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(Photo courtesy of UNFCCC, under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license)
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On Sunday January 22nd, we mark
eleven years of salons! The 132nd Sustainability Salon, on Zoom (4 p.m. to 7 or so), will reflect on the
COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt last November, and the UN's COP process to bring global efforts to bear on the climate crisis.
Michele Fetting of the
Breathe Project and
The Climate Institute will provide a primer on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (
UNFCC) and the Conference of the Parties (
COP), and will share some of her observations from the recent COP27 summit as well as plans for COP28 in Dubai next year.
Josh Knauer was also in Egypt, sharing his work with ReSeed using carbon markets to encourage and sustain better agricultural practices among small farmers in developing countries.
Past COP attendee Mark Dixon -- also a local filmmaker, photographer, and air quality & climate activist -- will share his own reflections on the COP process and will help frame our conversation.
Order of the program? First, Josh will reprise his COP27 talk, then we'll take a deep dive into COPs past and future with Michele and Mark. Atmospheric and climate scientist Neil Donahue will also be with us for part of the time.
Check back here for updates or additions! In the meantime, some other items of note:
• Jan 10: Pittsburgh Regional Transit is holding a BRT online information session on the proposed bus-only lanes in downtown Pittsburgh, Uptown, and Oakland. More info and registration here.
• Jan 17: Learn about EVs at a free workshop offered by Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities and CCAC. Register here.
• Jan 17: We shouldn't be extracting fossil carbon to burn for energy or to turn into plastics, let alone release it into the atmosphere directly. Learn more about the climate and health impacts of methane, and how you can influence new EPA rules, in this webinar. Also, sign this petition (or make your own comments directly)!
• Jan 18: Allegheny County Council recently passed a ban on fracking in and under county parks, though Deer Lakes Park had already been compromised. Now Range Resources wants to add a compressor station at that well site, further endangering residents and park users. Please sign this petition to help prevent that by January 18th.
• Jan 19: An ill-conceived development project threatens a forested hillside in Hazelwood. Please sign this petition to help stop it, before the Urban Redevelopment Authority meets on January 19th.
And forests are threatened nationwide. Wildfires, fossil energy and petrochemical projects, and other development projects. Three more petitions:
• Tell the Forest Service to do its job and protect our forests from further fragmentation by gas pipelines. This will likely lead you to another petition, encouraging the Army Corps of Engineers to deny permits for the same pipeline, the Mountain Valley, to cross waterways.
• Tell Atlanta to keep their promise to keep their biggest urban forest the centerpiece of their resilience plan, instead of a giant police and fire training facility (in the middle of a majority-Black community already dealing with environmental contamination as well as a long and troubled history with policing). More information at that site, and also in this article which looks at many different perspectives. Three Pittsburghers were arrested in the January 18th raid that also killed one other.
• Jan 20-21: The 25th Pittsburgh Racial Justice Summit looks back to see how far we've come in the last 25 years. Friday evening keynote and Saturday workshops, once again at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; more information and registration here.
• Jan 23: Air Quality Town Hall on why the EPA needs to meet with residents of our region. Info and registration here.
• Jan 25: Webinar on blue hydrogen (noon)
• Jan 25: Webinar on methane and pollution (6:30 p.m.)
• Jan 28: Seed Swap at the Monroeville Public Library. Info and registration here.
• Feb 19: Zoom panel on moving from environmental racism to environmental justice (7 p.m.). More information and registration here.
• Students at Shaler Area High School have partnered with the Allegheny Land Trust to protect open space in their community and enhance butterfly habitat with native plants. They've put together a fundraiser to help acquire a parcel of former farmland.
•. During the Climate Convergence in June, we placed a countdown Climate Clock in the Pennsylvania Capitol. We petitioned to make this installation permanent, and were largely successful!
•. The petition we spoke about a few months ago is also still relevant: https://www.fixharrisburg.com/• PRC continues to hold online workshops about composting, rainwater harvesting, and waste reduction.
• Did you see the film The Story of Plastic, or the PBS doc Plastic Wars? (and/or join us for Plastic Paradise at a winter film salon six 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!
Talks and discussion will run from 4 p.m. to 7 or so on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days). You're welcome to join the call for informal conversation after 3 p.m., 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. Past topics have included 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, 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!).
Past COP attendee Mark Dixon -- also a local filmmaker, photographer, and air quality & climate activist -- will share his own reflections on the COP process and will help frame our conversation. 
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