Marin Voice: Mill Valley should draft climate resolution for Congress - Marin Independent Journal

Marin Voice: Mill Valley should draft climate resolution for Congress - Marin Independent Journal

In early 1968, just a couple of months after the Tet Offensive escalation, Mill Valley was the first incorporated city in the United States to send a resolution to leaders in Washington, D.C. demanding that America end the Vietnam War.

It is time to urge Mill Valley leaders to live up to the city’s glorious reputation by being the first to send another such resolution, this time calling on the president and Congress, as well as all other world leaders. We must demand that defense spending be redirected to fighting carbon-dioxide emissions until climate change is reversed.

The climate crisis continues to hand out disasters caused by extreme weather conditions. We are clearly in a war.

On one side, unnatural global processes, often unchecked, are completely destroying us, directly and by induced civil disintegration. Our side, not knowing we are even in a war, is rapidly losing. Why? The same answer comes up every time. There is a lack of political will to commit enough resources to reverse it, proven by the present situation.

Long interested in people living where they work to slash dangerous emissions caused by transportation, all the members of the Mill Valley Affordable Housing Committee conducted a near monthlong collaboration to craft the following draft resolution to redirect defense spending to fight climate change:

“Whereas, though the city’s climate action plan is doing its part to locally reduce greenhouse gases, we, the members of the City Council of the City of Mill Valley, are deeply concerned with the world’s inability to reverse climate change, which is so advanced now we are no longer on the precipice of, but are rather deep within, a sustained climate disaster, with projected sea rise being a direct threat to our city.

“And, whereas, As climate change threatens even our free will with recently accelerated intensity supplanting pursuit of happiness with simple survival, it has become the greatest existential threat of our time to our nation’s security.

“Therefore, as with any threat to our national security, we … urge the president and the Congress of the United States of America, and leadership of all other nations, to redirect defense spending to meet carbon-dioxide reduction mandates. The current situation is proof that this is impossible without national/international level capitalization for expediting long overdue vital technology research and implementation and coordinated national/global public relations programs.”

But how will redirected defense spending enable us to beat climate change? Immediate beefing up well-understood components of infrastructure bills and the “Build Back Better” bills will speed up development of clean energy sources like solar and wind power. Most important will be vast investment in research and development in such capital-intensive, but already proven, carbon-dioxide removal technologies as:

• Reducing refrigeration, power plant and industry induced carbon dioxide, including sequestering emissions underground

• Capturing emissions directly from the air, even turning it into marketable industrial and commercial products

• Expanding reforestation, including drone-based robotic seedling deployment combined with the practice of silvopasture, or grazing cattle in forested areas.

• Adding a vast number of under market housing units in high walk/transit areas to eliminate long commutes.

Considering that carbon dioxide emissions created by gridlock-induced transportation is 35% of all greenhouse gases and that more housing will reduce homelessness, that last point is a “two-fer.”

Perhaps redirecting defense spending to climate change seems a bit over the top. But this idea has been around for years and it is becoming more popular among grownups in higher places. Unfortunately, fear of inevitable political blowback has trumped courage to pull the trigger.

With no ties to political maneuvers in Washington, Mill Valley can act with impunity. As the third-largest city in Marin County, accompanied by enough press and notoriety, I think a response is likely.

So what are the next steps? Expect a petition to be floated soon. Write your own opinion to the press. Put the issue on the agenda of all your neighborhood associations and city councils to build broad urgency for Mill Valley to act. As is the tradition, Mill Valley has to be the one to demand this change.

Dennis H. Klein is chair of the Mill Valley Affordable Housing Committee.