form Jorge: Climate Change and the rebuilding of Sonoma County
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Jorge Rebagliati
May 22, 2018, 1:07:34 AM5/22/18
to ClimateActivists-SC, OSC - Earth Action Campaign
Dear friends:
Below you will find our latest e-mail to our Sonoma County governments that I am sharing with you for two reasons:
1) As a reflexion for all of you about the reality of Climate Change and the responses (including yours) to the most dangerous challenge that humanity and civilization has ever faced in historical times.
2) As a tool to influence our local governments to convince them that now is the time for a Climate Change-Ready Sonoma County. You can resend the e-mail below to them expressing your support and adding your own encouragement for them to act now.
As I told our local public officials, it is not anymore only about fulfilling our duty to the Earth by supporting projects to mitigate the Change of the Climate, but to acting for our own survival. The world we love is in danger and that danger is not just in the future, it is here now.
Love,
Jorge Rebagliati
Climate Change Major Disaster Declaration
SoCoCAN
"We are the ones we've been waiting for"
DECLARATION: "Climate Crisis Is Already A Major Disaster"
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Jorge Rebagliati <jorge...@sbcglobal.net>
To: "susan...@sonoma-county.org" <susan...@sonoma-county.org>; "david....@sonoma-county.org" <david....@sonoma-county.org>; "shirle...@sonoma-county.org" <shirle...@sonoma-county.org>; "lynda....@sonoma-county.org" <lynda....@sonoma-county.org>; "jsa...@srcity.org" <jsa...@srcity.org>; "tschw...@srcity.org" <tschw...@srcity.org>; "jco...@srcity.org" <jco...@srcity.org>; "ccou...@srcity.org" <ccou...@srcity.org>; "eoli...@srcity.org" <eoli...@srcity.org>; "hjtib...@srcity.org" <hjtib...@srcity.org>; "cro...@srcity.org" <cro...@srcity.org>; "CMOf...@srcity.org" <CMOf...@srcity.org>; "Dist...@sonoma-county.org" <Dist...@sonoma-county.org>; "psta...@rpcity.org" <psta...@rpcity.org>; "SHa...@cotaticity.org" <SHa...@cotaticity.org>; "mayorda...@gmail.com" <mayorda...@gmail.com>; "ps.s...@gmail.com" <ps.s...@gmail.com>; "bokr...@townofwindsor.com" <bokr...@townofwindsor.com>; "smcca...@ci.healdsburg.ca.us" <smcca...@ci.healdsburg.ca.us>; "gwo...@ci.cloverdale.ca.us" <gwo...@ci.cloverdale.ca.us>; "madolyn....@sonomacity.org" <madolyn....@sonomacity.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2018 5:04 PM
Subject: Climate Change and the rebuilding of Sonoma County
Dear Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and City Councils:
In a moment of candid sincerity Keith Woods, the executive director of the North Coast Builder's Exchange said: "There's not only the theme of SONOMA STRONG. We're also SONOMA UNCERTAIN" (Press Democrat 4/29/18) referring to the multiple uncertainties about how, where, when, why, and with what to reconstruct the deeply wounded Sonoma County after the October 2017 fire storms.
The how, where, when and why are still very much up in the air, and the "with what" is in need of a miracle. Where is the money going to come from? In the same P D article of 4/29/18 we learned that the average insurance gap - the difference between the payout to residents for property lost in the DISASTER and the cost to rebuild - was $317,000. With 5,283 homes destroyed in Sonoma County in the fires the total insurance gap for those homeowners is almost $1.7 billion. This huge insurance gap and other reasons show up in the small number of rebuilding permits that have been issued since the fires: 147 permits for Santa Rosa and 88 for the County. Eighty percent of victims have not settled their claims and a growing number of then are selling their lots to land speculators.
Sonoma County is in an undeclared state of emergency reflected not only in the lack of funds to rebuild but in the under-funding of public services, lower tax revenue and in the inability to effectively prepare to prevent and fight future fires.
This silence from our leaders about the gravity of our predicament is not benefiting anybody (at least not inside the County) but, on the contrary, it is fostering an "uncertain" future for Sonoma County.
Even though the words Climate and Climate Change has rarely publicly being used by our local leaders since the October 2017 fires , there is general understanding among you that the environmental conditions set by Climate Change determined the "unprecedented" intensity and speed of the October 2017 fire storms. You are also aware that because of those new environmental conditions, fire storms like those can happen again in the near future, even in 2018.
The experiences of other parts of the world facing an uncertain future, because of Climate Change, have lessons about what not to do, if we want to turn disaster into an opportunity to transform our communities to become not only safer, but better places to live.
Three of those places are Cape Town in South Africa, Jakarta in Indonesia and Puerto Rico.
Cape Town (lack of WATER):
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"So how does an ostensibly well-run city manage to blow the water file so spectacularly? In part, it comes down to the fact that its administration was paralyzed by a sort of bureaucratic magical thinking that combined technocratic hyper-efficiency, an obsession with austerity-driven bean-counting, and an apparent belief that miracles are certain to fall from the sky.
The DA (Democratic Alliance) promised that it would do better. Instead, it has been bad, but in its own special ways. Its near-messianic adherence to fiscal rectitude has meant that local bureaucrats have tended to ignore repeated warnings from civil engineers and climate scientists, who insisted that Cape Town’s water infrastructure, which relies exclusively on six dams in parched catchment areas, would not be able to meet demand should rainfall patterns change due to climate change.
One of the first warnings that Cape Town would run dry was published in the Cape Times in 1990. Scientists, meteorologists, engineers and lay-folk have echoed those warnings in the years since. Emergency measures were considered and abandoned, with weather-like caprice: Desalination plants were deemed too expensive and cumbersome for a situation that the city’s bureaucrats believed would resolve itself.
So what is to be done? In an age in which both the climate and politicians have gone rogue, the only good thing that can come of Cape Town’s crisis is how eloquently its inhabitants come up with new definitions of resilience. What unfolds in the next few months has a massive impact on the lives of all South Africans—cholera won’t stop at the foot of Table Mountain—but it also suggests a way forward for the rest of the world. Drought, or rather climate change, is only part of the reason that Cape Town is dying of thirst. The other failings are more readily addressed, but seem far more intractable."
Jakarta (Too much Water)
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"With climate change, the Java Sea is rising and weather in Jakarta is becoming more extreme. Earlier this month, another freakish storm briefly turned the Indonesian capital's streets into rivers and brought this vast area of nearly 30 million residents to a virtual halt.
About 40 percent of the metropolis now lies beneath sea level, and several districts, including Muara Baru, have sunk as much as 14 feet in recent years. The average sinking is 10 inches each year.
In fact, Jakarta is sinking faster than any other big city on the planet, faster, even, than climate change is causing the sea to rise - so surreally fast that rivers sometimes flow upstream, ordinary rain regularly swamps neighborhoods and buildings slowly disappear underground, swallowed by the earth.
The main cause: Jakarta's are digging illegal wells, drip by drip draining the underground aquifers on which the city rests - like deflating a giant cushion underneath it.
A tsunami of human-made troubles - runaway development, a near-total lack of planning, next to no sewers and only a limited network of reliable, piped-in drinking water - poses an imminent threat to the city's survival.
Hydrologists say the city has only a decade to halt its sinking. If it cannot, northern Jakarta, with its millions of residents, will end up underwater, along with much of the nation's economy.
Puerto Rico (Hurricane-force WIND)
"What has happened in Puerto Rico is nothing short of a cataclysmic tragedy for the island, its economy, its people and their health. The aftermath of Hurricane Maria shows how the impacts of our developing environment are quickly moving from abstract scenarios to grim reality. It is a call to action for every country, every community, to start preparing for the metaphoric storms that are already on their way.
Climate Change may have played a role in the disaster – warmer ocean temperatures generally feed stronger storms. But even before the hurricane, exceptionally hot days, air pollution and sea level rise – all symptoms of a changing climate – had already been taking their toll on the islanders’ health and financial stability.
The catastrophe in Puerto Rico may therefore be a worrying harbinger of a future for other countries and regions facing the effects of climate change. How the island’s recovery unfolds, and whether Puerto Ricans are able to rebuild so they might withstand future extreme events, could hold valuable lessons for the world as a whole."
The lessons from Puerto Rico has been described further in previous e-mails and in the first-hand observations from Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore after this inspection of Florida and Puerto Rico in March. This U. S. Territory ignored Climate Change, did not prepared for it, suffered tremendous destruction and is embarked in a haphazard reconstruction that provides no resilience to future extreme Climate Change-Related events and does nothing for Climate Recovery. Over 200,000 Puerto Ricans have emigrated from the island to the U S mainland since Hurricane Maria.
...and Sonoma County, California (Fire) has become part of this unfortunate list of example communities.
Sonoma County with a record of several Climate Action Plans, used to be an example of a conscious territory for which Climate Change was real and had to be taken seriously but where there also was enough denial that our County could be a target for a Climate Change-Related Major Disaster in the near future. Our leaders tended to believe that we had time to deal with Climate Change and that by attempting to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions over time we were fulfilling our duty to the Earth and to Sonoma County.
Sadly, the October 2017 fires proved you wrong. Climate Change was more advanced that you had believed, the planned Climate actions were not enough and we had not prepared for the most likely massive disaster of the FIRE STORMS.
As the example of those four communities demonstrate: ignoring the existence and extent of Climate Change and not transforming all our systems to produce Climate Change Adaptation (Resilience) and Climate Restoration (to former livable levels) is a formula for disaster, that challenges the very existence of humanity and of human civilization (Remember the prophetic words of California Governor Jerry Brown just a few weeks ago).
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You can continue grieving the loss of lives, property and the wounded environment and offering policies to palliate the situation, while knowing in silence that you are "playing with fire"and jeopardizing the future of the County, the future of your loved ones and your own future.
Otherwise you can choose the alternative of accepting the full urgency of the bind you (we) are in. and go to work to transform Sonoma County now to meet the reality of the New Climate Conditions. The "reconstruction" will turn into the "rebirth"of Sonoma County as the first Climate Change-Ready community in the world.
If you issue the binding, official, public, in-writing and detailed Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations we have been urging you to issue, you will gain control over the destiny of Sonoma County, by committing to a Climate Change-Ready County and by applying for State, Federal and Private resources to fulfill the immense and badly necessary task of really preparing Sonoma County for Climate Change.
Governor Jerry Brown who has publicly committed to do "everything" within his power to deal with Climate Change and the State of California has a "rainy day reserve fund"of $13.8 billion. Sonoma County can, and must, tell the Governor that it needs a chunk of that reserve fund to deal now with the clear and present danger of Climate Change. Not by 2025, or 2035, or 2045 or any other future date, but NOW when we are still a functional community.
Being the first ones to issue Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations is likely scary for most of you but your bravery will pay off in many ways, particularly to obtain the external resources needed for the transformation to a Climate Change-Ready County. Likely, communities that follow our example will have an increasingly harder time accessing external resources as the emergency and disaster reserves get drained.
The $1.7 billion of insurance gap for the homes destroyed by the fires, the preexisting shortage of at least 14,000 housing units, the millions of dollars to respond to the fires, the hundreds of millions (possibly billions) to implement all GHG emissions elimination projects and to prevent and effectively fight future fires, require a level of funding that you will never achieve by increasing local taxes, and by asking for private, State and Federal donations.
By issuing Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations Sonoma County and its cities become "entitled" to State, Federal and private funding commensurate with the investment that responding to the Climate Change Disaster requires.
The answers to how, where, when, why, and with what to reconstruct are imbedded in the strategy of the Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations. By issuing them you will open a great number of possibilities for Sonoma County to survive and thrive and stop our current race to the bottom.
May the examples of Cape Town, Puerto Rico and Jakarta inspire you to not become another helpless community in the face of Climate Change but leaders showing the path out of Climate Change.
If you do not heed our call, the year-round new fire season will find you poor and unprepared.
Sincerely,
Jorge Rebagliati
Climate Change Major Disaster Declaration Campaign
Sonoma County Climate Activist Network (SoCoCAN)
"We are the ones we've been waiting for"
DECLARATION: "Climate Crisis Is Already A Major Disaster"
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