We hope you’ve been well and staying healthy and safe.
We’d like to invite you to 350 Humboldt’s virtual Taco Party and General Meeting on Thursday, May 21, starting at 6 PM. Our own Katy Gurin serves as Master of Ceremonies, you supply the tacos. Reply to this email and we’ll send you the link to our virtual meeting the day before.
Since it’s been months since we’ve met together we’d like a chance to check in with each other. We’ll also discuss our involvement in getting out climate voters in November, and the campaign to stop the Jordan Cove gas pipeline in southern Oregon.
Another topic is the Just Recovery campaign. You might think of this as the Green New Deal, updated to Covid-19. A huge financial boost is needed nationally to support the unemployed as well as essential workers. We need to ensure that boost is both socially and climate friendly. 350 Humboldt has signed onto this campaign (see the Just Recovery website, here) and we’re already working to ensure that local stimulus funding is climate friendly.
This is a vital next step once the pandemic begins to subside. Millions of peoples’ livelihoods have come to an abrupt end. When those jobs return, we need to make sure our economy is greener than it’s ever been.
An article in Yale Climate Connections gives a humbling glimpse of how far we have to go. Even the vast reduction in the economy of the past few months, with empty highways, shuttered factories and stores, and a 96% drop in American air travel has bought us very little time to maintain a liveable climate. The authors calculate that the current reduction in global emissions will need to become permanent in only two years — and then continue dropping — to keep the globe from warming more than 1.5 degrees C.
A more upbeat essay in the same issue argues that the massive global response to the pandemic — billions of people acting largely in unison against a common threat — suggests that climate action can be effective at the individual level as well as through governments, especially when it builds community engagement.
There is much more to talk about. Reply to this email to attend our Virtual Taco Party and General Meeting. We won’t be in the flesh — but your car stays home. We’d love to hear what you think, and we look forward to seeing you on Thursday, May 21 at 6 PM.
Pat Carr for 350 Humboldt