Principles into Practice

I have been thinking about what the youth climate movement’s Statement of Principles might look like if we were to start to put them into practice. Here are some thoughts:

We call on our leaders to follow these guiding principles as they make decisions that will determine our future:

1. A just climate policy must be scientifically based – The US must enact mandatory caps on greenhouse gas pollution that ensures the peak and decline of global carbon emissions before 2015 towards a minimum of 80% emissions reductions below 1990 levels before mid-century in order to avoid a climate catastrophe.

In Practice: Pass national climate legislation. In my opinion, passing the Safe Climate Act in the U.S. House and the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act in the U.S. Senate are critical to getting us on the right track.

Bay to Break-me

The Photos

Bay to Breakers is ridiculous. You might call it a run. You’d be wrong. It’s got running involved. A bunch of eager beavers break out from the East side of town at about 8 in the morning and run to the beach. Some of them are wearing super hero spandex or too-toos. A few are buck nekid. That’s not really Bay to Breakers though. That’s the teaser. The warmup. The apertif, as the French might say (it’s a sweet alcohol drink before evening drink after dinner before desert, very tasty). The real business of the B2B is the slop-fest that happens after the runners are out of the way.

My nippies are chafed and burnt. I’ve got red all over me. It’s the sun. It stings you when you least expect it. Like when you’re stumbling down Lincoln street on your way back from Bay to Breakers with no cabs and no buses in sight. I made it to the beach with Liz and friends finally well into the afternoon after making my start at 8:15 in the morning about six miles from the Ocean on Hayes and Laguna. The original idea was to put on an orange tube dress and some pipe cleaners and go as a carrot in Team Thumper. Lack of organization and a weak spark of inspiration turned that idea into Rick Dickerson, Mr. Emergency: he’s ready for anything. Basically I threw on an orange safety-worker vest, tied an emergency blanket around my waste, put some glitter in my eyebrows, and popped on a Giants hat. It was a bit of a mess, but did the trick.

Free times in sin city

Let’s pretend like San Francisco is Paris. Back in Paris I wrote about plotting to wrestle wild boars with diplomacy and my run-ins with small Italian children who sound like the movies. Well, here at home I find myself in slightly different scenarios. All-in-all it’s fairly unworthy of penmanship. But we can dream.

I just got done with two hours of Grey’s Anatomy where the red-head doctor goes to Hollywood to have babies and the Grey fails to save her step-mom who was just trying to be nice to her but never got accepted. The show was a little less engaging than usual, but the problem this time was really the fact I wasn’t watching it on the internet so there were extra-long Lexus commercials interrupting my viewing every two minutes. Ahh.