Editor,

San Francisco just began running in a race where the starting gun fired decades ago. 

As you might imagine, we’re way behind where we need to be, though the teams we’re running against aren’t doing a lot better. Many of them are just standing around, some haven’t even gotten to the starting line, and some are pretending there is no race.  And us?  We’ve taken a few baby steps forward; we’ve finally started.  But in this race for survival, the race to mitigate and adapt to climate change while we can still have an impact, San Francisco’s final standing will have more to do with running now than with waiting for everyone else to start, too. 

San Francisco has taken a few baby steps, and that’s good. This race is an ultramarathon; we need to be sprinting flat out right now.

Ellen Koivisto