STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
because right now we are only seconds from midnight.
It won’t be cheap, easy, politically feasible, pro-capitalist, or any of the rest of the ridiculous stupidity we’ve let blind us so long to the science and the screaming of the biosphere as it dies.
If you’re not panicked, you haven’t been paying attention. Pay attention.
This week’s topic is THE PLANET.
As of 4/22/19, the CO2 level at Mauna Loa is 414.14 ppm.
The last time it was this high was 3 million years ago, before our genus, Homo, existed.
The current extinction rate is 100-1000x the normal background extinction rate.
The last time the extinction rate was this high was 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
We are on the cusp of multiple planetary tipping points:
melting of ice sheets, mass methane releases from thawing permafrost, ocean
acidification, thermohaline disruption, Amazonian deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil
erosion, and element cycle disruptions (for carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus).
This means:
- This planet is not the earth you grew up on – that earth is gone, never to return; it is dead.
- Our species has no lived experience of current or future conditions on this new planet.
- Conditions will worsen rapidly in a very short time, probably within 3-5 years.
- None of the old rules apply; this is a new biosphere with new rules we need to discern and live by in order to survive.
So:
SF needs to define the biggest immediate, 2 yr, 5 yr, 10 yr, 20 yr, and 50 yr threats to its
continued existence, for a start.
SF needs to develop plans, make modifications, acquire stockpiles, form partnerships, and initiate strategies to respond to, and where possible, reduce these threats.
SF needs to be doing all this, at a frantic pace, NOW! There is no more time to equivocate or postpone.
It’s foolish to think you can first land on the moon and then worry about how you’re going to breathe. Yet this is exactly what we are currently doing. We act now, and our new earth is poor and awful. We wait, and our new earth is probably uninhabitable.
The SF Climate Emergency declaration must be much more than a just political declaration. It must be a call to immediate arms.