-spawning-out-of-sync-and-in-major-trouble/.
14. “Oceans Issues & Threats”. Greenpeace. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/oceans/issues/.
15. Kendra Pierre-Louis. “California’s Underwater Forests Are Being Eaten by the ‘Cockroaches of the Ocean’”. The New York Times. 22 October 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/climate/kelp-climate-change-california.html.
16. Brad Plumer. “The World’s Oceans Are in Danger, Major Climate Change Report Warns”. The New York Times. 25 September 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/climate/climate-change-oceans-united-nations.html.
17. “Ocean Plastics Pollution”. Center for Biological Diversity. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/.