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This is the letter for week 145 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
“…what’s good for the New York Stock Exchange might not be good for the United States.” former Fed Chair William McChesney Martin
This week’s topic: Let’s Do The Numbers!
Stock markets are oscillating all over the place
That’s what stock markets do. Or, as Jesse Lauriston Livermore said, “The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most of the people, most of the time.” Market movement may feel important or be mesmerizing, but it is as meaningful as Keno numbers popping up on the screens in an all-you-can-eat buffet in Reno.
So what numbers are important then?
Unemployment? Inflation? GDP? Interest rates? Nah, let’s look at some real numbers.
- amount warming since pre-industrial era: 2°F
- temperature above pre-industrial era at which all coral reefs will suffer severe bleaching: 2.7°F
- estimated percent of marine life dependent on coral reefs: 25
- other species in danger of extinction: ¼ of mammals, 1-in-6 bird species, 40% of amphibians
- percent Amazon rainforest lost in the last century: 20
- year when the Amazon rainforest changed from net carbon absorber to net carbon emitter: 2010
- amount of carbon being released by melting permafrost: 330 million to 660 million tons annually
- amount carbon being released from U.S. gas appliances: equal to 500,000 cars / year
- percent carbon emissions absorbed by the ocean: 30-40
- change from 1998 to 2008 in efficiency of ocean carbon absorption due to heating: 10 times less
- year when extreme heating in the ocean passed the point of no return: 2014
- percent of water-resistant products containing toxic PFAS: 75
- percent of Americans with PFAS in their blood: ~100
- connection between wildfires and PFAS: in firefighting foams
- how long it takes PFAS to breakdown: forever
- how many years to probable loss of Sierra snowpack: 25
- percent giant sequoia killed by 2021 fires: 14
- likely percent increase in Sierra Nevada area burned by 2040: 92
- year when CO2 level on Mauna Kea will top 420 ppm: 2022
- increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1958: 25%
- increase in global economic climate-driven losses from 1970s to 2010s: $334 million per day
- length of summer by 2100: 6 months
- percent land in extreme heat zones by 2070: 20
- number of people displaced by climate change impacts in 2020: 40.5 million
- percent land-based ecosystems at high risk of major transformation due to climate change: 100
- percent San Francisco land to be impacted by sea level rise already baked in: 24
- number of mega-housing projects being planned for these at-risk areas in SF: at least 8
And there’s more. There’s so much more.
Wall Street numbers mean nothing against these other numbers
Wall Street has never been strong on responsibility or reality. Wall Street was a slave market. Wall Street rewards ecosystem rape. Wall Street is the shiny rollercoaster that keeps us from focusing on what’s actually going on.
Follow the real numbers
We’re living on the very end of a bubble that’s about to burst. It’s not a housing or student loan or dot com or equity or tulips or gold cryptocurrency bubble; it’s the entire environment as a bubble. The environment has been hollowed out and exploited and blown up and it’s popping right now. It’s popping. So ACT!
Dear Editor
Why do news outlets fetishize stock indices? Every hour on the hour during the trading day, the Dow Jones and S&P numbers are reported as if they indicate something, as if there’s some information to be gleaned from them, like reading entrails of an animal sacrifice. Meanwhile, the numbers that directly impact our lives — numbers like the atmospheric CO2 level increases, the increase in the length of summer, the vanishing of the snowpack, the increase in ocean temperatures, the percent of SF land in sea level rise zones, and the number of housing projects being built in these zones — these numbers are ignored. Numbers that are life and death to us are ignored in favor of stock market gamification. Wall Street titillates but Mauna Loa tells us to act in order to survive. Climate change isn’t a game.