Dear friends: The following petition was delivered today to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors (California) urging them to break the status quo by issuing a Climate Change Major Disaster Declaration for Sonoma County, home to the costliest 2017 fire storms in the history of California. May this petition inspire you to produce similar petitions were you live. Only massive and speedy action can stop Climate Change. Elliott City, in the Baltimore Region of the State of Maryland just gave us another example of how ignoring Climate Change brings repetitive suffering and destruction (see link). Just a few days ago, Ellicott City endured a second 1000-year flood that had torrents of water running as high as the second floor of buildings along its main street. The previous 1000-year flood had been in 2016 and since then the city embarked in reconstruction without investing heavily in preparing for another mega flood. The results have been devastating. PETITION SONOMA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS ISSUE A CLIMATE CHANGE MAJOR DISASTER DECLARATION NOW Santa Rosa, California May 31st, 2018 The organizations and individuals signing below respectfully urge the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to issue an official, public, binding, in-writing and detailed Climate Change Major Disaster Declaration by June 10th, 2018. The purpose of such a Declaration is to immediately commit all the resources of the County of Sonoma to Climate Restoration and to Climate Change Adaptation to minimize the effects of future Climate Change-Related Disasters to come, in order to transform Sonoma County into a Climate Change-Ready County. The May 8th, 2018 Climate Change Action Resolution by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors supporting the Climate Action 2020 Plan will be upgraded to binding by the Climate Change Major Disaster Declaration, with the greater goal of turning Sonoma County into a Greenhouse Gases Emissions-Negative territory in the shortest possible time, and to guide the urgent Climate Change Adaptation work, particularly needed for the prevention and fighting of fires. Furthermore, the purpose of such a Declaration is for the County to become eligible to receive external funding and other resources from State, Federal and private sources. Sonoma County has been in an undeclared state of emergency since the October 2017 Fire Storms which is threatening the chances for a future in which Sonomans can survive and thrive. The rebuilding of the 5,283 homes destroyed in the October, 2017 Fire Storms does not have a clear and intelligent master plan to minimize the chances of being destroyed again by the forces of Climate Change. Additionally, the rebuilding (in any form) is unlikely with an average insurance gap for the owners of those destroyed homes of $317,000, totaling a deficit of funding close to $1.7 billion. The deterioration of the Climate due to human economies' Greenhouse Gas Emissions is happening at a rate faster that what the most pessimistic scientists have predicted. Such a deterioration is shown in real disasters such as the mega fires in California and the hurricanes in the South Eastern United States, and in the worsening of the parameters of the Climate such as: the slowing down of the Gulf Stream, CO2 atmospheric readings of over 410 ppm, increasing average air and water temperatures, increasing wind speeds, irreversible melting of land ice masses, massive reduction of sea ice, etc. Our own California Governor, Jerry Brown, has recently projected the death of three to four billion humans if Climate Change is not radically acted upon, and has recognized that, not even California is doing nearly enough to stop such devastation. The Climate Change Major Disaster Declarations are a powerful tool to turn around the trajectory of self destruction and of destruction of the biosphere we, and most of the rest of humanity, are currently in. Please heed our demand to save everything we love. ISSUE A CLIMATE CHANGE MAJOR DISASTER DECLARATION NOW. Keep on promoting this petition and act locally. We need binding Declarations not sugar-coated non-binding Resolutions.