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 17 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 all the strike letters, see this story.
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
because it’s all about the data.
Argue that human groups can’t move quickly to make big changes, but arguments won’t stop physics quickly making this planet uninhabitable.
If you’re not panicked, you’re not paying attention. Pay attention.
This week’s topic is NUMBERS because data is useful.
DEADLINES
- IPCC – The fight is to limit heating to 1.5°C and we only have 10 years in which to do that; higher means catastrophe.
- IPBES – Over 1 million species face human-caused extinction now.
- pH – From 8.179 (pre-industrial) to 8.069 is a 29% increase in hydronium ions in seawater, and has already started affecting shell production off the CA coast.
- CO2 – In March 2019, it was 414.7 ppm, and the rate of increase is accelerating (above 2 ppm/yr).
- Water – 21 of 37 of the world’s major aquifers are being rapidly depleted due to overdrafting and drought.
- Cryosphere – Glaciers currently lose ~500 billion tons of ice per year. The arctic sea ice melt period increased 5 days per decade from 1979 to 2013.
- Sea Level – Flooding has increased 233% in the last 20 years, and the rate of sea level rise is accelerating.
- Info gathering systems – 35% of EPA and 47% of NPS employees were told to omit “climate change” from their work, there’s been massive workforce reductions in the 16 federal agencies tasked with doing science, and long-term studies are being terminated and data collection abandoned.
LOCAL ISSUES
- The California Current – Dissolved oxygen has decreased by 40% over 16 years, average surface temperature has increased 3°F since 1950, nearshore waters are more acidic, the waters are stratifying, and there’s been an increase in the number of dead zones.
- Fires – CA wildfires burn 500% more land than in 1970s, they are costlier and more dangerous, and the fire season is now all year. 80% of CA is forest and rangeland.
- Food – 82% of CA’s 121 native fish species are likely to be driven to extinction. CA climate forecast is for more frequent, severe, and longer lasting droughts.
- Water – 80% of CA’s water comes from the Sierra snowpack. This snowpack will be 64% smaller by 2100. More precipitation is rain, and spring thaw is happening earlier.
- Refugees and Climate Gentrification – 10 years of a shifted climate has turned Central American and Mexican farmers into climate refugees. Meanwhile, the rich can afford to move to more habitable areas: Flagstaff, AZ with cooler housing at 6000 feet has seen a population increase of 192% over 48 years.
- Disease – Increased asthma and allergies, heat stroke, longer pollen seasons, increases in ozone and particulate matter, wider spread of Valley Fever, wider spread of the West Nile virus, an increase in foodborne and algae diseases: all these and more are already occurring.
- Sea Level Rise – 85% of CA’s residents live and work on the coast.
PRIOR TIMELINES, from good to awful
- WWII – It took 6 months to shift the American economy to a war economy.
- New Deal – FDR pushed through much of the New Deal in his first 100 days in office.
- Gay marriage – Mayor Newsom issued licenses to same sex couples in 2004. The Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage nationally in 2017.
- ‘89 earthquake response – The Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed part of the Bay Bridge in 1989. The rebuilding/replacing was finished in 2018.
So we can do what needs to be done to prevent the worst outcomes from happening. We know our deadlines, we know the problems as they appear locally, and we know how we’ve responded to deadlines in prior important situations. This is the biggest crisis our species has ever faced. We need to just get the work done.
WAYS TO GET IT DONE
- Use the declaration of climate emergency. This is a real emergency. Act like it.
- Rope everyone into taking action, not just the poorest, not just the disenfranchised.
- Act for the future, not for profit. We’re moving from a figurative “you can’t take it with you” to a literal one. If there’s nowhere to go, profits mean nothing.
- And get the indigenous community involved and in places of authority asap. They lived on the land without destroying it for hundreds of thousands of years; they might be the only way our species can figure out how to save us from ourselves.