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 48 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. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
We must not resurrect an economic and social system that is destroying life.
We must change everything. And the time to change is now.
This week’s topic is A GREEN NEW DEAL NOW.
What is a Green New Deal?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal has five goals with a 10-year timeline (as of 2019). The goals are:
- Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.
- Good, high-wage jobs that ensure prosperity and economic security for Americans.
- Investment in sustainable infrastructure and industry for the 21st century.
- Securing for all generations to come clean water and air, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment.
- Justice and equity for now and the future for all frontline and vulnerable communities.1
Jay Inslee’s plan is full of details on how to get to:
- 100% clean electricity by 2035,
- 100% clean new vehicles by 2030, and
- 100% clean new buildings by 2030.
The overview of the details are available here — https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/100clean — while the full plan is available here — https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/100clean/text/Inslee_100CleanPlan_2_1.pdf — or by contacting Inslee.2
The Green New Deal Group, in 2008, listed the following:
- Government-led investment in energy efficiency and energy microgeneration.
- Green jobs to rebuild a low-carbon infrastructure.
- Developing financial incentives for green investment and reduced energy usage.
- Changing the financial system to support green investment.
- Green banking (and the breaking up of megabanks).
- The re-regulation of the financial sector and the re-introduction of capital controls.
- An oil and gas company wind fall tax to pay for government spending on renewables and efficiency.
- And the prevention of corporate tax evasion.3
And there are more well-thought-out plans out there, all having in common: getting to zero carbon emissions by 2030, rebuilding our infrastructure so it doesn’t damage the planet or people, doing so by focusing on the needs of frontline and vulnerable communities, and paying for it all by getting back some of the wealth stolen from the most vulnerable, the frontline communities, other species, the commons, and the biosphere.
Right, but we don’t have to do this now, with everything else that is going on?
Actually, we do.
- The timelines of Covid-19, climate chaos, and mass extinction are overlapping. This is because one of the many nasty promises of climate chaos and mass extinction is an increase in the number and severity of pandemics, like the one we’re living through now.4, 5, 6, 7, 8 This may be the fastest, deepest economic shock in human history9, but it promises to be only the first of many that will attack this system we’ve created that’s attacking life.10
- This novel coronavirus likely jumped vectors because of the human behaviors that are causing our current mass extinction event. These behaviors include deforestation, industrial farming, mining, human overpopulation, habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, habitat impoverishment, overhunting/fishery destruction, and the introduction of non-native species.11
- Climate change isn’t getting any better. While air pollution has gone down substantially (NO2 and CO212, but probably also particulates, ozone, and other SOx and NOx) due to the Covid-19 economic crash, it’s both not enough and temporary. We haven’t done a fraction yet of what we need to do and we are also finding that our models about the environmental impacts of our pollution were far too optimistic.13
So what does SF need to do right now?
Take care of the low-hanging fruit immediately. That means fixing codes and regulations so we don’t, zombie-like, keep replicating planet-destroying activities; stop them before they can happen anymore. This means:
- ALL new construction must be zero-carbon producing, have blackwater recycling (either in the building/complex or shared with others, hopefully municipally), be fully energy-efficient, be all electric, be minimum 50% low and moderate income if a multi-unit building or complex, have native garden space equivalent to the footprint of the building/s (on top or on the sides of the building/s), be made using at least 50% recycled and re-sourced materials (including recycled concrete), be wildlife positive in design (so it does not contribute to bird kills and light pollution), have bioswales and sidewalk greenery, and have a high albedo.
- Close some roads to individual car traffic now, and make that closure permanent. Cars are dangerous at every stage down the line. Reducing the amount of SF available by auto will also serve to make Uber and Lyft less politically powerful in SF; limit their literal reach and they aren’t as “easy” or “useful”.
- Put people to work planting native trees and food gardens now. Summer is coming and we’re in drought conditions; we need the shade and the moisture trapping capacities of greenery right away, and this planting can be done while maintaining social distancing, will provide food, and most benefits communities of color and impoverished areas.
- Use this time to shift more of MUNI to electric.
And, as I keep reminding you, we need to already be starting on: massive native tree plantings, black water recycling for the entire county, all electric and clean energy transportation, getting rid of plastics, switching to all local carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy, and resilience and self-sufficiency. They all tie together, and make a huge difference in SF’s ability to weather this pandemic and everything else that we’re going to face from now on.
The world has changed. We can stick to failed policies and greed and keep destroying the planet or we can build a new world that might be strong enough to support us.
There are only 40 weeks left.14, 15 A lot bad can happen in a single week; prove that a lot good can, too.
FOOTNOTES
1. Jessica McDonald. The Facts on the ‘Green New Deal’. FactCheck.org. 15 February 2019. https://www.factcheck.org/2019/02/the-facts-on-the-green-new-deal/.
2. Jay Inslee. 100% Clean Energy for America. Jay Inslee For Governor. Accessed 24 March 2020. https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/100clean.
3. Larry Elliott, Colin Hines, Tony Juniper, Jeremy Leggett, Caroline Lucas, Richard Murphy, Ann Pettifor, Charles Secrett, and Andrew Simms. A Green New Deal. July 2008. new economics foundation. https://greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/a-green-new-deal.pdf.
4. Gregory Silverman. Just The Tip Of The Iceberg: Climate Change Is Going To Make Epidemics Like Coronavirus More Frequent And Intense. ValueWalk. 4 February 2020. https://www.valuewalk.com/2020/02/coronavirus-crisis-climate-change/.
5. Cyril Caminade, K. Marie McIntyre, and Anne E. Jones. “Impact of recent and future climate change on vector-borne diseases”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 18 August 2018. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6378404/.
6. Eileen Drage O’Reilly. “WHO warns of 13 emerging health threats including possible pandemics”. AXIOS. 20 January 2020. https://www.axios.com/who-emerging-health-challenges-pandemic-climate-change-inequalities-f83e0dd1-6d00-40c4-aaca-11523270648c.html.
7. Event 201: A Global Pandemic Exercise was conducted on 18 October 2019 in New York City, presupposing a novel coronavirus became global and gaming out what would be needed to cope. Information about the exercise can be accessed here from this page http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ but the participants are now predicting that our current epidemic will kill 65 million people.
8. Damian Carrington. “Coronavirus: ‘Nature is sending us a message’, says UN environment chief”. The Guardian. 25 March 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-nature-is-sending-us-a-message-says-un-environment-chief.
9. Nouriel Roubini. “Coronavirus pandemic has delivered the fastest, deepest economic shock in history”. The Guardian. 25 March 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-pandemic-has-delivered-the-fastest-deepest-economic-shock-in-history.
10. George Monbiot. “Covid-19 is nature’s wake-up call to complacent civilisation”. The Guardian. 25 March 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/covid-19-is-natures-wake-up-call-to-complacent-civilisation.
11. Kate Wong. The Current Mass Extinction. Scientific American. 30 October 2000. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-current-mass-extincti/.
12. Times Travel Editor. “Air pollution in Italy drops significantly after COVID 19 shutdown, satellite images released”. Times of India. 15 March 2020. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/destinations/air-pollution-in-italy-drops-significantly-after-covid-19-shutdown-satellite-images-released/as74634198.cms.
13. Ester Wells. “Climate change ‘getting worse faster than we are mobilizing to solve it’: Al Gore”. ABC News. 11 August 2019. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/climate-change-worse-faster-mobilizing-solve-al-gore/story?id=64862944.
14. Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting. United Nations. 28 March 2019. https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm. See the action timeline in the report.
15. Paula Murray. “We’ve 10 years to save the seas or life on earth will become impossible”. Express. 23 December 2018. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1062990/environment-plastic-pollution-Sir-David-Attenborough-seas-earth.