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 16 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 all the strike letters, see this story.
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
because the ocean is dying.
The ocean is in worse shape than the land or atmosphere; life on this planet depends on the ocean.
If you’re not panicked, you haven’t been paying attention. Please pay attention.
This week’s topic is PROTECTING OUR OCEAN.
Just because we can’t see the destruction, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
There is plastic in significant amounts even at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
Over 70% of the world’s fish species have been entirely exploited or depleted.
“Fish farming” destroys native stocks, spreads disease, and frequently uses wild caught smaller fish for feed.
Ghost nets – drifting abandoned fishing nets – are mobile walls of death.
Every gyre has a substantial garbage patch and the sizes of these patches are growing.
The pH of ocean water is falling to the point where shell formation is becoming difficult.
Dead zones, anoxic areas, are increasing in size and number every year.
Mercury pollution levels have risen due to dirtier coal being used in power plants.
Offshore drilling causes massive amounts of many types of pollution for long periods of time.
Whaling and shark finning are killing off top predators, unbalancing already fragile ecosystems.
Ocean warming is causing increases in diseases, migration, and species die-offs.
Destruction of coral reefs is widespread and increasing.
Invasive species are destroying coastal and estuarial ecosystems.
Dumping into the ocean continues unabated and is increasing.
Deep sea mining is yet another threat to the deep water benthic ecosystems already being chewed up by bottom trawling, aka ocean clear-cutting.
Why is this important to SF?
SF is surrounded on three sides by water. SF is still a port. SF still has a fishing industry and people who fish for their dinner. SF is a densely populated city and the water levels are rising around us.
So what does SF need to do to protect our ocean?
- All traffic into and in the bay needs to be sail or electric within 3 years.
- Dumping needs to be curtailed with severe punishment – large fines and community shaming – at all levels, from individual to corporate and federal (the Army Corps of Engineers, for example.)
- SF needs to actively promote and engage in regenerative ocean farming of seaweed, oysters, clams, and mussels for a start.
- All of our coastlines must be replanted and/or regreened in the next 3 years.
- SF must have 100% renewable energy and recycle 100% of our water and waste now.
Why should SF protect the ocean?
Replanting coastlines returns $7 in savings for every $1 of investment. The clearest example of this is the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 where coasts with mangrove forests had substantially fewer fatalities and less damage than coasts turned into shrimp farms or tourist beaches.
It is long past time we get serious and act! There’s very little time left.