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.
This is the letter for week 34 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 to see topics for all the strike letters, see this story.
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
Our house is literally on fire and all we’re doing is sitting inside watching reruns?!
That’s why this week is about CO2 (part 1).
Why do we need to stop producing CO2 now?
- It controls or amplifies the effects of other GHGs.1
- We’ve never had this amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the history of our species.2
- The last time there was this much, the planet was up to 8°C warmer3 and sea levels were 20 meters higher.4
- Current levels of CO2 production put us on the path for over 5.5°C change by 2100.5
- It hasn’t been that hot on the planet since the later part of the Miocene when grasses spread across earth, replacing forests.6
- And the situation is just getting worse. Look at where our current policies are taking us in the graph below.
OK, clearly we need to stop producing CO2 and we need to do so immediately. How?
First we need to look at where we are producing it now.
Where do we produce CO2?
Included below is the graph on CA’s CO2 production by sector. A reminder on how the graph works: the inner ring is the larger sectors that CA’s CO2 production falls into while the outer ring is made up of the subdivisions of the inner ring sectors. The rings are color-coded. For example, all of TRANSPORTATION is blue. The components that make up TRANSPORTATION, such as Passenger Vehicles and Boats, etc. are all shades of blue. The inner ring adds up to 100%. The outer ring adds up to 100%.
The relevant sectors for SF, the places where we produce the most CO2, are TRANSPORTATION, ELECTRIC POWER, INDUSTRIAL, and RESIDENTIAL.
- In TRANSPORTATION, we have way too many passenger vehicles (Lyft, Uber) on the roads, we have extensive deliveries by heavy-duty trucks, and we have substantial contributions from boats and aviation as well.
- In ELECTRIC POWER, we do better than some other CA municipalities but we still burn coal, oil, or methane for large amounts of our electric power.7, 8
- In INDUSTRIAL, we have construction closely followed by internet-based companies pouring huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Construction produces enormous amounts of CO2 at every stage9, 10, and any internet business depends on massive server farms that spew more CO2 than cities and even whole industries.11, 12 Additionally, many internet companies rely on worldwide transportation networks to deliver their services, and these take us back into the already carbon-heavy transportation sector.
- In RESIDENTIAL, we probably do slightly better than most CA municipalities due to our population density, but we can readily improve on this number due, again, to our population density. Natural gas use and leaks, and wood fires for household heat contribute substantially in this sector.
What are the easy cutbacks?
These should be obvious by now, and it should be obvious that they are easy cutbacks because they don’t involve any structural changes, just altered emphases to currently existing structures:
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- Transportation – all electric, all multi-passenger, with massive investment in transit, biking, and walking. Seattle and Minneapolis have made huge progress while increasing jobs and equitable access.13, 14
- Energy production – all renewable, no nuclear (it has a hefty GHG contribution that is discounted in industry and industry-friendly publications, in addition to the multiple dangers of nuclear waste, earthquakes, terrorism, and tsunamis), with an emphasis on passive sources (such as ground source heat pumps, house and roof colors, planting trees, and biomimetic construction.15)
- Food – local permaculture with substantial reductions in beef and dairy are needed.
- Land use – land needs to absorb and store CO2, not emit it. This means massive native tree planting, and eliminating bad land uses, such as astroturfed fields, paved curbsides and yards, and any buildings not covered in greenery.
The harder cutbacks
The harder cutbacks involve changing the systems we live with now. Since these systems are killing us and destroying the ability of the planet to support life, it’s clear we absolutely must change them. The timelines we’re seeing make it clear they must be changed immediately. Possible ways to do so will be the topic for next week.
Which doesn’t mean you can wait until next week to act. On Monday, a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that the gap between our emissions targets and reality are “glaring and growing”.16 The IPCC Working Group III state in a paper due to be published in Environmental Research Letters that climate modeling has understated both the speed of warming and the potential for runaway scenarios, where we pass tipping points leading to positive feedback situations that we will not be able to stop. The risk of crossing tipping points grows substantially as warming increases from 2 to 3°C. Current projections, with everyone adhering to existing policies and pledges, has us headed for over 3°C. The time for change is now.
None of this is going to change until we do something to make it change – and only if we act quickly!
What’s the timeline for action?
It hasn’t changed, except we’re yet another week closer to too late. We are still increasing the amount of GHGs being dumped into the atmosphere every year. If we are going to hit zero emissions by 2030, we have to start acting immediately.
57 weeks left.
1. See the last two Strike for the Planet letters (#32 on methane and #33 on other GHGs) for mechanisms and specifics.
2. Meilan Solly. “Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Highest Point in Human History”. Smithsonian.com. 15 May 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/carbon-dioxide-levels-reach-highest-point-human-history-180972181/.
3. John Mason. “The last time carbon dioxide concentrations were around 400ppm: a snapshot from Arctic Siberia”. Skeptical Science. 14 May 2013. https://skepticalscience.com/pliocene-snapshot.html.
4. Damian Carrington. “Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole”. The Guardian. 3 April 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/03/south-pole-tree-fossils-indicate-impact-of-climate-change.
5. Dr. Vicky Pope. “The scientific evidence for early action on climate change”. MetOffice. 1 October 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101229170710/http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/policymakers/action/evidence.html.
6. John Peterson. “Climate of the Miocene Period”. Sciencing 25 July 2018. https://sciencing.com/climate-miocene-period-4139.html.
7. “Exploring clean energy”. PG&E. 2019. https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-pge/environment/what-we-are-doing/clean-energy-solutions/clean-energy-solutions.page.
8. “PG&E’s Power Mix”. PG&E. November 2017. https://www.pge.com/pge_global/local/assets/data/en-us/your-account/your-bill/understand-your-bill/bill-inserts/2017/november/power-content.pdf.
9. Madeleine Rubenstein. “Emissions from the Cement Industry”. Earth Institute / Columbia University. 9 May 2012. https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/05/09/emissions-from-the-cement-industry/.
10. IEA Statistics. “CO2 emissions from manufacturing industries and construction (% of total fuel combustion)”. The World Bank. 2014. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.CO2.MANF.ZS.
11. Fred Pearce. “Energy Hogs: Can World’s Huge Data Centers Be Made More Efficient?” YaleEnvironment360. 3 April 2018. https://e360.yale.edu/features/energy-hogs-can-huge-data-centers-be-made-more-efficient.
12. Duncan Clark and Mike Berners-Lee. “What’s the carbon footprint of…the internet?” The Guardian. 12 August 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/12/carbon-footprint-internet.
13. Aaron Short. “Five Lessons From Seattle’s Crusade Against Driving”. StreetsBlogUSA. 25 November 2019. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/11/25/five-lessons-from-seattles-crusade-against-driving/#new_tab.
14. Angie Schmitt. “How Two Cities Actually Reduced Driving”. StreetsBlogUSA. 8 February 2019. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/02/08/minneapolis-and-seattle-have-achieved-the-holy-grail-for-sustainable-transportation/.
15. Jill Fehrenbacher. “Biomimetic Architecture: Green Building in Zimbabwe Modeled After Termite Mounds”. Inhabitat. 29 November 2012. https://inhabitat.com/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/.
16. “UN Climate Change conference (COP25)”. World Meteorological Organization. 2019. https://public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate/cop25.