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 98 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
It’s all about the data. It’s always been about the data.
This week is a Data Geek Out!
Climate change’s impacts on individual human bodies include:
- increased debilitating and fatal dehydration — especially for children1
- increased premature births and pregnancy complications2
- decreased food security and increased undernutrition3
- increased stress and mental health problems4
- increased respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses5
- increased exposure to toxic molds6 and algae blooms7
- increased exposure to pandemics8 and a geographic expansion of tropical disease vectors9
What about climate change’s impacts on the people of SF?
- At least 10% of SF’s population was below the federal poverty level before the pandemic10 — that’s 88,000 people. However, if adjusting for the higher cost of living in SF, our population in poverty before the pandemic rockets up to around 20% (176,000 individuals) or 1 in 5 people.11
- Climate change hurts the poor the most and the quickest.12 How badly that population suffers is substantially impacted by sufficient and early government actions against climate change.13
- Children in SF make up a substantial proportion of the poor.14
- Climate change is also a racial justice issue.15 Covid-19 is a climate change-caused pandemic (the first of many). Looking at the Covid-19 case count and outcome data for SF, it’s clear who in SF is already being most hurt by climate change.16
Climate change also impacts SF’s water and food supplies.
- 75-80% of CA’s freshwater comes from the Sierra Nevada snowpack.17
- ⅓ of the nation’s vegetables and ⅔ of its fruits and nuts are grown in CA.18
- The west is in the first years of a human-caused megadrought.19
- The megadrought is destroying the snowpack20, drying up the Central Valley21, and causing massive wildfires22 (leading to more water pollution).23
- All of which means we’re going to be increasingly hard up for both food and fresh water in the short-term and the long-term. The systems we have in place for both will fail.
And you do realize that climate change is getting worse, right?
- Temperatures are rising faster than expected24 and higher than livable.25, 26
- CO2 – the grandparent GHG – has only had a small dip in its rate of increase due to this pandemic.27 To put it another way, we’d have to do lockdown levels of CO2 reduction every year for decades in order to come close to reaching the Paris Agreement numbers, numbers28 that were already too high according to most scientists.29
- The impacts of climate change are coming sooner than expected and are much worse than expected.30
- And, as it gets worse, it’s getting harder to predict.31
About that unpredictability thing: are you up on the latest news?
Like that butterflies are going extinct in the west?32 Or that the United States is perfectly set up to brew a bunch of Covid variants domestically?33 Or on just how bad the yearly wash of wildfire smoke is to our health?34 Or that summers are getting much, much longer?35 Or that tens of millions of women have been pushed into poverty?36 Or that we’re drowning in plastic?37 And there’s more….38
Act! It saves dollars and makes sense.
Because the cost of climate change to countries is huge: it’s estimated that ¾ of all countries will be poorer in 2100 than they would have been without climate change.39 And the cost to individuals is even bigger: average income in the 20 poorest countries will go down 75% by 2100.40 And even these economic analyses mean nothing if you’re not accounting for everything41, 42 and they aren’t. As insurance companies and people who depend on insurance are discovering.43
Your not acting is harming the most vulnerable people in SF.
It’s now or never; damage is already being done and it’s only going to get worse. Act!44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 You have to fight for the people of SF now while accomplishing anything is still possible!
FOOTNOTES
1. Neelu Tummala. “What Climate Change Does to the Human Body”. Scientific American. 29 August 2020. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-climate-change-does-to-the-human-body/.
2. Robin Young and Allison Hagan. “Climate Change Is Taking A Toll On The Human Body”. Here & Now. 23 September 2020. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/09/23/climate-change-human-health-impacts.
3. Jayne Leonard. “How does climate change affect human health?” Medical News Today. 7 February 2020. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/climate-change-and-health.
4. “Health Risks”. National Geographic. Accessed 9 March 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/health.html.
5. Rachael Rettner. “5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health”. Live Science. 30 May 2013. https://www.livescience.com/35635-climate-change-health-countdown.html.
6. “Climate Adaptation — Indoor Fungi, Mold and Health”. EPA. Accessed 9 March 2021. https://www.epa.gov/arc-x/climate-adaptation-indoor-fungi-mold-and-health.
7. Kate Wheeling. “Toxic Algal Blooms Are Worsening with Climate Change”. Eos. 13 November 2019. https://eos.org/articles/toxic-algal-blooms-are-worsening-with-climate-change.
8. Jeff Goodell. “How Climate Change Is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era”. Rolling Stone. 7 December 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/climate-change-risks-infectious-diseases-covid-19-ebola-dengue-1098923/.
9. “Vectorborne and Zoonotic Diseases”. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Accessed 9 March 2021. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/climatechange/health_impacts/vectorborne/index.cfm.
10. “Percentage of People in Poverty: San Francisco County, California – All persons”. US Census Bureau. 10 December 2020. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/acs-percentage-poverty-2015-2019.html.
11. Regional cost of living puts the SF poverty line at $35,500 (Carol Morello, “When cost of living is taken into account, poverty rate is higher in the Washington area”, The Washington Post, 6 November 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/when-cost-of-living-is-taken-into-account-poverty-rate-is-higher-in-the-washington-area/2013/11/06/13d6853e-4712-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html) and the Census Reporter puts the SF population at that number at around 20% (“San Francisco, CA”, Census Reporter, accessed 10 March 2021, https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0667000-san-francisco-ca/).
12. Carmin Chappell. “Climate change in the US will hurt poor people the most, according to a bombshell federal report”. CNBC. 26 November 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/climate-change-will-hurt-poor-people-the-most-federal-report.html.
13. Julie Rozenberg and Stephane Hallegatte. “The Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty in 2030 and the Potential from Rapid, Inclusive, and Climate-Informed Development”. World Bank Group Open Knowledge Repository. November 2015. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/23447.
14. In 2016, 44% of the students in SFUSD received free or reduced lunches, a strong indicator of economic want (The Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Canter at https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/8687-eligible-students-who-received-free-or-reduced-price-meals-during-the-school-year?loc=6&loct=5#detailed/5/1156-1213/false/870/any/17448).
15. Sarah Kaplan. “Climate change is also a racial justice problem”. The Washington Post. 29 June 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/06/29/climate-change-racism/.
16. “Maps of COVID-19 Cases”. DataSF. Accessed 10 March 2021. https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/Map-of-Cumulative-Cases/adm5-wq8i#cumulative-cases-map. Specifically look at the Cumulative Cases Map.
17. Brain Clark Howard. “5 Key Threats to California From Climate Change”. National Geographic. 12 August 2014. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/140812-california-climate-change-global-warming-science.
18. “California Agricultural Production Statistics: 2019 Crop Year Report”. CA Dept of Food and Ag. Accessed 9 March 2021. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/.
19. Darryl Fears and Andrew Freedman. “First human-caused megadrought grips vast part of Southwest — plus Oregon, Idaho”. The Seattle Times. 16 April 2020. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-southwest-is-locked-in-the-grips-of-the-first-human-caused-megadrought-study-finds/.
20. Jeff Ranieri. “Sierra Snowpack Has Major Drop Over The Past Decade”. NBC Bay Area. 23 February 2021. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/climate-in-crisis/sierra-snowpack-has-major-drop-over-the-past-decade/2475777/.
21. Mark Schapiro. “A Time of Reckoning in the Central Valley”. Bay Nature. 23 June 2019. https://baynature.org/article/a-time-of-reckoning-in-the-central-valley/.
22. Susanne Rust and Tony Barboza. “How climate change is fueling record-breaking California wildfires, heat and smog”. Los Angeles Times. 13 September 2020. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-13/climate-change-wildfires-california-west-coast.
23. Erin Fee. “Three Ways Wildfires Can Pollute Our Water: The California Wildfires”. Save The Water. 23 December 2018. https://savethewater.org/wildfires-water-quality/.
24. Umair Irfan, Eliza Barclay, and Kavya Sukumar. “Weather 2050”. Vox. 19 July 2019. https://www.vox.com/a/weather-climate-change-us-cities-global-warming.
25. Henry Fountain. “Global Warming’s Deadly Combination: Heat and Humidity”. The New York Times. 8 March 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/climate/climate-change-heat-tropics.html.
26. Yi Zhang, Isaac Held, and Stephan Fueglistaler. “Projections of tropical heat stress constrained by atmospheric dynamics”. Nature Geoscience. Vol 14, p. 133-137, 8 March 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00695-3.
27. Fiona Harvey. “Atmospheric CO2 levels rise sharply despite Covid-19 lockdowns”. The Guardian. 4 June 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/04/atmospheric-co2-levels-rise-sharply-despite-covid-19-lockdowns.
28. A. Kim. “Report: Reducing CO2 in Atmosphere Would REquire COVID-Like Lockdowns for Decades”. CNS News. 9 February 2021. https://www.cnsnews.com/article/international/kim/report-reducing-co2-atmosphere-would-require-covid-lockdowns-decades.
29. PBS NewsHour. “Why 2 degrees Celsius is climate change’s magic number”. PBS. 2 December 2015. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-2-degrees-celsius-is-climate-changes-magic-number.
30. Stephen Leahy. “Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns”. National Geographic. 7 October 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/ipcc-report-climate-change-impacts-forests-emissions.
31. Gary Yohe. “Climate change is not just getting worse, it’s getting harder to predict”. Hartford Courant. 4 October 2020. https://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-yohe-climate-pendulum-1004-20201004-5xrmc4vkdfhv7nehn7zickakke-story.html.
32. Maddie Capron. “Spotting butterflies is becoming more difficult in the West. New research shows why”. The Sacramento Bee. 4 March 2021. https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article249697348.html.
33. We undertest and have a huge infection rate, leading to a massive population of long-haulers. They are the most likely place for mutations to occur and have a chance to flourish and spread. And clearly viral spread is pretty easy in the U.S.
34. Maanvi Singh. “California’s wildfire smoke could be more harmful than vehicle emissions, study says”. The Guardian. 6 March 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/06/california-wildfire-smoke-harmful-pollution-study.
35. AGU. “Northern Hemisphere summers may last nearly half the year by 2100”. Science Daily. 8 March 2021. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210308165237.htm.
36. “Covid-19 pandemic will push 47 million more women, girls into extreme poverty”. The Economic Times. 3 September 2020. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/covid-19-pandemic-will-push-47-million-more-women-girls-into-extreme-poverty-by-2021-un/articleshow/77903824.cms.
37. Marc Fawcett-Atkinson. “Canada is drowning in plastic waste — and recycling won’t save us”. National Observer. 9 March 2021. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/09/canada-drowning-plastic-waste-recycling-wont-save-us.
38. From fracking and health to leaching chemicals from plastics, from the mass of plastic coating coral reefs to the increased amounts of nuclear waste exposure, from lead and city freshwater crises to endocrine disrupting chems in our lives, and on and on.
39. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/.
40. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/.
41. Dana Nuccitelli. “New report finds costs of climate change impacts often underestimated”. Yale Climate Connections. 18 November 2019. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/11/new-report-finds-costs-of-climate-change-impacts-often-underestimated/.
42. Rebecca Hersher and Nathan Rott. “What Are The Costs Of Climate Change?” NPR. 16 September 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913693655/what-are-the-costs-of-climate-change.
43. Samantha Fields. “Insurance increasingly unaffordable as climate change brings more disasters”. Marketplace. 31 August 2020. https://www.marketplace.org/2020/08/31/insurance-increasingly-unaffordable-as-climate-change-brings-more-disasters/.
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. Lauren Frayer. “Scores Are Feared Dead In India After Himalayan Glacier Breaks Away”. NPR. 7 February 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/07/965046888/scores-are-feared-dead-in-india-after-himalayan-glacier-breaks-away. It’s now looking like it was a landslide which makes the situation worse.
53. 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/.
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