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 71 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
Because SF right now is the poster child for environmental racism
This week’s topic is No Nukes in SF.
You do know there’s a problem here, right?
From the end of WWII until they moved out entirely, the Navy (under the auspices and with the blessings of the Atomic Energy Commission) dumped radioactive materials with impunity in San Francisco: on Hunters Point1, 2, 3, on Treasure Island4, and off the Farallones.5 The nuclear waste was “cleaned up” but, surprise, the waste, radiation, and risks are all still there.6, 7, 8
Why is this a problem?
- The situation in SF is definitional environmental racism and classism.9
- This situation in SF is definitional ecotoxicology.10
What’s the solution? The military must finally, really clean up the mess.
The US military budget is massive.
For FY 2020, the Defense received $633 billion, the largest discretionary budget item by far (the 2nd largest recipient is HHS at only $106 billion). While nominally the second largest total budget item, after mandatory Medicare costs of $694 billion, the military budget is actually bigger when you include Overseas Contingency Operations funds (at $79 billion), other Support Agencies (at $216 billion), and Overseas Contingency Operations funds for these other Support Agencies (at $8 billion). That gives a truer military budget of $936 billion.11
As such, the military represents ~19.5% of the total US budget. Comparing the military budget to the budgets of the agencies that really do protect the US (or at least used to) — the CDC12, EPA13, National Parks14, and FDA15 at a combined $9,279,444,908 — one year of the military budget could entirely fund those 4 federal organizations for 10 years.
And the facts are that the military doesn’t need all that money. From the F-35 that was obsolete before it became deployable to Reagan’s Star Wars system, the B-1 Lancer to Future Combat System, the Comanche helicopter to unusable Army combat camouflage, bloated project costs to CEOs siphoning off money, terrible bookkeeping to sequestration of obsolete or redundant bases: the US Military has a long and insanely costly track record of waste and inefficiency with our money.
SF is neither financially nor logistically equipped to clean up the Navy’s mess.
Assuming an SF budget of a round $300 million, one year of the military budget could entirely fund SF for 3120 years. And, because climate catastrophe and extinction levels events are expensive16 and we refused to take action sooner when it would have been cheaper17, SF doesn’t have the money to clean up this radioactive mess ourselves.
And the mess must be cleaned up because:
- exposure to radioactive waste causes cancers18
- we don’t know the types of materials and radioactive half lives of what was dumped19
- the waste endangers, sickens, and kills those already most damaged by the American system,
- and environmental destruction always comes back to bite us in the butts.20
So? SF must force the military to clean it all up. How?
- Stop covering up the problem21,
- Put responsibility (legal liability and financial) where it belongs, and
- Raise a stink. We’re not the only municipality being screwed over in CA (San Onofre22) or the US (St. Louis23). If we make a big noise, we will have company.
Start with a letter to the Navy, ccing the Joint Chiefs, Treasury, Trump, DiFi, Harris, Pelosi, Speier, Newsom and Bracerra, Chiu, Ting, and Wiener. Give them a timeline for a response — 2 months is generous as it’s been 75 years and counting. And then follow through when they say it’s not the time or there’s no money.
See? It’s not that difficult.
Why do this now?
Because there are, at most, 18 weeks left in which to start the necessary big actions if we’re going to survive.24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 In a little over a year, we have lost 10 years time in which to act. The Guardian climate countdown gives us 63 days to save the earth.32
Because there is NO time left, you must act now.
FOOTNOTES
1. Chris Roberts. “New reports suggest Navy likely spread radiation all over Hunters Point, never checked for contamination”. Curbed San Francisco. 19 October 2018. https://sf.curbed.com/2018/10/19/17997464/navy-hunters-point-report-radiation-contamination-housing-cleanup.
2. Jaxon Van Derbeken and Sean Myers. “Hunters Point Testing May Defy US Rules”. NBC Bay Area. 9 July 2020. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/hunters-point-testing-defies-us-rules/2315753/.
3. Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes. “‘Extremely unlikely that they will find anything’”. San Francisco Chronicle. 28 August 2020. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Extremely-Unlikely-That-They-Will-Find-15519861.php.
4. Katie Canales. “San Francisco’s historically radioactive Treasure Island is finally getting a $6 billion makeover. Meet the residents who have lived on it for years.” Business Insider. 24 January 2020. https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-treasure-island-housing-crisis-radioactive-land-2019-12?op=1.
5. “Farallon Island Radioactive Waste Dump”. USGS. 22 July 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20140516052156/http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/farallon/radwaste.html.
6. Chris Roberts. “New reports suggest Navy likely spread radiation all over Hunters Point, never checked for contamination”. Curbed San Francisco. 19 October 2018. https://sf.curbed.com/2018/10/19/17997464/navy-hunters-point-report-radiation-contamination-housing-cleanup.
7. Carol Harvey. “Navy removes an estimated 163+ new radiation deposits from two toxic dumps and dangerously radioactive soil from under occupied Treasure Island home”. San Francisco Bay View. 17 December 2019. https://sfbayview.com/2019/12/navy-removes-an-estimated-163-new-radiation-deposits-from-two-toxic-dumps-and-dangerously-radioactive-soil-from-under-occupied-treasure-island-home/.
8. Chris Roberts. “‘Basketball-sized’ chunk of radioactive dirt found beneath Treasure Island home”. Curbed San Francisco. 20 September 2019. https://sf.curbed.com/2019/9/20/20875795/treasure-island-radioactive-toxic-contaminated-dirt-home-navy.
9. “Environmental Racism Law and Legal Definition”. USLegal. Accessed 2 September 2020. https://definitions.uslegal.com/e/environmental-racism/.
10. “ecotoxicology”. Lexico. Accessed 2 September 2020. https://www.lexico.com/definition/ecotoxicology.
11. Kimberly Amadeo. “FY 2020 Federal Budget: Trump’s Budget Request”. The Balance. 28 February 2020. https://www.thebalance.com/fy-2020-federal-budget-summary-of-revenue-and-spending-4797868.
12. “FY 2020 Operating Plan”. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 11 February 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2020/fy-2020-cdc-operating-plan.pdf.
13. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. “FY 2020 EPA Budget in Brief”. Environmental Protection Agency. March 2019. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-03/documents/fy-2020-epa-bib.pdf.
14. “Budget Justifications and Performance Information Fiscal Year 2020”. National Park Service. Accessed 1 September 2020. https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/fy2020-nps-justification.pdf.
15. GlobalData Healthcare. “FDA 2020 Budget Authority Funding Totals $3.2 bn and Boosts Support for Compounding, Opioids, and Rare Disease”. Pharmaceutical Technology. 28 January 2020. https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/comment/fda-2020-budget-authority/.
16. COVID-19 is a first, but not the last, example of the costs of climate change. For more, see Strike letters for weeks 13, 18, 19, 30, 40, 47, 50, 51, 55, and 64.
17. Penny wise, pound foolish.
18. “What do the studies show?” American Cancer Society. Accessed 2 September 2020. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposure/x-rays-gamma-rays/do-xrays-and-gamma-rays-cause-cancer.html.
19. “Farallon Islands Nuclear Waste sites”. Disaster Area: The Navy Nuked San Francisco. 23 July 2020. https://disasterarea.home.blog/2020/07/23/farallon-islands-nuclear-waste-sites/.
20. Jeremy Lent. “Commentary: What will it really take to avoid collapse?” Environmental Health News. 3 January 2018. https://www.ehn.org/capitalism-and-our-environmental-collapse-2521833465.html.
21. Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes. “‘Extremely unlikely that they will find anything’”. San Francisco Chronicle. 28 August 2020. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Extremely-Unlikely-That-They-Will-Find-15519861.php.
22. Roger Johnson. “Letter: Does Living Near San Onofre Increase Cancer Risks?” San Clemente Times. 14 October 2015. https://www.sanclementetimes.com/letter-does-living-near-san-onofre-increase-cancer-risks/.
23. Austin Price. “Radioactive Waste Could Be Killing Residents in Missouri Community, Say Federal Scientists”. Earth Island Journal. 30 October 2019. https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/radioactive-waste-could-be-killing-residents-in-missouri/.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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/.
28. 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.
29. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/.
30. 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/.
31. 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/.
32. “Climate countdown”. The Guardian. Accessed most recently 29 July 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/climate-countdown.