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 91 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 of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
Why aren’t you acting?
Anyone paying attention knew the White Right was going for a coup, yet some national politicians swear they are shocked and surprised at the events of January 6th, and are now making noises about enacting minimal, cosmetic changes to “fix” the problem while calling for unity around keeping the status quo.
Sound familiar?
This week’s topic: Get On The Job Or Get Out Of The Way.
What’ s the problem here?
As everyone who has been looking and listening knows, you can’t fight White Nationalism by humoring the White Nationalists.1 Big problems don’t go away by ignoring them or through cosmetic token actions. In other words, you can’t fight climate chaos by pretending it isn’t happening or by too-small acts of climate “appeasement”.2 We are at the “act big or die” stage here and so far you’re not acting anywhere close to big enough to have any impact at all.
So why aren’t you acting like it counts?
The most likely reasons are:
- You’re scared. You scared of the people who don’t want you to act3, or of admitting climate chaos is real (so you don’t act cause not acting will magically make it not real)4, or that acting will cost you funding5 or party position6 or your office7, or that acting will make you sad8 and won’t accomplish anything.9, 10
- You can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re so focused on the small things that are on your screens that you can’t see what’s actually in front of you.11, 12, 13
- You don’t understand the scale. This is bigger than homelessness14, is causing homelessness15, and will cause a LOT more homelessness.16 This is bigger than the economy crashing17, is causing the economy to crash18, and will cause a total and complete economic collapse on our current course.19 Climate chaos and the extinction event dwarf everything else; everything else is a subset of them.
- You don’t understand the sequence. There’s no time to attend to other, easier stuff and get to this later; there will be no later unless this is attended to now.20
- You don’t understand the scope. Cosmetic changes have impact but not enough to make a difference. A 3.0 doesn’t lessen the chances of a 6.5 earthquake21; just because an action taken feels like a legislative or political earthquake doesn’t mean it’s big enough to lessen the built up strain that is bringing disaster. You are LONG past the time when small actions alone could make any difference.22, 23, 24
- You don’t really believe it is happening. Deep down you know the world will continue in the way that it “always has.” So while climate change sounds scary intellectually, emotionally you’re unmoved and so don’t take it seriously.25, 26, 27
- You don’t care as long as you get what you want. You are on the side of the planet killers as long as it makes you rich/ comfortable/ respected/ powerful/ whatever for now.28
Because you know action is needed, right?
You have 90 weeks of Strike letters that prove it, but here’s some news from the last 7 days should you still need convincing.
- CA now has year-round massive wildfires.29
- Western U.S. air quality is now as bad as or worse than it was before we started tackling air pollution.30
- Last year was the hottest year in human records. Every year will be hotter for the rest of this century.31
- Current plans for pandemic recovery make the 1.5°C goal impossible.32
- Heatwaves and attendant deaths have gone up orders of magnitude in the last 50 years.33
- Plankton off the coast have too thin shells or can’t form shells at all due to ocean acidification. They are the base of the ocean food chain.34
- The Monarch butterfly population is dropping toward extinction.35
And there's more. Clearly the time to act is right now, and the actions must be big.
What actions are needed on what timelines?
In order for the city to survive, we need to be resilient and diverse enough to deal with whatever comes at us. We can’t do either of those things without immediately taking care of energy and water, closely followed by ensuring we have food and land, and dealing with heat, pollution, refugees, and burning.
ENERGY: We need 100% local, 100% green and renewable all-electric energy now. We need a community owned and operated grid, and PG&E needs to be gone; they owe us, we do not owe them.36, 37, 38, 39 Many many communities in the US have locally owned energy. Many communities in CA have locally owned energy. San Francisco cannot put this off anymore.
WATER: We need blackwater recycling. We are in the opening years of a megadrought and cannot afford to wait for other technologies to begin recycling our water. This is easy, cheap, non-polluting tech. If Namibia can do it — and they have been doing it for 53 years — then we can do it.40
EVERYTHING ELSE: At the same time, we need to start building resilience and diversity in our food supply (spoiler alert: we need to be growing a lot more food in SF), land (plant buffer zones and begin managed retreats from the coasts or we’ll lose time and resources in an un-winnable fight for the low lands), pollution (cradle-to-cradle and in-city recycling are a must), refugees (as a growing percentage of the homeless population are from climate chaos), heat (plant the native urban forest, increase our albedo, resurface waterways), and burning (fight against state actions that will destroy the northern CA biosphere, like the Delta Tunnel).
The actions are clear, and the timeline is now.
Not acting will destroy SF long before the planet won’t support life.
Climate change grows fascism.41 A substantial chunk of the world’s population will become climate refugees, roughly 1/10th of the earth’s population in the next few years alone.42 We’re in a dystopia that is getting worse.43
If you can’t or won’t act, step aside for those who can and will.
Who are they?
Sunrise Movement (https://www.sunrisemovement.org/?ms=SunriseMovement)
Youth versus Apocalypse (https://www.youthvsapocalypse.org)
350.org (http://350bayarea.org)
Poder (https://www.podersf.org)
AOC, Bernie Sanders, Jay Inslee, May Boeve, Reb. Lennox Yearwood Jr., Katharine Hayhoe, Adrianna Quintero, Heidi Cullen, Billy Parish, Kandi Mossett, Bill McKibben, Mackenzie Feldman, Bridget Gustafson, Daniela V. Fernandez, Josh Fryday, Christine Gardner, Anthony G. Khalil, Purba Mukerjee, Loren Poncia, Leila Salazar-Lopez, Miranda Wang, Marv Zauderer, Inkza Angeles, Quinn Redwoods, Isra Hirsi, Kevin J. Patel, and so many more.
Because we’re not approaching the cliff or at the edge of the cliff — we’re over it and in free fall, so it’s time to sew a parachute, fast.
Act! Act like life matters! Act like you care! And act now!
Because time’s up.44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 In almost 2 years, we have lost over 10 years time in which to act; our situation now is what we thought the worst case scenario would be in 10 years from now, and our current situation is worsening daily. 2020 was the hottest year on record, but it’ll be one of this century’s coolest years.52 You must act now!
FOOTNOTES
1. Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Nevill Chamberlain”. Britannica. 8 January 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Neville-Chamberlain.
2. “San Francisco Climate Action Plan”. SF Environment. Accessed 18 January 2021. https://sfenvironment.org/climateplan.
3. Dominick Mastrangelo. “Democrat: GOP colleagues say they’re ‘afraid for their lives’ if they vote to impeach Trump”. The Hill. 13 January 2021. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/534034-democrat-gop-colleagues-say-theyre-afraid-for-their-lives-if-they-vote-to.
4. Khalil Bendib. “Head In The Sand Evening News”. See cartoon at otherwords.org/head-in-the-tar-sands-cartoon/.
5. Alleen Brown. “Oil Industry Reconsiders Donations To Election Deniers — But Has Its Own Big Lie”. The Intercept. 16 January 2021. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/16/oil-industry-election-climate-denial-stop-steal/.
6. Dustin Gardiner. “Amid climate crisis, California approves far more drilling permits”. San Francisco Chronicle. 29 December 2020. https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-approved-far-more-permits-to-drill-15825548.php.
7. Brian Mastroianni. “How climate change became so politicized”. CBS News. 3 December 2015. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-climate-change-became-so-politicized/.
8. Christine Ro. “The harm from worrying about climate change”. BBC Future. 10 October 2019. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191010-how-to-beat-anxiety-about-climate-change-and-eco-awareness.
9. Fred Pearce. “Climate myths: We can’t do anything about climate change”. NewScientist. 16 May 2007. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11658-climate-myths-we-cant-do-anything-about-climate-change/.
10. Jessica Sieff. “Believing in climate change doesn’t mean you are preparing for climate change, study finds”. Phys Org. 8 October 2019. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-believing-climate-doesnt.html.
11. Simona Sacchi, Paolo Riva, and Alice Aceto. “Myopic about climate change: Cognitive style, psychological distance, and environmentalism”. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Vol 65, July 2016. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103116301706.
12. London Breed. “Mayor London N. Breed’s 2020 Inauguration Speech”. Office of the Mayor. 8 January 2020. https://sfmayor.org/mayor-london-n-breeds-2020-inauguration-speech. In the entire speech only 1 sentence mentioned clean energy and GHGs; 1 sentence out of 150 sentences, or far less than 1%. Yet sea level rise, temperature rise, megadrought, and abysmal air quality due to fires (in addition to the economic collapse caused by this, the 1st pandemic in what will be an age of pandemics) will cause many times greater homelessness than what we have now. Ignoring the tiger won’t keep it from attacking you.
13. Art Markman. “Why People Aren’t Motivated to Address Climate Change”. Harvard Business Review. 11 October 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/10/why-people-arent-motivated-to-address-climate-change.
14. Thomas Reuters Foundation. “Natural Disasters Make 14 Million People Homeless Each Year: Report”. Global Citizen. 13 October 2017. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/disasters-climate-change-14-million-homeless/.
15. Erik Sherman. "Climate Change Is Already Helping To Drive Up Homelessness”. Forbes. 28 December 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/12/28/climate-change-is-already-helping-to-drive-up-homelessness/?sh=15d94a954631.
16. Robin McKie. “Climate change ‘will make hundreds of millions homeless’”. The Guardian. 11 May 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/12/climate-change-expert-stern-displacement. Please also note the date. In climate change science, unfortunately, old means much more optimistic than what we now know to be true.
17. Matt Egan. “US report warns climate change could create economic chaos”. CNN Business. 9 September 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/business/climate-change-economy-cftc-report/index.html.
18. Ker Than. “The economic damage from climate change may be more than you think”. Stanford. 26 February 2016. https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/economic-damage-climate-change-may-be-more-you-think.
19. Brandon Specktor. “Human Civilization Will Crumble by 2050 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.
20. Ibid.
21. Amy Graff. “No, these small earthquakes won’t prevent ‘The Big One’”. SFGate. 17 January 2019. https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-prevent-large-earthquakes-13541155.php.
22. Jonathan Alter. “Climate Change Was on the Ballot With Jimmy Carter in 1980—Though No One Knew It at the Time”. Time. 29 September 2020. https://time.com/5894179/jimmy-carter-climate-change/.
23. Shannon Hall. “Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago”. Scientific American. 26 October 2015. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/.
24. Benjamin Hulac. “Every president since JFK was warned about climate change”. E&E News. 6 November 2018. https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060105233.
25. Michael Hall, Neil Lewis Jr., and Phoebe Ellsworth. “Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study”. Journal of Environmental Psychology. Volume 56, April 2018. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494418301488.
26. Robert Wilder and Daniel Kammen. “Exposed: The Climate Fallacy of 2100”. Scientific American. 19 October 2016. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/exposed-the-climate-fallacy-of-2100/.
27. Sara Gorman and Jack Gorman. “Climate Change Denial”. Psychology Today. 12 January 2019. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial.
28. Stanley Reed. “Oil Companies Ponder Climate Change, cut Profits Still Rule”. The New York Times. 15 October 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/business/energy-environment/oil-companies-climate-change-profits.html.
29. Julia Carrie Wong. “Powerful winds spark new blazes in California’s year-round fire ‘season’”. The Guardian. 19 January 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/19/california-fire-climate-crisis-high-winds.
30. Erin McCormick. “Wildfires having devastating effect on air quality in western US, study finds”. The Guardian. 19 January 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/wildfires-air-pollution-western-us.
31. Zoya Teirstein. “2020 was the hottest year on record. We’ll remember it as one of the century’s coldest”. Grist. 16 January 2021. https://grist.org/climate/2020-was-the-hottest-year-on-record-well-remember-it-as-one-of-the-centurys-coldest/.
32. H. Damon Matthews and Kasia Tokarska. “New research suggests 1.5C climate target will be out of reach without greener COVID-19 recovery plans”. Phys Org. 19 January 2021. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-15c-climate-greener-covid-recovery.html.
33. CMCC Foundation. “Climate impacts on health and urban areas: Heatwaves and death rate”. Phys Org. 15 January 2021. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-climate-impacts-health-urban-areas.html.
34. NOAA Headquarters. “Acidification impedes shell development of plankton off the US West Coast”. Phys Org. 19 January 2021. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-acidification-impedes-shell-plankton-west.html.
35. Associated Press. “Monarch Butterfly Population Moves Closer to Extinction”. U.S. News & World Report. 19 January 2021. https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2021-01-19/monarch-butterfly-population-moves-closer-to-extinction.
36. Nathanael Johnson. “Burned Out”. Grist. 21 November 2019. https://grist.org/article/pge-failed-california-heres-how-the-state-could-turn-things-around/.
37. Associated Press. “PG&E will pay up to $190M to clean up San Francisco marina”. Miami Herald. 16 January 2021. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article248549625.html.
38. Rachel Swan. “Fires at PG&E’s SF substations a recurring problem”. San Francisco Chronicle. 3 May 2017. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Fires-at-PG-E-s-SF-substations-a-recurring-11119604.php.
39. Katie Dowd. “PG&E, 7 others subpoenaed in widening San Francisco public corruption probe”. SFGate. 12 February 2020. https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Mohammed-Nuru-Nick-Bovis-corruption-probe-15051358.php.
40. Theresia Tjihenuna. “Recycled water is the future”. The Namibian. 30 October 2013. https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=115884&page=archive-read.
41. Brian Kahn. “The Climate Crisis Will Be Steroids for Fascism”. Gizmodo. 7 January 2021. https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-climate-crisis-will-be-steroids-for-fascism-1846009446.
42. Matthew Taylor. “Climate change ‘will create world’s biggest refugee crisis’”. The Guardian. 2 November 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/02/climate-change-will-create-worlds-biggest-refugee-crisis.
43. Sean Illing and David Wallace-Wells. “It is absolutely time to panic about climate change”. Vox. 24 February 2019. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/22/18188562/climate-change-david-wallace-wells-the-uninhabitable-earth.
44. 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.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. 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/.
48. 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.
49. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
50. 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/.
51. 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/.
52. Zoya Teirstein. “2020 was the hottest year on record. We’ll remember it as one of the century’s coldest.” Grist. 16 January 2021. https://grist.org/climate/2020-was-the-hottest-year-on-record-well-remember-it-as-one-of-the-centurys-coldest/.