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 130 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
Water: too much and not enough
This week’s topic: Not enough water — the siege
We’re in a megadrought
Megadroughts last decades to centuries. Megadroughts destroy civilizations.1 We’re in a megadrought.
What’s this about a siege?
To attack a walled town, you lay siege to it. You start by cutting off the water supply because that’s the fastest way to force a surrender. CA’s water supply is literally evaporating.2 A megadrought may not be a traditional siege but, like a siege, it has us surrounds and absolutely can destroy us.
So what do we do?
Blackwater recycling, increasing permeable surface area, planting native trees and substantially increasing the tree cover in SF, investing in cheap and easy-to-implement desalination3, and getting serious about conservation4 all will go a long way towards our ability to survive this siege.
Can you act so SF survives?
Dear Editor,
The West is in a megadrought and Governor Newsom just proclaimed a drought emergency for the entire state of California. SF must act now to ensure the city has water. But if the rains aren’t coming, how do we create a sustainable water supply? Blackwater recycling is a good start. This is not a new or complex technology; Namibia, the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, has been recycling blackwater for over 50 years. There is blackwater recycling in Singapore, South Africa, Israel, Spain, Texas, Orange County, and Witicha Falls. Windhoek, the capitol of Namibia, has up to 30% recycled water in their drinking water. In a megadrought, to have water we have to save water. Reusing our water instead of flushing it away is a good place to start. If Namibia can do it, we can do it.
FOOTNOTES
1. Jeff Masters. “Ten Civilizations or Nations That Collapsed From Drought”. Weather Underground. 21 March 2016. https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/ten-civilizations-or-nations-that-collapsed-from-drought.html.
2. “California Drought Update: October 18, 2021”. State of California. 18 October 2021. https://drought.ca.gov/media/2021/10/CA-Drought-Update-10-18-21.pdf.
3. Bob Marcotte. “Lasers etch an efficient way to address global water crisis”. University of Rochester. 13 July 2020. https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/lasers-address-global-water-crisis-443612/.
4. Like by NOT having city trucks driving around spraying water on the roads (as they currently are doing).