I spent 30 years teaching science, and I always taught — every week, most days in fact — about climate change, global extinction, and pollution of all kinds (endocrine disruptors, drug metabolites and anti-depressants downstream of cities, plastics everywhere, flame retardants in polar bear fat, and on and on.) I gave my students tons of data, ways to analyze that data, and then we explored solutions, beginning with the personal (how to reduce exposure to the bad chems in personal care products, how to reduce the danger from mostly untested and unregulated chems everywhere, etc) to the global (what is environmental racism, what does it look like, where does it happen, what do we do about it). But the big news to my students was always about climate change and extinction.
Every year my students would ask me when they’d see sea level rise and vanishing megafauna happening in the world around them, when would knowing it was happening be unavoidable. And, based on the studies I was reading, I told them 15 years ago that it would be obvious in 15 years. 10 years ago I said 10 years. 5 years ago it was 5 years. This year I said now, and I realized I can’t keep teaching students for the future when there might not be one, that I had to take more direct action than hoping on generational change, and I had to do so immediately.
So I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out how to take action. It’s been hit and miss, and I’m currently over-involved in some things I’ll probably drop, and not putting enough time into other things that I really should invest time in. But one thing I’ve done that seems pretty good is a weekly Strike for the Planet in front of city hall in SF.
I live in SF. SF can make changes to how it does things, and it can make those changes quickly. Small organizations are more nimble, even among governments. Changes made at the city-level are cheaper to implement and enforce, and easier to fight for and to fight off the forces trying to kill them. In cities, citizens have more power because we have way more access to politicians. And changes made in cities can spread rapidly to other cities. A good example from SF is composting. We proved it could be done in a city (we were sort of forced into it, actually, but it worked), and the SF urban composting model has spread to cities across the globe.
I decided to push for change in my city. I go every Wednesday morning, from 8:30 to 10 a.m., to city hall. I stand just to the side of the stairs at the Civic Center entrance. I have a cloth sign I hang on my bike (cloth signs survive rain, I discovered), a cardboard sign I prop nearby, and a paper umbrella sign that also keeps me from getting sunburned. I chalk a slogan on the sidewalk, and I stand there and talk to anyone who wants to talk. My supervisor’s environment guy comes in about 9:15, and my supervisor shows up around 9:30, and they both have to pass me and my signs to get to work.
Then, at 10, I pack up my strike backpack and I head into city hall where I deliver a letter to each supervisor, to the mayor’s office, and to the Youth Commission. The topic is different each week, but focuses on a specific problem and what SF can and must do about it. Here’s a list of topics by week:
- 1 — water
- 2 — ideas
- 3 — carbon sequestration
- 4 — local recycling
- 5 — elevation
- 6 — planting
- 7 — transportation
- 8 — the planet
- 9 (this week) — insects
9 weeks so far. I’m a teacher, and I’ve started treating this like a new class of students I’m prodding into action. 9 weeks is about halfway through the first semester. Maybe it’s time to give them a midterm.
Here’s the letter for this week:
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
because a dying biosphere means we die too.
It won’t be cheap, easy, politically feasible, pro-capitalist, or any of the rest of the ridiculous stupidity we’ve let deafen us so long to both the science and the silence as life dies off.
If you’re not panicked, you haven’t been paying attention. Please pay attention.
This week’s topic is INSECTS.
Insect populations are crashing worldwide.
• North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany has seen an 81% drop in insect biomass in 25 years.
• A German nature reserve saw a 40% decrease in butterfly and moth species in 173 years.
• A 2014 study documented a 45% drop in invertebrate abundance worldwide since 1974.
• 42% of terrestrial invertebrate species are classified as threatened with extinction.
• Colony collapse disorder has caused 30-40% drops in bee populations.
• In a pristine Puerto Rican rainforest, insect/ anthropod biomass fell 60-fold since the ‘70s.
• Insect diversity has diminished; less diversity means less system resilience to change.
So why should we care?
Bird species that eat insects are crashing; in ecosystems, extinction is a chain reaction of death.
3/4ths of all flowering plants are pollinated by insects.
1/3 of the world’s food supply by mass depends on insect pollinators.
Insects decompose plant and animal waste, and recycle nutrients back into the biosphere.
If predator insects die off, prey insects can boom, destroying ecosystems and spreading diseases.
What’s causing the die-offs? Probably a combination of:
Modern agricultural practices, pesticides, nitrogen fertilizer, monocrops, destruction of native habitat and habitat loss, invasive species, neonics and DDT and glyphosate, climate chaos, water pollution, light pollution, air pollution, and global temperature increases.
What can we do about this in a city? Lots!
Engage citizens in insect Citizen Science (Xerces Society, School of Ants, Bugs In Our Backyard),
Plant insect gardens and ensure insect corridors throughout the city,
Turn SF lights out and enlist buildings to practice lights down and reduced lighting at all times,
Plant trees and micro-ecosystems everywhere,
Outlaw all non-permaculture pesticide use in SF (private and public),
Plant natives and lots of them all over (including in yards and on sidewalks, by fields and roads),
Phase out cars quickly and outlaw all diesel in SF,
Above-ground rivers and streams and rebuild the habitats they sustained,
Fund insect zoos and insect nurseries in all SF schools,
Plant lots of plants and leave some “bare” ground for burrowing insects; no astroturf in SF!
This one is doable and quickly; we just have to do it and do it now!
And I sign it and provide contact info to prove I’m a local. This topic, by the way, is one of the easy ones (transportation was a pretty good one, too.)
Anyway, if you’re in SF and want to spend some time standing in front of a very pretty city hall, I’d love to meet you. Numbers help, no question, but I’m discovering stubbornness helps, too. If anyone wants to sign on to a weekly letter, as a person or an organization, well, that might help, too. I’ll try to post the letters here every week.
Like I said, I’m trying to figure out what I can do and the best way to do it.