Extra

Between council on recess and the usual August slowdown, my report on city meetings will be short. As for everything else, this week was boiling over. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released AR6 (Sixth Assessment Report). The UN warns that global heating is at “code red” for humanity and the cause is unequivocal – it is us. July was the hottest month ever recorded. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#FullReport 

As I reached for the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, there was a lot on my mind--the films Elysium and The Biggest Little Farm, the seminars forecasting perpetual drought for the western U.S. with occasional wet years, the articles on climate and the environment, the slowing of the gulf stream (the overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean) heading toward collapse, the wobbling of the jet stream, the loss of insects and wildlife, superstorms, floods and fires, an obscure mention on glacier melting and earthquakes and, of course, my reading, the books: The Sixth Extinction, Under a White Sky, Ishmael, The Uninhabitable Earth, The Nature of Oaks, Bringing Nature Home, Half-Earth Our Planet’s Fight for Life, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast and Midnight in Chernobyl.  

I’ve seen less in the news than I expected of the dire warnings coming from AR6. Instead, we’re wrapped in saving the economy of endless consumerism as the mantle to carry. We are the earth’s most destructive species, pilfering the earth’s resources for our immediate pleasure with little regard for our impact, our own future or that of our children. 

The best forecast for the future requires immediate action to bring GHG (Green House Gas) emissions to zero. So much is already baked in, that even with immediate action, the climate forecast is continued warming for the next 30 years with more intense superstorms, floods, drought, heat events and fires than we already see. If the world responds with immediate action, the IPCC forecast is climate change can after the next 30 years be expected to slow and stabilize. Without aggressive action, we are headed for the cliff of exponential heating reaching a level when much of the earth will be uninhabitable for our species and many others. 

We sit in various camps, sometimes shifting from one to another: denial, willful ignorance, technology can fix it, it won’t affect me, what I do won’t make any difference, China pollutes more than the U.S., it’s not my responsibility, the government needs to fix it, no government is going to tell me what to do, or maybe the “God will save us.” You might have your own list of why and how we continue on a path of destruction. 

I know the conscious changes I make in my own life won’t save the planet, but I feel better for doing them. If others joined me, it wouldn’t be everything we need to do, but we could make a difference and right there in personal actions is voting. You don’t even need postage for your recall mail-in ballot. 

Newsom is less than perfect, but failing to vote at all or failing to vote no on the recall could give us Larry Elder, a progun, anti-abortion, climate denier. At this moment, Elder, the right-wing talk-show host who is the leading contender, stands for “individual freedom” in opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. Elder, who is Black, denies systemic racism and blames disintegration of two parent families and the absence of Black fathers as the source of societal problems. 

The other action that should be on everyone’s mind is how the California Assembly will vote on SB 9 and SB 10. We need to do our part here too, call 916.319.2115 or 510.286.1400 and write Buffy wicks to vote NO on SB 9 and 10. https://a15.asmdc.org/email-assemblymember-wicks 

Please also write the CA Assembly Appropriation Committee https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/ 

SB 9 and SB 10 do not include even the tiniest shred of attention to climate and the environment. These bills ride under the banner of “greenwashing” (fake sustainability) and are about over-riding any local zoning, splitting single family home lots and covering the lots with up to 14 units eliminating space for trees and the cool sheltering of their canopies. This leaves us with hard surfaces like sidewalks, driveways and buildings that soak up and hold heat thereby changing the local climate. And, should rain ever arrive all these hard surfaces increase water runoff instead of recharging the ground. 

These bills do nothing for affordable housing. A curious mind would be picking up Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick M. Condon, 2020 and The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown, 2021. Home ownership is how families build wealth. It is why Southern California neighborhoods of color are fighting so hard to stop these bills. 

The week closed with the release of the Census Report. In between these bookends is the continuing acceleration of COVID-19 infections due to the Delta variant. It was COVID and bad behavior that filled the air waves. 

I hope you are managing to avoid catching the delta COVID. Remember that if you are vaccinated and catch COVID you are still contagious and being contagious may mean giving COVID to children younger than 12 who are not eligible to be vaccinated. And, while children usually do not get seriously ill, they can end up in an ICU on a ventilator. 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-14/kids-covid-hospitalization-rates 

Cotton/homemade/cloth masks or bandanas and gators just don’t do the job we need for the very contagious delta variant. These facial coverings might be okay for a quick run into a grocery or picking up takeout, but real protection comes with N95 and KN95. The N95 and KN95 give hours upon hours protection, are widely available and can be used over and over until they get dirty. There are even KN95 masks for children. If you can’t find a comfortable N95 or KN95, the CDC has a whole section on how to improve the protection from the surgical/procedure masks our next best choice. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/mask-fit-and-filtration.html Johnston Medical stocks the surgical pleated style mask for children, but you can order KN95 for children online. https://www.johnstonmedicalsupply.com/ 

If you don’t care about yourself, don’t care about your family or neighbors, don’t care about children, just keep in mind if you have a pet at home, your cat or dog can catch COVID from you. 

On to city meetings 

Monday was a special meeting of the council Public Safety Committee with one item from Councilmember Terry Taplin prohibiting Ghost Guns. It was listed as a referral to the city manager, but Councilmember Wengraf quickly picked up that a fully completed ordinance should come to the committee for review and markup before going to the full council for a vote. A referral would just sit in the city manager’s spreadsheet of things to do. Councilmember Kesarwani on the other hand proposed a motion to move the item forward as a referral. It’s hard to know if Kesarwani isn’t paying attention or just doesn’t understand how council and council committees function. It’s a mystery. In the end, Taplin will bring back an ordinance. 

Tuesday evening was the Pier-Ferry workshop #2. Jim McGrath and I were called “heavy hitters” in the breakout meeting with our comments and questions. Despite what the Pier-Ferry team says, the decision has been made. It would be a complete shock for the momentum to stop at this point. There has never been a merging of the proposed pier-ferry designs and recreation. McGrath shared the mapping wind surfers have done by carrying GPS devices, which was the only way we could see it despite his statement that these have been sent to the team. McGrath also reminded the team of measure L which requires a public vote when recreation/park areas are impacted. 

Wednesday was the Parks Commission. The revision of the Ashby/I80 Interchange will be a vast improvement. Adopt-a-Spot received unanimous support and will move forward to council. 

The last meeting I attended I learned of at the last minute, a meet-up of the California Native Plant Society Yerba Buena Group with David Ackerly, professor in the departments of Integrative Biology and Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, speaking on Climate Change and Future of Biodiversity Conservation in California. 

His focus is trees. What was interesting were the pictures of the changing mix of oaks and pine. With warming the native oaks, which are more tolerant to heat and drought, increased in density while pines in the same area declined. It was the response of nature not human intervention. 

As always, a close with my latest reading. A friend called me a “reading machine.” I’ve been reading Douglas Tallamy’s books on restoring native habitat and watching his YouTube videos. Tallamy often quotes Edward O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world…” 

With that encouragement, I picked up Half-Earth Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson, 2016. As one who is doesn’t feel elderly but falls in that category, I love it when people continue to contribute and share a lifetime of knowledge. Wilson, who is still alive and active, wrote Half-Earth when he was 87 (born 6/10/1929). 

As I read Half-Earth, I thought of the game giant jenga that was played at the wedding party “groom’s dinner.” Tallamy poses the question, does an ecosystem depend on the health and presence of the “keystone” like the oak or is an ecosystem like jenga where blocks can be pulled one by one, until so many pieces are pulled the tower collapses? 

In this book Wilson gives weight to the organisms we don’t see and that leaving little plots of nature here and there can’t sustain ecosystems. 

On and in the earth and the seas, there is still so much to learn and discover.