Protecting the environment to stop or slow climate change has to be talked about like the personal, local emergency it is for every citizen in San Francisco, the state, our country, and the world.

Agatha supports the Green New Deal and the transition to a net zero carbon economy. The Green New Deal puts people at the center of a plan for a transition to a sustainable world. It provides Americans with the training, education and job guarantees needed to ensure a just transition, especially for those communities that are least responsible for climate change but are most affected by it: working class, low-income, people of color, and indigenous peoples.

In October 2018, the alarming "Global Warming of 1.5°C" report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that net human-caused carbon dioxide emissions must decline by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 in order to mitigate disastrous effects to our planet. The scientists called the task herculean, requiring unprecedented action. The message is clear; unless there is radical change in our approach to climate action, our lives will be irreversibly changed by climate chaos. It's not too late, but very soon it will be.

Our representatives are not ready to back a non-binding Green New Deal, at a time when our planet and our country is already facing higher levels of drought, floods, extreme heat, and wildfire disasters we see the effects of right here in San Francisco, as well as around the country. Meanwhile, our lawmakers continue to take special interest money from the fossil fuel industry, including $198,000 collectively pocketed by nine Democrats in 2018 and subsequently chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

It's time to focus on changes in the way we do business and how we measure success in the economy. Our natural resources are not the concern of a single district, or state, or government agency, but a global intersectional concern. As one of the country's six biodiversity hotspots and a leader of the environmental justice movement, San Francisco must continue to show bold leadership. We need representatives to take a humans-first approach to the climate emergency.