Nov 6: Sustainability Salon on Pittsburgh's Air

For the 118th Sustainability Salon, we'll return to Zoom, and to our annual autumn focus on Air Quality. 

The Group Against Smog & Pollution (GASP, on whose board I serve) has been working to improve the air in our region for the past 52 years through education, advocacy, and litigation.  From school programs and our blog (a valuable clearinghouse of air-quality news and information) to lawsuits and technical comments on pollution permits, GASP both informs the public and holds polluters and regulators to account.  One recent achievement is helping Allegheny County create new episodic air pollution regulations to curtail industry pollution during occasional atmospheric inversions.  Project Manager (and past Executive Director) Sue Seppi will talk about the new coke oven rules that GASP helped develop at the County level (and U.S. Steel's reluctance to accept them) -- and will introduce the organization's new Executive Director, Patrick Campbell.  

Allegheny County Clean Air Now (ACCAN) was formed by people living downwind of the Shenango coke plant on Neville Island.  That plant shut down in 2015, but it was not alone among industrial polluters on the island.  Since 2018, ACCAN has been monitoring (with a camera and air monitor set up in collaboration with CMU's CREATE Lab) a company called Metalico operating an automobile and scrap metal shredder, producing a lot of toxic emissions that often blow into Emsworth Borough and beyond. ACCAN documented the emissions, and the data were used in an EPA enforcement action.  On top of all that, this spring a giant heap of mixed materials caught fire there, sending noxious fumes into surrounding neighborhoods.  ACCAN members Angelo Taranto and Karen Grzywinski (also on the GASP board) will share the group's work on issues related to Neville Island and other sources around the region.

Activist and filmmaker Mark Dixon has been working to establish a network of air monitors surrounding the almost-completed ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, providing fine particle and VOC measurements to supplement EPA devices and Shell's own fenceline monitors.  Mark will also bring us up to date on his documentary-in-progress, Inversion:  The Unfinished Business of Pittsburgh's Air (and we'll screen some samples of the film!).

Check back here on MarensList for more details as the event approaches!  

Upcoming salons:  The annual Consumption theme will return on December 11th.  January's topic is TBA, but in February we'll continue our virtual walk through the woods -- Part 2 of our Urban Forest series -- with Forest Restoration.  

In the meantime, a few other items of note:

•  Also on the air front, the fourth annual resident-led Town Hall on Our Right To Clean air will be on October 26th at noon (via Zoom).  All the information's here.  You'll also be able to find the video here -- and please sign the petition here!  

•  November 2:  Don't forget to vote!  (if you haven't already)

•  Curious about RGGI?  Join Climate Reality Project's webinar on November 3rd (7 p.m., online). 

•  More on air and health:  a regional summit on asthma, on November 5th (8-4:30, virtual).

•  The ninth annual Shale & Public Health Conference will be on November 16 & 17 (12-4 each day, also on Zoom).

•  The next Sustainability Salon will be on December 11th, on Consumption and the History of Plastics

• Mask update:  Breathe99 masks (featured at November's 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.  

•  We cover a lot of important topics at Sustainability Salons.  If you're looking to get involved in any of them, feel free to connect with me (email with "salon" in the Subject is always a good method) and I can probably find a good match!  I also often post job opportunities on the Resources side of MarensList.  

Talks and discussion will run from 3 p.m. (usually 4 p.m.) to 7:30 or so on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days).  You're welcome to join the call for informal conversation after 3 p.m. (today, about protecting street trees from construction), and we aim to start the main program right around 4.  If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful.  If you RSVP via Eventbrite, you'll receive the Zoom registration link right away.  If you're not already on my Eventbrite 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!

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;  it's a house party (if there weren't a pandemic) with an environmental theme.  Each month we have featured speakers on various aspects of a particular topic, interspersed with stimulating conversation, lively debate, delectable potluck food and drink, and music-making through the evening (though the potluck and the music are on hiatus during the pandemic, so you're on your own for the delectables).

Past topics have included 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, 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!).

Coronavirus update:   As you know, people in Pittsburgh and around the world are sequestered at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Social distancing is still the rule for most Americans.  That's a bit of a misnomer, though -- we need physical distancing to flatten the curve, but technology now allows for rich interactions even so!  I believe that community is one of our greatest strengths, so in March as events began to be cancelled, I hosted the first virtual Sustainability Salon via Zoom teleconference -- rather than gathering our usual 50-80 people in a contained space.   It went quite well (even engaging participants from hundreds of miles away), and we're looking forward to June's salon!  Please be sure to RSVP (via email with "salon" in the Subject: line, or via Eventbrite) so you'll receive the sign-on information.  

And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all.  Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours.  Conversations would continue through the evening, as well.  With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!