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. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference.
This is the letter for week 79 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
For months, there’ve been two countdowns at the end of these Strike letters.
This week’s topic: Have You Figured It Out Yet?
What are these two countdowns?
- The first countdown is the number of weeks left to start the big actions needed for our survival. What big actions?
-
- Moving to all-electric, local green power;
- building 100% local blackwater recycling;
- planting a native urban forest;
- eliminating cars from the streets of San Francisco;
- getting rid of plastic;
- recycling locally;
- making social and environmental justice the driving force of all city actions;
- reparations,
- etc….
You’ve got all the prior Strike letters so you’ve got lists, details, contacts, costs, examples, legislative language on all of these things, and more, at your fingertips. We’re going to call this big action clock the Weeks To Act Clock.
2. The second countdown is the number of days left to save the Earth. It is a countdown clock The Guardian has been running for the past 93 days. Let’s call it the Days To Date Clock.
What, exactly, are these clocks counting down to?
The Weeks To Act Clock, widely publicized in July 2019, tells how long we have to take the “decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon” that will get us down to 45% of current carbon emissions by 2030.1 That clock expires at the end of 2020. 2020 is almost done. In fact, there are only 10 weeks left, and the only substantial reductions we’ve made in our carbon output were caused by the pandemic, are considered to be insignificant2, and are rapidly being reversed by anti-environmental politics at every governmental level.3
The Days To Date Clock isn’t how many days until the U.S. election; it’s the day after. And why is that date important enough that the fate of the planet hinges on it? That’s the date when the U.S., under Trump, is set to exit from the Paris climate agreement. We’re only one nation, true, but we are enormous polluters and resource abusers4, 5, 6, 7, and clearly capable of encouraging other nations to do as we do by our example.8, 9 We make rape and pillage of the planet somehow okay, so much so that a top climate scientist has said that if Trump is reelected it will be game over for the climate.10 What’s the date when we leave the Paris climate agreement again? It’s November 4. It’s one week from today.
What does this mean?
Act now. The deadline is here, and it is a literal dead line — for all of us.
Act now or we’re done
We have 10 weeks left in which to start the necessary big actions if we’re going to survive.11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 In a little over a year, we have lost 10 years time in which to do something. The Guardian climate countdown gives us 7 days to save the earth.19 Do you get it yet?
FOOTNOTES
1. Matt McGrath. “Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months”. BBC News. 23 July 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736.
2. Associated Press. “Carbon emissions fall during pandemic, but reduction is ‘a drop in the ocean’”. The Washington Post. 19 May 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/carbon-emissions-fall-during-pandemic-but-reduction-is-a-drop-in-the-ocean/2020/05/19/559a0a28-8a4e-11ea-8ac1-bfb250876b7a_story.html.
3. Examples include: International — Amazon burning, China’s Belt and Road, Trump; National — Trump; California — oil and fracking well leases, dam height increases, Delta Tunnel; San Francisco — embracing plastics for the pandemic.
4. Emily Holden. “US produces far more waste and recycles far less of it than other developed countries”. The Guardian. 3 July 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/02/us-plastic-waste-recycling.
5. John W. Schoen. “Here’s how US carbon pollution stacks up with the rest of the world”. CNBC. 31 May 2017. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/how-us-carbon-pollution-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world.html. It’s an older article but the graphics are good and, unfortunately, any shifts have been toward more carbon from the US since then.
6. Justin Gillis and Nadja Popovich. “The U.S. Is the Biggest Carbon Polluter in History. It Just Walked Away From the Paris Climate Deal.” The New York Times. 1 June 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-biggest-carbon-polluter-in-history-will-it-walk-away-from-the-paris-climate-deal.html?mtrref=duckduckgo.com&gwh=A549F91B89126C246A15F7120ED7767A&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWALL.
7. Sarah Gibbens. “15 ways the Trump administration has changed environmental policies”. National Geographic. 1 February 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/15-ways-trump-administration-impacted-environment/.
8. Christopher Brauchli. “The Environment, the Trump and Bolsonaro”. Common Dreams. 27 June 2020. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/27/environment-trump-and-bolsonaro.
9. Dave Keating. “Trump’s lasting damage to the environment”. Deutsche Welle. 21 June 2018. https://www.dw.com/en/trumps-lasting-damage-to-the-environment/a-44315788.
10. Mark Hertsgaard. “A second Trump term would be ‘game over’ for the climate, says top scientist”. The Guardian. 2 October 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/02/donald-trump-climate-change-michael-mann-interview.
11. Matt McGrath. “Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months”. BBC News. 24 July 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736.
12. Heather Smith. “Climate Change: Even Worse Than We Thought”. Sierra. 8 October 2018. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-change-even-worse-we-thought-ipcc-report.
13. Michael Grose and Julie Arblaster. “Just how hot will it get this century? It’s worse than we thought”. Phys Org. 18 May 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-hot-century-worse-thought.html.
14. Amelia Urry. “The scientist who first warned of climate change says it’s much worse than we thought”. Grist. 22 March 2016. https://grist.org/science/the-scientist-who-first-warned-of-climate-change-says-its-much-worse-than-we-thought/.
15. Rafi Letzter. “Today’s Climate Change Is Worse Than Anything Earth Has Experienced in the Past 2,000 Years”. Live Science. 25 July 2019. https://www.livescience.com/66027-climate-change-different.html.
16. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
17. Peter Castagno. “Biodiversity Loss Worst in Human History — 1 Million Animal Species Risk Extinction”. Citizen Truth. 6 May 2019. https://citizentruth.org/biodiversity-loss-worst-in-human-history-1-million-animal-species-risk-extinction/.
18. Kristen Callihan. “Earth’s Currently Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Is Worse Than We Thought”. OutwardOn. 7 August 2017. https://www.outwardon.com/article/earths-currently-ongoing-sixth-mass-extinction-event-is-worse-than-we-thought/.
19. “Climate countdown”. The Guardian. Accessed most recently 7 October 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/climate-countdown.