July 27: Sustainability Salon on Air Science into Policy -- Across the Atlantic

Peat briquettes in a stove, heating a borrowed cottage in Balinderry, Co. Tipperary (Ireland) in 1995.  

For the 162nd Sustainability Salon, we'll continue our Transatlantic series -- looking at policy approaches to environmental issues in Ireland and in our own region.  

Thirty years ago, much of Ireland had a noticeable smell.  Not unpleasant to many a nose, but also not healthy.   A lot of turf, or peat, was burned for residential heating; we stayed for a while in a friend's rustic cottage warmed by a peat fire, and there was a peat fire in every pub we visited that autumn.  Now, that distinctive scent is quite rare, just a nostalgic whiff here and there.  Why?  A ban on the sale of smoky solid fuels like coal, peat, and unseasoned wood was implemented across the country in 2022.  John Wenger is an atmospheric chemist, a professor at University College Cork, and the director of UCC's Center for Research into Atmospheric Chemistry -- and he had a lot to do with enacting that regulation.  He'll give us a window into the cultural context, the air quality issue, and the process leading to the law.  

Southwestern Pennsylvania, of course, has struggled with air pollution for centuries.  The steel industry has dominated the scene, along with coal power generation, transportation, and now the petrochemical industry.  The Group Against Smog & Pollution has worked to improve our region's air for over 55 years, doing policy advocacy, legal work, and air-quality education for policymakers and the public. GASP executive director Patrick Campbell will reflect on how environmental regulations happen here, and how our regulatory landscape compares to that in Ireland.  

Years ago, GASP helped develop diesel idling regulations which were first enacted for Allegheny County, and then implemented statewide.  More recently, the adverse health effects of thermal inversions -- which can trap pollution generated in river valleys, as happened most famously in the deadly incidents in Donora (1948) and London (1952) -- have come under scrutiny.  Atmospheric inversion events have continued to occur over the years, and in 2022 the Mon Valley Air Pollution Episode Rule was passed.  It's not a complete solution, but is a step to curtail emissions during inversions.  Patrick will share the story of motivating, developing, and passing these and other regulations.

And we'll be joined by a Pittsburgh scientist with rare insights into the federal regulatory process -- how it is supposed to work, and how it sometimes doesn't:  we'll hear about some of the shenanigans during the first Orange administration, when they ejected scientists from the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee Particulate Matter Review Panel -- since they do government-funded research so must have a conflict of interest!  (leaving all of those conflict-free industry representatives on the panel, of course).  Peter Adams served on that panel, and is the head of Engineering and Public Policy at CMU, and a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering.  He's also director of the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies.

The next salon will be on August 31st.  There are also a whole lot of other important events happening in our region;  check out the list below!

This salon will be on Zoom.  You can join the Zoom starting at 3 if you'd like to chat , and the talks and discussion usually wind down sometime around 7 or so; join us for whatever time works for you!  If you're not already on my salon email list, please email me (maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with "salon" in the Subject line to be added -- and let me know how you heard about salons!  If you RSVP via Eventbrite, you'll receive the Zoom registration link right away. Along about Saturday night/Sunday morning, I'll send it out again, with other information, to all who have RSVP'd.  If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful. 

Other events and whatnot (times are EDT):

•  June 23-28:  Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice:  COP30 and Beyond.  More information and registration here. 

•  July 11:  Family fun and air education!  Protect PT presents Crafting for our Future: Kids for Clean Air.  4-6 p.m. in the pavilion at Bartlett playground in Schenley Park;  more information and registration here. 

•  July 12:  Pittsburgh's Environmental Action Day, starting with a rally at the City-County Building followed by a short march to more activities on the waterfront.  9-noon;  more information and registration here.

•  July 12:  7th annual Swissvale Edible Garden Tour.   9 a.m. - 1 p.m. open gardens;  info at the Farmers' Market.  1:30-3:30 p.m., community picnic at the market.  More details here.

•  July 15:  In response to an AI summit at CMU convened by Senator McCormick (and featuring the current US president), there's a rally on Flagstaff Hill (10 a.m. -3 p.m.).  More details here, courtesy of Sunrise Pittsburgh.

•  July 15:  The 16th SWPA Grassroots Town Hall on Our Right to Clean Air -- this time, health consequences of air pollution, and funding for the Allegheny County Health Department's Air Quality Program.  7 p.m. on Zoom;  Register here. 

•  July 16:  Are you an urban gardener?  Join Grow Pittsburgh for an urban soil health workshop:  Lessons Learned in Lead Remediation.  (6-8 p.m. at be.wilder farm in Wilkinsburg; more info and registration here)

•  July 21:  Webinar on the federal administration's Liquified Natural Gas Hazardous Rail Proposal to strip away the ban on LNG transport by rail.  7 p.m. on Zoom; more info and registration here. 

•  July 22:  Learn about local moth species that depend on particular trees at this free Lunch & Learn webinar presented by Tree Pittsburgh.  (Noon, via Zoom;  more info and registration here)

•  July 23:  "The Data Center Next Door:  Hidden Costs and Harms of Artificial Intelligence Development" a virtual roundtable with Senator Markey (MA) and frontline advocates and allies.  Noon;  register here.

•  July 30 & Aug 13:  One Million Rising: virtual training on strategic non-cooperation to fight authoriatianism.  Wednesdays, 8-9:30 p.m.  More information and registration here.  A recording is available for the previous session.

•  July 31:  Webinar:  "Why is My Electricity Bill So High?" (part 2;  you can see Part 1 here). Learn about our PJM grid's over-reliance on costly, outdated fossil fuels could mean even higher costs down the line.  6-7 p.m.;  more information and registration here. 

•  July 31:  InvolveMint invites businesses in greater Penn Hills to a Circular Economy Happy Hour.  6:30 p.m. at the Penn Hills Charter School of Entrepreneurship (2501 Main St. 15235).  More information and registration here. 

•  Aug 4:  The EPA is threatening to revoke the Endangerment Finding (the basis for emission limits on greenhouse gases).  Join Congress member Yassamin Ansari, Moms Clean Air Force, and other organizations for an action workshop.  7:30-8:45 p.m.; more information and registration here.

•  Aug 31:  The 163rd Sustainability Salon. 

•  Sept 18-20:  Building worker power where unions were born:  the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum's Camp Solidarity in historic Matewan, WV.  More information and registration here. 

•  Again, I encourage local folks to sign up for the Indivisible Grassroots Pittsburgh email list, which will bring you lots more listings, more frequently -- email Debra.

•  Training and running AI models requires a lot of energy and water demand for power and cooling. Big tech companies are currently meeting data center resource demands with fossil fuel energy and huge water withdrawals—actions that clearly contradict their sustainability commitments.  Climate Action Now has a petition to pressure Meta to clean up their act.  

•  Energy Transfer is suing Greenpeace for $300M because they supported the Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock (claiming that Greenpeace orchestrated the protests).  This is a classic SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), and itself worthy of protest.  Greenpeace has a petition you can sign.  

•  Liquid and solid waste from gas and oil extraction (much of which is radioactive) is currently being stored in a building (part of a former steel mill, which was never cleaned up properly in the first place) near the municipal drinking water source for thousands of people in Martins Ferry, Ohio.  The facility had a permit for 600 tons at a time, but held as much as 10,000 tons.  It is in the floodplain of the Ohio River, and waters rose up to the front doors this spring.  This petition, by Concerned Ohio River Residents, asks officials to halt waste processing there and keep it out of the Source Water Protection Area, clean up the site, and conduct environmental testing and monitoring.  This practice is insane;  we have to stop legitimizing dangerous extractive industries.  

•  Concerned Health Professionals of NY recently released the 9th Edition of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas & Oil Infrastructure.  Check it out!  

•  We know that only a tiny fraction of plastic has ever been recycled.  And yet, NPR has been airing sponsorship messages for the American Recycling Council, which is continuing to perpetrate the "recycling" hoax.  Does that make your blood boil?  The national group Beyond Plastics has a petition/sign-on letter to get them to stop -- please sign, for yourself or for an organization you represent!

•  It's been well over two years now!  You can support striking Post-Gazette workers here (and consider signing up for the alternative online publication, the Pittsburgh Union Progress -- and maybe even cancel your P-G subscription until they start treating workers fairly!).  This strike has garnered national attention;  one recent picket even made it into Teen Vogue.

•  PRC continues to hold online workshops about composting, rainwater harvesting, and waste reduction.  They have several Hard-to-Recycle events each year; upcoming events are listed here.  For household chemicals, here's the link.

•  The Rachel Carson EcoVillage is still looking for a few more members.  Curious?  You can sign up for an introduction session or sign up as an “inquirer” to have more information sent to you.

•  Have you seen the film Single-Use Planet (hopefully soon to appear on PBS), or The Story of Plastic, or the PBS docs Plastic Wars, Fenceline, and We're All Plastic People Now?  (and/or join us for Plastic Paradise at a winter film salon seven years ago?)  ...What if you could bring up imagery of the toxic impacts of plastic production, and commentary by the people and communities living with them, over the world?  You can do all that with the interactive Toxic Tours tool.  Check it out!  

•  Mask update:  Breathe99 masks (featured in a 2020 salon on Pandemics and Air (video), and one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2020) are now being distributed by Our Children Our Earth, a local purveyor of alternatives to disposables (as well as classy wooden toys).  Contact Dianne via OCOE's Facebook page, or call (412) 772-1638 to coordinate a curbside pickup (or you can still order online).

For the uninitiated, a Sustainability Salon is an educational forum;  it's a mini-conference;  it's a venue for discussion and debate about important environmental issues (and often health, and justice, and politics);  it's a house party with an environmental theme.  Each month we have featured speakers on various aspects of a particular topic, interspersed with stimulating conversation, lively debate, and (when in person) delectable potluck food and drink and music-making through the evening.   Beginning in early 2012, salons were originally a potluck mini-conference;  the event has been either on Zoom or outdoor/hybrid since March 2020.  This event series was featured in the Pittsburgh Media Partnership's Pittsburgh Story project on Civic Catalysts -- here's a piece by The Allegheny Front. 

Past topics have included. air quality education and engagement,  farming and succession, building with wood, food justice, Mutual Aid networks, activism in the coming years, COVID caution and community care, nature education/volunteer programs, air quality, stories that inspire, forest protection, a celebration of the 150th salon, a closer look at our quarter-acre, reducing single-use plastics, water campaigns, climate campaigns, consumerism, air quality campaigns,  movement-building and sustained campaigns, abandoned oil and gas wells, hope (finding it, creating it, using it), addressing environmental causes of cancer, a development proposal for Frick Park, single-use plastic legislation, home energy efficiency (and legislation to help fund improvements), the UN's COP process for climate negotiations, alternatives to single-use packaging, our region's air (part I and part II), activist art and America's Energy Gamble, advocacy opportunities, social justice games, fixing Pennsylvania state government, climate action, forest restoration, the history of American consumerism, regional air quality, preserving Pittsburgh's forests, climate modeling, approaches to pipelines, pipeline hazards, the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the judiciary and fair elections, consumption, pandemics and air,  election law and activism, air quality and environmental justice, social investment,  local economies, the economics of energy, mutual aid networks, ocean health, the rise of the radical right, the back end of consumption, approaches to activism on fracking & climate, air quality, technology, and citizen science, single-use plastics, election activism, election law, whether to preserve existing nuclear power plants, advanced nuclear technologies, passenger and freight trains, consumption, plastics, and pollution, air quality, solar power, youth activism, greening business, greenwashing, the petrochemical buildout in our region, climate/nature/people, fracking, health, & action, globalization, ecological ethics, community inclusion, air quality monitoring, informal gatherings that turn out to have lots of speakers, getting STEM into Congress, keeping Pittsburgh's water public, Shell's planned petrochemical plant, visualizing air quality, the City of Pittsburgh's sustainability initiatives, fossil energy infrastructure, getting money out of politics, community solar power and the Solarize Allegheny program, the Paris climate negotiations (before, during, and after), air quality (again, with news on the autism connection), reuse (of things and substances), neighborhood-scale food systems, other forms of green community revitalization, solar power, climate change, environmental art, environmental education (Part I & Part II), community mapping projects, environmental journalism, grassroots action, Marcellus shale development and community rights, green building, air quality, health care, more solar power, trees and park stewardship, alternative energy and climate policy, regional watershed issues, fantastic film screenings and discussions (often led by filmmakers) over the winter with films on Food Systems, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, Plastic Paradise, Rachel Carson and the Power Of One Voice, Triple Divide on fracking, You've Been Trumped and A Dangerous Game, A Fierce Green Fire, Sustainability Pioneers, films on consumption, Living Downstream, Bidder 70, YERT, Gas Rush Stories, and food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, and more food (a recurrent theme;  with California running out of water, we'd better gear up to produce a lot more of our own!).