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 69 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
“I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it!”
Judge Doom, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
This week’s topic: The Streets of San Francisco.
SF’s streets don’t belong to cars.
- Streets existed long before cars did.
- There were no cars when San Francisco was built.1
- Cars kill. They kill us by hitting us2 and by poisoning us3, and they kill everything living around us.4
- More cars mean more killed5 and more environmental destruction.6
SF’s streets aren’t made for cars.
From impossible grades7 to no parking8, from narrow streets to lots of other road users9, it’s clear that cars don’t belong on SF’s streets. In fact, once upon a time a few decades ago, one of the local newspapers set up a crosstown mobility race to see who could reach a destination first: a bicyclist, a transit rider, or a driver. The driver got to the location first but couldn’t find parking. As the driver started circling, the transit rider and the cyclist arrived and went indoors, finishing the race first. It took another 20 minutes for the driver to find a parking space and arrive indoors in last place.
Cars are awful for cities.
- Cars make crime worse: road chases kill more people than bike or foot chases, cars make smash and grab operations easy10, cars make abductions easy11, 12, 13, cars are terrific blunt force weapons14, 15, 16, 17, and are readily available mass-casualty armament for hate crimes and domestic terrorism.18
- Cars increase environmental injustice.19, 20
- Cars are used to enforce racial injustices, segregation, and redlining.21
- Cars destroy neighborhoods and increase social isolation.22, 23
- Cars take up valuable space.24
SF’s streets belong to the people.
When we’re not being threatened with imminent death by inattentiveness, impairment, dooring, road rage, or terrorism from cars, people find creative and wonderful ways to fill and use our streets, both temporary and permanent, such as:
- Street fairs and block parties
- Art
- Farmers markets
- Games
- Flea markets
- Community Meetings
- Races and sports
- Farming and Urban Forestry
- Theatre and movies
- Stargazing
- Outdoor dining
- Housing
And so much more!25, 26, 27
Fix this now!
You have a plan, remember? Do it. Beef up transit again28 (see graphs in this link29 if more transit makes you nervous because there’s so much less Covid-19 danger from transit than the dangers of toxic pollution, climate chaos, and death by a car.) Squeeze out private vehicular traffic on the majority of SF’s roads to save lives and substantially reduce environmental injustice.
That’s why it’s time to make this happen fast!
And a gentle reminder about why I’ve been doing this strike for over a year:
There are, at most, 20 weeks left in which to start the big changes that may allow us to survive.30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 In a little over a year, we have lost 10 years time in which to act. We recently crossed two major tipping points and are now locked into catastrophic change38; we have to be changing our behaviors to deal with that now. There is NO time left to delay. We’re past the point of no return and must now focus on surviving.
FOOTNOTES
1. “The birth of the automobile”. Daimler. Accessed 18 August 2020 from Web Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20151121032810/http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-1322446-1-1323352-1-0-0-1322455-0-0-135-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html.
2. Hunter Oatman-Stanford. “Murder Machines: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year”. Collectors Weekly. 10 March 2014. https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/.
3. George Monbiot. “Cars are killing us. Within 10 years, we must phase them out”. Guardian. 7 March 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/cars-killing-us-driving-environment-phase-out.
4. Solon Kelleher. “More Animals Are Killed By Cars Each Day Than We Ever Could Have Imagined”. The Dodo. 7 October 2015. https://www.thedodo.com/road-kill-every-day-1392772624.html.
5. Tim Ryan. “Pedestrian Deaths Rise In San Francisco In 2019”. KCBS Radio. 19 December 2019. https://kcbsradio.radio.com/articles/pedestrian-deaths-rise-in-san-francisco-in-2019.
6. National Geographic Staff. “The environmental impacts of cars, explained”. National Geographic. 4 September 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/green-guide/buying-guides/car/environmental-impact/.
7. Julian Garr. “Here Are The 10 Steepest Streets In San Francisco — They’ll Make You Sweat”. Only In Your State. 6 January 2017. https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/northern-california/san-francisco/steepest-streets-san-francisco/.
8. Pacific Tradewinds. “Parking in San Francisco: How to Find a Spot and Not Get Towed”. San Francisco Hostels Club. 17 September 2018. https://san-francisco-hostel.com/best-things/parking-in-san-francisco-how-to-find-a-spot-and-not-get-towed.
9. Lisa Fernandez. “Clogged streets: 45,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in San Francisco grab lawmakers’ attention”. KTVU. 19 June 2017. https://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and-lyft-drivers-in-san-francisco-grab-lawmakers-attention.
10. C.W. Nevius. “Rash of auto burglaries hits Twin Peaks”. SFGate. 9 October 2014. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Rash-of-auto-burglaries-hits-Twin-Peaks-5799769.php.
11. Morgan Adderley. “Police Release Photo Of ‘Car Used In Abductions’”. The Tribune. 15 March 2019. http://www.tribune242.com/news/2019/mar/15/police-release-photo-car-used-abductions/.
12. Deborah Hastings. “Kidnappers sexually abused 2 N.Y. Amish girls, planned more abductions: police”. Daily News. 17 August 2014. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/alleged-kidnappers-amish-kids-wanted-abductions-article-1.1905753.
13. “North London abductions and rapes: Image of car and description of attacker released”. Sky News. 28 April 2019. https://news.sky.com/story/north-london-abductions-and-rapes-image-of-car-and-description-of-attacker-released-11705255.
14. Hamed Aleaziz. “Road-rage incident in SF results in man being hit by car”. SFGate. 21 March 2016. https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Road-rage-incident-in-SF-results-in-man-being-hit-6926587.php.
15. Fiona Kelliher. “Police: ‘Prank’ leads to road rage, attack on teen pedestrians in Burlingame”. The Mercury News. 2 March 2020. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/02/18-year-old-arrested-for-deliberately-ramming-suv-into-4-teens-police-say/.
16. Bay City News Service. “3 stabbed, 1 hit by car in Walnut Creek road rage incident”. SFGate. 4 May 2019. https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Four-Hurt-Three-Arrested-Following-Road-Rage-13819915.php.
17. Courtney Teague. “Road Rage: SMC Man Swipes Parking Spot, Hits Woman, Cops Say”. Patch. 13 December 2019. https://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside/road-rage-peninsula-man-swipes-womans-parking-spot-hits-her.
18. Charlottesville, Pacific Grove, Torrance, Barcelona, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Nice, Ohio State University, Dijon, Nantes, and many more.
19. Maya Golden-Krasner. “Years Of Caltrans Bulldozing Freeways Through Communities Of Color Is Over”. Communities For A Better Environment. 5 May 2014. http://www.cbecal.org/years-of-caltrans-bulldozing-freeways-through-communities-of-color-is-over/.
20. Megan Wier, Charlie Sciammas, Edmund Seto, Rajiv Bhatia, and Tom Rivard. “Health, Traffic, and Environmental Justice: Collaborative Research and Community Action in San Francisco, California”. American Journal of Public Health. November 2009. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2774185/.
21. Matthew Fleischer. “Opinion: Want to tear down insidious monuments to racism and segregation? Bulldoze L.A. freeways”. Los Angeles Times. 24 June 2020. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-24/bulldoze-la-freeways-racism-monument.
22. Marisa Johnson. “Undoing Oakland’s History of Environmental Racism As We Address Climate Change in California”. Greenlining. 12 May 2017. https://greenlining.org/blog-category/2017/undoing-oaklands-history-environmental-racism/.
23. J. Crawford. “Cities & Cars”. Carfree. Accessed 19 August 2020. http://www.carfree.com/car_crisis.html.
24. Brad Plumer. “Cars take up way too much space in cities. New technology could change that.” Vox. Accessed 19 August 2020. https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/cars-cities-technologies. Ironically enough, the article talks a lot about SF’s plans.
25. Len Williams. “What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?” BBC. 16 October 2019. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191011-what-happens-when-a-city-bans-car-from-its-streets.
26. Garage Staff. “A second act for the parking garage”. The Garage. 3 May 2018. https://garage.hp.com/us/en/modern-life/parking-garages-repurposed-apartments-offices.html.
27. Eben Diskin. “7 of the coolest pedestrian streets around the world”. Matador Network. 15 June 2020. https://matadornetwork.com/read/coolest-pedestrian-streets-around-world/.
28. Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow. “Fear of Public Transit Got Ahead of the Evidence”. The Atlantic. 14 June 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/fear-transit-bad-cities/612979/.
29. Maya Wei-Haas and Kennedy Elliott. “Measure the risk of airborne COVID-19 in your office, classroom, or bus ride”. National Geographic. 11 August 2020. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/how-to-measure-risk-airborne-coronavirus-your-office-classroom-bus-ride-cvd/.
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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/.
34. 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.
35. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
36. 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/.
37. 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/.
38. Pakalolo. “Greenland ice cap melt has reached the point of no return”. Daily Dos. 14 August 2020. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/8/14/1969098/-Greenland-ice-cap-melt-has-reached-the-point-of-no-return.