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 82 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
If we don’t take care of water and energy, nothing else matters
and we did energy last week
This week’s topic then is Water, Water, Water.
SF needs water in order to survive
Humans cannot live or operate very long without water.1 In the chaos to come2, 3, 4 (and don’t fool yourself — climate chaos is coming5, 6, 7) whatever is not locally produced and controlled won’t be available.8 We covered this in terms of energy for SF last week. Now we need to talk about water.
Why talk about water now?
California is in the first years of a megadrought.9, 10 Past megadroughts in the North American west have lasted from multiple decades to over a century.11 And the current megadrought, the one we’re just entering, is being amplified by climate change.12 Modern work reexamining the rapid fall of civilizations has shown that climate change is usually the cause13, 14, 15, and megadroughts are the most common climate condition to destroy civilizations.16, 17, 18, 19, 20 The implications are obvious: If we don’t take care of our water now, SF will die from a lack of water in the very near future.
But we’re fine on water, you say. We’ve got Hetch Hetchy, you say.
But do we? Really?
- Hetch Hetchy is fed by the Sierra snowpack. We know the Sierra snowpack is greatly reduced during droughts.21 And, yet again, we’re at the start of a megadrought right now.22
- With the Hetch Hetchy and in CA in general, we depend on substantial amounts of water being stored in snow and ice.23 Even if we get an equivalent amount of precipitation as rain, we don’t have the above-ground storage capacity for that much liquid water.24
- Hetch Hetchy is 167 miles away across a series of faults and rapidly sinking25 land. Pipelines break all the time26, 27, and even though Hetch Hetchy pipelines are gravity controlled, they are old and difficult to maintain over that much distance.
- Hetch Hetchy is 167 miles away. You know about bunkering of the oil pipelines28 in Nigeria? Only one of their pipelines is anywhere close to the length of the distance from Hetch Hetchy to SF.29 Even if somehow Hetch Hetchy continues to collect enough water to pump across CA by pipeline and aquaduct, do you really think that when the need is great the pipeline isn’t going to be breached and the aquaduct emptied long before SF?
- Would need be great enough to take this water en route? In CA we have pumped the aquifers so much that many of them have collapsed and are permanently incapable of recharging.30, 31 That means CA’s underground water storage capacity is historically low and dropping all the time. Yes, the water will be taken.
All of which means we cannot depend on Hetch Hetchy if SF is going to survive.
So what can we in SF do about it?
We need to develop our local water resources. That does not mean draining our small local aquifer; repeating ruinous mistakes made by other municipalities is bad governance.32 It means acting responsibly in response to current and coming conditions.
How?
- Blackwater recycling. This is a set of old, cheap, regenerative technologies being done at multiple scales across the world. There are resources everywhere to assist on this, including in SF (the Exploratorium, Salesforce). This is not rocket science.33
- Low to free energy desalination and purification technologies. These are cutting edge, but ridiculously cheap and easy to produce. Want to invest in a growth market for the future while securing SF’s ability to tap new water resources cheaply? This is the way to go.34, 35
- Conservation. SF is good. We could be a lot better.36
- And investment in our local groundwater and aquifer. Who is enforcing the percent permeable surface rules for property in SF, cause it sure looks like no one is? Bioswales are good, but construction on them seems to have stopped. Rec and Parks (called Wreck the Parks in local environmental circles for good reasons) continues to promote plastic over natural surfaces. Where are the local native forest and biohighways needed for biodiversity support, water conservation, heat reduction, environmental equity, and air quality improvement?
Okay, but why do all that now? There’s no emergency in SF … yet.
As Dr. Jason Ur of Harvard University says:
When we excavate the remains of past civilizations, we rarely find any evidence that they made any attempts to adapt in the face of a changing climate. I view this inflexibility as the real reason for collapse.37
So act now!
There are, at most, 7 weeks left in which to start the necessary big actions if we’re going to survive.38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 In a little over a year, we have lost 10 years time in which to act. The U.S. has now been out of the Paris Agreement for 14 days, and every day out is making our situation worse. The need to act is obvious, our ability to survive is at stake, and the past “norms” are long gone (and were killing us anyway). ACT NOW!
FOOTNOTES
1. Natalie Silver. “How Long Can You Live Without Water?” Healthline. 29 March 2019. https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/how-long-can-you-live-without-water.
2. Matt Egan. “US report warns climate change could create economic chaos”. CNN. 9 September 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/business/climate-change-economy-cftc-report/index.html.
3. McGill University. “Melting ice sheets may cause ‘climate chaos’ according to new modelling”. Science Daily. 6 February 2019. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190206131921.htm.
4. Brandon Specktor. “Human Civilization Will Crumble by 2051 If We Don’t Stop Climate Change Now, New Paper Claims”. Live Science. 4 June 2019. https://www.livescience.com/65633-climate-change-dooms-humans-by-2050.html.
5. Bill McKibben. “On Climate Change, We’re Entirely Out Of Margin”. The New Yorker. 28 October 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/on-climate-change-were-entirely-out-of-margin.
6. Damian Carrington. “Extreme sea level events ‘will hit once a year by 2050’”. The Guardian. 25 September 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/25/extreme-sea-level-events-will-hit-once-a-year-by-2050.
7. Jeff Beradelli. “Climate chaos: Extreme heat, wildfires and record-setting storms suggest a frightening future is already here”. CBS News. 24 August 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-heat-wave-wildfires-hurricanes-derecho/.
8. Kristen Steele. “Disaster Localization: A Constructive Response to Climate Chaos”. Resilience. 29 October 2019. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-29/disaster-localization-a-constructive-response-to-climate-chaos/.
9. Dale Kasler. “California and West suffering worst ‘megadrought’ in centuries, study of tree rings shows”. The Sacramento Bee. 16 April 2020. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article242063336.html.
10. Samuel Gilbert. “US south-west in grip of historic ‘megadrought’, research finds”. The Guardian. 29 May 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/29/megadrought-us-south-west-fires-water-research.
11. Richard Seager. “Persistent drought in North America: a climate modeling and paleoclimate perspective”. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory/The Earth Institute at Columbia University. 2011. http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/.
12. Jeff Berardelli. “Megadrought emerging in western U.S. could be the worst in 1,200 years, study finds”. CBS News. 17 April 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-drought-california-western-united-states-study/.
13. Emily Sohn. “Climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations”. NASA. 20 January 2014. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/1010/climate-change-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilizations/.
14. Rochester Institute of Technology. “New mathematical method shows how climate change led to fall of ancient civilization”. Phys Org. 3 September 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mathematical-method-climate-fall-ancient.html.
15. Sean Fleming. “Climate change helped destroy these four ancient civilisations”. World Economic Forum. 29 March 2019. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/our-turn-next-a-brief-history-of-civilizations-that-fell-because-of-climate-change/.
16. Jeff Masters. “Ten Civilizations or Nations That Collapsed From Drought”. Weather Underground. 21 March 2016. https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/ten-civilizations-or-nations-that-collapsed-from-drought.html.
17. Tia Ghose. “300-Year Drought Was Downfall of Ancient Greece”. Live Science. 14 August 2013. https://www.livescience.com/38893-drought-caused-ancient-mediterranean-collapse.html.
18. Fiona Zublin. “The Drought That Led To The Death Of A Whole Civilization”. OZY. 4 March 2017. https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-drought-that-led-to-the-death-of-a-whole-civilization/74696/.
19. Josh Gabbatiss. “Ancient Maya civilisation was destroyed by massive drought, scientists find”. Independent. 3 August 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/mayan-temples-civilisation-drought-climate-change-mexico-university-cambridge-a8475121.html.
20. Biplab Das. “Drought destroyed ancient civilizations”. Nature Middle East. 29 September 2014. https://www.natureasia.com/en/nmiddleeast/article/10.1038/nmiddleeast.2014.243.
21. Peter Fimrite. “California drought: Meager snowpack sets record”. SF Gate. 30 January 2014. https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/california-drought-meager-snowpack-sets-record-5190495.php.
22. The Associated Press. “Is the West’s dry spell really a megadrought?” The Sacramento Bee. 29 December 2013. https://www.sacbee.com/news/article2587743.html.
23. Alejandra Borunda. “‘Snow droughts’ are coming for the American West”. National Geographic. 14 August 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/snow-droughts-coming-to-winters-western-us-california-water/.
24. Dan Charles. “As Rains Soak California, Farmers Test Hot To Store Water Underground”. NPR. 12 January 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/01/12/509179190/as-rains-soak-california-farmers-test-how-to-store-water-underground.
25. Andrew Sheller. “The Central Valley is sinking as farmers drill for water. But it can be saved, study says”. The Sacramento Bee. 15 April 2019. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/big-valley/article229148999.html.
26. Laura Haefeli. “Water Main Break Flood Roadway, Spills Onto Highway 99 In South Sacramento”. CBS Sacramento. 20 July 2020. https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2020/07/20/water-main-break-flooding-hwy-99-south-sacramento-closed/.
27. David Schaper. “As Infrastructure Crumbles, Trillions Of Gallons Of Water Lost”. NPR. 29 October 2014. https://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359875321/as-infrastructure-crumbles-trillions-of-gallons-of-water-lost.
28. Emily Mangan. “A Primer on Nigeria’s Oil Bunkering”. Council on Foreign Relations. 4 August 2015. https://www.cfr.org/blog/primer-nigerias-oil-bunkering.
29. “Nigeria Pipelines map - Crude Oil (petroleum) pipelines - Natural Gas pipelines - Products pipeline”. Countries of the World. 2017. https://theodora.com/pipelines/nigeria_oil_gas_and_products_pipelines_map.html.
30. “Overpumping Reduces California’s Groundwater Storage”. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 12 April 2017. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6810.
31. Nathan Halverson. “9 sobering facts bout California’s groundwater problem”. Reveal. 25 June 2015. https://www.revealnews.org/article/9-sobering-facts-about-californias-groundwater-problem/.
32. Alejandra Borunda. “We pump too much water out of the ground—and that's killing our rivers”. National Geographic. 2 October 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/groundwater-pumping-killing-rivers-streams/.
33. See Strike letters weeks 1, 20, 22, 23, 28, 42, 46, 52, and 77.
34. Shane McGlaun. “Researchers find solar-based water purification is more effective than boiling”. Slash Gear. 14 July 2020. https://www.slashgear.com/researchers-find-solar-based-water-purification-is-more-effective-than-boiling-14628889/.
35. U.S. Army Research Laboratory. “New solar material could clean drinking water”. EurekAlert/AAAS. 13 July 2020. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uarl-nsm071320.php.
36. Camden Avery. “Is San Francisco Part Of California’s Water Crisis?” Hoodline. 3 May 2015. https://hoodline.com/2015/05/paying-for-california-s-water-crisis/.
37. Emily Sohn. “Climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations”. NASA. 20 January 2014. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/1010/climate-change-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilizations/.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. 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.
41. 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/.
42. 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.
43. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
44. 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/.
45. 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/.
Lake Oroville
