Chung-Man Tam 🇺🇸

San Francisco needs a reset. Our city charter is one of the longest in the country. It is bloated. It is broken. And it only works for the people who know how to manipulate it—not everyday San Franciscans. Today, I’m proposing reforms to clean up our city charter and make the government, and me, more accountable to you. Here is the breakdown. First: we are going to fix the city’s broken contracting system to make sure that your tax dollars are being spent efficiently and transparently. By bringing contracting under one entity, the City Administrator, we can set consistent citywide standards that will cut red tape, reduce delays, and save taxpayer dollars. Second: we are going to make our ballots shorter and simpler. That long voter packet that you received in 2024 had 15 ballot measures on it. In the same election, Oakland had 3. San Jose had 1. San Francisco makes it so easy to put things on the ballot that our elected officials don’t have to do their jobs. The result? San Franciscans have to fill out lengthy, confusing ballots, including contradictory measures and sometimes poorly written laws. This will ensure that ballot measures reflect real citywide priorities—and that elected officials focus on the job voters sent them here to do: delivering results for the people of San Francisco. Third: accountability. San Franciscans expect our city to deliver world-class services. To do that, we need to be able to hold those in leadership accountable. But right now, our charter rewards bureaucracy and scatters responsibility—protecting those in power, even if they have demonstrated serious ethical lapses. These reforms would change that to ensure that when San Franciscans elect a mayor, they know who is responsible for delivering results. San Franciscans elect people to run their government, and those leaders should be accountable for whether it works. If it doesn’t, you should know exactly who to hold responsible—that’s the point of elections. This package of reforms is about results. It’s about accountability. It’s about making City Hall work for San Francisco.

Today I’m going to tell you why I chose reforestation as my climate change solution to back. There are many proposed solutions to the climate crisis. Why did I choose this one? Well, reforestation is not just a solution unto itself, it is part of a grand climate strategy. I want to solve all of climate change. I want it to be a solved problem. Comprehensively, conclusively, in a very real sense. But I cannot do it alone. Climate change is an enormous, planetary-scale problem, and it will not be solved by any one person, or solution, or any single country. It is a global issue, and it’s really complicated. So here is why global reforestation FIRST is the key wedge needed to enable a global effort to truly, comprehensively, overcome our climate crisis. Remember - the key advantages of global reforestation as a strategy: It is simple, reliable, and universally accessible. Of course there are quite a few practical hurdles. But compared to all the solutions, achieving planetary scale with global forest restoration is one of the least complicated. Unlike high-tech solutions, it is broadly understandable and anyone can participate. The ability to plant trees, to restore forests is within reach of any human being, in any country. Why, if every human being alive planted only 1 tree a month, we’d approach a trillion trees after only a decade (try the math!). Not every human being can put up solar panels or drive an electric car (all fine things to do, btw). But every human being can plant 1 tree a month. The ability for anyone to pitch in is important because climate change is a global issue. To sustain our will to walk such a long path, we need a vision that all 8 billion of us, all stakeholders, can join in on. Like all the solutions that have been proposed, reforestation by itself will not solve climate change. The latest scientific consensus says that it will sequester maybe a third of all existing emissions. And if we do a bunch of clever things where we restore desertified lands with irrigated water from cheap solar desalination, we might get up to 2/3rds. (Those are very large fractions! Current solutions all still fall under 1% of the problem!) And here is the key: Solving climate change, and keeping it solved, and advancing our civilization and the quality of lives while doing it is a huge, worldwide movement that requires everyone working together. And right now, the world isn’t really in the right mood, the right mindset. We’re pretty down on ourselves. There’s economic strife, political upheaval, outright wars, and it looks like international consensus to work together on big problems is not too strong. There’s no confidence, no belief, that we can collectively solve big problems. And so we muck about, arguing with each other, avoiding the hard questions. In tech, our most optimistic minds today are racing ahead on AI, hoping to build a super-intelligent god quickly enough in the hopes that it will save us all. That is not really optimism, that is desperation. But this is what success in global forest restoration is really for. Because by itself, reforestation won’t solve climate change. It will just solve a big part of it. But when we succeed in doing so, we will succeed in a way where everyone was able to be part of the solution. And that is valuable beyond measure. If we declared a crisis and then a handful of billionaires solved it, it would barely register. All that would do is feed their egos, re-affirm their superior status, and further concentrate their power. We would not - as a species, as mankind - we would not GROW from that. What sets reforestation apart is the fact that it is simple, so everyone can understand it, and everyone, in every country, can play a part. This is crucial. When the day of victory comes, and we have restored all of the world’s ancient forests and then some, when we have solved 1/3rd, or 2/3rds - some great fraction - of the climate change problem, it will not just be a small group of people, a small group of countries. No, it will be people ALL OVER THE WORLD, GREAT AND SMALL, who can say - “We did this! We were part of this solution! We can do it!” THAT is the ultimate goal, the master plan. Reforestation is not just a simple, reliable, universally accessible, and immediately scalable solution. It is all those things, yes. It is also the solution that everyone can contribute to, because once that day comes, when we have succeeded, it will be a success that everyone realizes they were a part of. It will be a victory that gives the world confidence. It will show everyone that collectively, all of us, we can work together to achieve great things, and solve enormous planetary-scale problems. Everyone will know that this solution came about because we chose to bring it about. We can choose to solve planetary-scale problems, to work together, and succeed. Climate change - on that day - will not yet be fully solved. But enough of it will be, and nearly everyone will have been a part of it. And we will all look upon our work and realize what is possible. And that confidence is what mankind needs. With that confidence we will easily close the gap, we will easily mobilize ourselves to solve the remaining environmental and ecological issues and we will know a grander scope of what is possible for mankind. Forevermore, our restored beautiful planet will be a monument to remind us - that together we can accomplish great things and solve any problem, no matter how daunting. That confidence - that existence proof - the knowledge that we can do it. That is our true goal, a worthy one, for it will be a gift. A gift to our children, to the future - for we are ancestors.

My new coding workflow as an ex-PM: 1. Have an idea for a feature in mind 2. Write that in the Cursor chat box in a scrappy format 3. Ask Claude-3.7-thinking to plan for the feature, write a complete design docs without a single line of code (continue in next thread...)