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 136 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
Pick: A or B
This week’s topic: Choose Your Own Adventure
Congratulations! You’ve reached a narrative crossroads, a storyline tipping point, and now you have to make a choice. You can choose A — go on as if nothing much is different and what you’re doing now is fine, or B — make the major changes so that life in climate change is possible. Which do you pick?
Choice A — Go on per “normal”
The 5th atmospheric river in 7 days has slammed into SF; this is what weather does now. There’s standing water in multiple locations citywide, the subways are flooded, untreated sewage is flowing into the ocean and bay, multiple roads are closed, and there have been landslides in the Presidio, Russian Hill, Glen Canyon, Bay View, and Hunters Point. Treasure Island has been evacuated. It’s been pouring for three hours.
“I need some volunteers here!” the fire captain yells, pulling a large orange pack up out of the water that’s seeping over the sandbags. “Help!” She throws the pack on top of an engine, grabs some boots and tosses those up, too.
A NERT1 runs over. “I can help.”
“We need to move the equipment out now. We need to move everything to higher ground. Get all the firefighters in the station and we’ll, uh — Is the ham radio working?” She grabs a medical response box and tosses that after the boots. The water flow over the sandbags is increasing.
“I’ll find out,” the NERT says, splashing away.
The fire captain grabs a helmet that’s floating near her feet. “Tell them to pack it up. We can’t stay here. Where is my crew?”
Suddenly, the power flickers and dies. All anyone can hear is the rain and the sound of water pouring over the sandbags. Then the backup generator kicks on. “Everyone on the trucks!” yells the captain. “Now! We’re evacuating now!” The lights die again. The water is rising.
Choice B — You choose to make major changes
The 5th atmospheric river in 7 days has slammed into SF; this is what weather does now. There’s standing water in the marshes and bioberms, the retreated lands not yet planted out are flooded, the blackwater systems are working but close to overwhelmed where the pavement hasn’t yet been replaced by permeable surfaces, and landslides are only happening in rich enclaves that resisted making changes. The permanent evacuation of Treasure Island finished a week ago. It’s been pouring for three hours.
“How are the marshes holding up?” The emergency environmental coordinator leans over the ham radio operator’s shoulder to read his call notes. The emergency response office is quietly busy around them.
“They’re flooded but still absorbing water, it looks like. I could use some coffee.”
“In a minute. Are we talking about all the marshes on the whole east side?”
“We’ve heard from Candlestick, Bayshore, Islas, uh, Dogpatch, Mission Bay —“
“And they’re all okay?” The coordinator goes to the wall map and pencils in those areas.
“Yeah,” the ham operator answers. “It sounds like the new shoreline is holding.”
“For now,” the coordinator says. “It won’t be enough when Antarctica goes.”
“It’s enough for now. It’s a start,” the ham operator answers. The radio squawks to life and the operator turns to answer it. “I really need that coffee,” he says before keying on.
Which path do you choose?
Disaster or survival, do nothing or make the big changes needed — which do you choose?
Dear Editor,
Because of earthquakes and fires, SF knows that if we don’t prepare now, we pay a bigger price when disasters ultimately hit. That’s why the city makes emergency plans and why first responders do disaster preparedness trainings. That’s why you have a go-bag sitting next to your front door. So why isn’t San Francisco preparing for the realities of climate change now? New reports say the Sierras will be snow-free in 25 years2, and that the Antarctic Ice Sheet has passed the tipping point.3 These are big disasters we can see coming our way. They will happen, and soon. Our job is to do the big preparations that will mitigate their harm, and do those preparations now. So why isn’t SF preparing for the future that is barreling down on us? This is not business per normal.
FOOTNOTES
1. Neighborhood Emergency Response Team — citizen volunteers who were vital after the 1989 earthquake (leading to the formation of NERT), who’ve been vital during the pandemic, and who form a large network of first responders. https://sf-fire.org/nert.
2. Erica Siirila-Woodburn, Alan Rhoades, Benjamin Hatchett, Laurie Huning, Julia Szinai, Christina Tague, Peter Nico, Daniel Feldman, Andrew Jones, William Collins, and Laurna Kaatz. “A low-to-no snow future and its impacts on water resources in the western United States”. Nature. November 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-021-00219-y.epdf?
3. Michael Weber, Nicholas Golledge, Chris Fogwill, Chris Turney, & Zoë Thomas. “Decadal-scale onset and termination of Antarctic ice-mass loss during the last deglaciation”. Nature Communications. 18 November 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27053-6.