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 104 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
“But we’re taking action,” you say every Wednesday, don’t you.
This week’s topic: Scale
“Scale?”
Yup. I think you’re not acting because you really don’t understand the scale of the problem.
“Why do you keep saying we’re not acting? We’re acting!”
“We’ve taken environmental actions. We have press articles and pictures of us planting trees and cutting ribbons with constituents. We have been scarred from standing up against big money lobbyists. We couldn’t get all of that and more without taking action. So we have proof we’ve done something about the environment. In fact, we deserve congratulations!”
Okay, I know you’ve done a few things, and some of the actions you’ve taken are even still in effect. I can find bioswales; it’s just a matter of knowing where to go look for them. I have used the bike lanes and seen the EV charging stations right in front of City Hall. Market St. is mostly transit and somewhat safer. All that’s proof of some action. But it’s not nearly enough.
“You have to be realistic,” you say. “There are other, more pressing matters we have to deal with right now. People are screaming at us every day about issues closer to home and it’s not like the deniers are in power anymore. So,” you think to yourself, “get off our case.”
But are your actions enough for the scale of the problem?
This, in a nutshell, is a matter of scale. So how big a problem is all this environment stuff really?
It’s big.
What are you comparing this to when you think of the situation? Are you thinking of:
- When SF became the hippy center of the universe? This is bigger.
- Jonestown and the Milk-Moscone assassinations only 10 days apart? This is bigger.
- 9/11? This is bigger.
- A nuclear bomb? This is bigger.
- The 1906 earthquake? This is bigger.
- The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns? This is bigger.
- World War II? This is bigger.
- The genocide of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas? This is bigger.
“Really? How much bigger?”
- We are adding 3-6 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy to the ocean every second, and have been doing so for the last 50 years.1
- Due to us, species are going extinct at 1000 times the normal background rate, and the speed of extinctions is increasing.2
- In 20 years, we have caused the number of extreme weather events to increase by 83%. Major floods have more than doubled, the number of severe storms has risen 40%, and there’ve been huge increases in droughts, wildfires, and heatwaves.3
- Because of climate chaos, we are starting wars, forcing migrations, and creating refugees.4, 5 In 2018, 16.1 million people were displaced by climate change6, and that number is rapidly increasing.
- Human-caused climate chaos is starting to hit our food7, and we already have hunger and starvation because of it.8
- Our use of fossil fuels is directly responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide9, and now we’re adding climate change-caused wildfire smoke to the toxic mix.10, 11
- In our race to disaster, heat is winning, causing more deaths in the US than hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods.12
- Direct costs of climate change already baked in are in the trillions.13 Indirect costs are higher, from the economic14 to the governmental15 to the societal.16
- And there’s more.17, 18, 19
How big is this biosphere-destroying problem?
You know about the asteroid hitting off the Yucatan Peninsula and causing the Chicxulub crater and the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event that wiped out 75-80% of all plant and animal species on earth?21 Now we’re getting to the right size range, but this is still bigger.
Climate action “delayed” is climate action denied.
I have had to infer your words from your actions, and actions do speak louder than words. Want to prove me wrong? Then ACT — at long last do something!
SF’s chances for survival are borderline, and require immediate action.22 You’ve taken oaths to act for the good of SF. You say you are bound by the Precautionary Principle. So act already.
The costs of climate change are huge.23, 24, 25, 26, 27 Damage is already being done and it’s going to get worse.28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 You have to fight for the people of SF now while it’s still possible to accomplish anything!
Because, until you understand scale, you’ll never be able to get a handle on the problem.
FOOTNOTES
1. Jill Kiedaisch. “The Oceans Have Absorbed an Unfathomable Amount Due to Climate Change”. Popular Mechanics. 11 January 2019. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a25856754/ocean-absorb-climate-change-150-years/.
2. “Extinctions during human era worse than thought”. Brown University. 2 September 2014. https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/09/extinctions.
3. “Extreme Weather Events Have Increased Significantly in the Last 20 Years”. YaleEnvironment360. 13 October 2020. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/extreme-weather-events-have-increased-significantly-in-the-last-20-years.
4. Nathan Empsall. “Climate change and refugees: How drought and war lead to more asylum seekers”. Yale Environment Review. 18 July 2019. https://environment-review.yale.edu/climate-change-and-refugees-how-drought-and-war-lead-more-asylum-seekers.
5. Michael Casey. “Did climate change cause the Syrian civil war?” CBS News. 2 March 2015. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-climate-change-cause-the-syrian-civil-war/.
6. Maram Ahmed. “How climate change exacerbates the refugee crisis - and what can be done about it”. World Economic Forum. 20 June 2019. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/how-climate-change-exacerbates-the-refugee-crisis-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/.
7. Frederick Hewett. “The Scariest Thing About Climate Change: What Happens To Our Food Supply”. WBUR. 5 June 2019. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/06/05/climate-change-food-frederick-hewett.
8. Michael Klare. “Covid-19’s Third Shock Wave: The Global Food Crisis”. The Nation. 1 May 2020. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-global-food-crisis/.
9. “Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide”. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 9 February 2021. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/.
10. Erin McCormick. “Wildfires having devastating effect on air quality in western US, study finds”. The Guardian. 19 January 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/wildfires-air-pollution-western-us.
11. Sue Dremann. “Deaths from recent wildfire smoke could top 3K, Stanford researchers say”. Palo Alto Weekly. 30 September 2020. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/09/30/deaths-from-recent-wildfire-smoke-could-top-3k-stanford-researchers-say.
12. Dean Russell, Elisabeth Gawthrop, Veronica Penney, Ali Raj, and Bridget Hickey. “Deadly heat is killing Americans: A decade of inaction on climate puts lives at risk”. The Guardian. 16 June 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/climate-deaths-heat-cdc.
13. Patrick Galey. “Climate impacts ‘to cost world $7.9 trillion’ by 2050. Phys dot Org. 20 November 2019. https://phys.org/news/2019-11-climate-impacts-world-trillion.html.
14. Jeff McMahon. “6 Hidden Costs Of Government Inaction On Climate Change”. Forbes. 1 August 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/08/01/6-hidden-costs-of-the-government-fiddling-while-the-climate-burns/?sh=ac9ddff758b9.
15. University of Maryland. “Hidden Costs Of Climate Change In US: Major, Nationwide, Uncounted”. ScienceDaily. 17 October 2007. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071017085305.htm.
16. Greta Moran. “Is the climate crisis creating a mental health crisis?” Al Jazeera. 14 September 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/9/14/is-the-climate-crisis-creating-a-mental-health-crisis.
17. Pam Wright. “How Bad Will Climate Change Get? It’s a Surprise, Says Report”. The Weather Channel. 9 August 2017. https://weather.com/science/environment/news/climate-change-report-surprises.
18. Joe Pinkstone. “Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is melting FASTER than expected”. Daily Mail. 9 April 2021. https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/antarcticas-doomsday-glacier-is-melting-faster-than-expected/ar-BB1ftZJp.
19. Trevor Nace. “US Drought Could Last A Century As We Now Enter A Megadrought, Study Finds”. Forbes. 20 April 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2020/04/20/us-drought-could-last-a-century-as-we-now-enter-a-megadrought-study-finds/?sh=29f637482e00.
20. And see previous 103 Strike letters.
21. Roff Smith. “Here’s What Happened the Day the Dinosaurs Died”. National Geographic. 11 June 2016. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/what-happened-day-dinosaurs-died-chicxulub-drilling-asteroid-science.
22. 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/.
23. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/.
24. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/.
25. 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/.
26. 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.
27. 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/.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. 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/.
32. 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.
33. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
34. 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/.
35. 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/.
36. 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.
37. 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/.