At a climate forum in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Mayor William Peduto said he opposes construction of any new petrochemical facilities in the region because of their long-term toll on climate, the environment, public health and even the local economy.
Mr. Peduto, speaking at the Climate Action Summit in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, also was sharply critical of area industries that refuse to acknowledge the dire threats posed by ongoing climate change or join efforts to combat it.
“Let me be the first to say that I oppose any additional petrochemical facilities,” he said, the statement almost drowned out by cheers and applause from more than 350 people in the audience. “We do not have to become the petrochemical and plastics center of the U.S.”
Mr. Peduto said the corporations and culture of the region continue to support extractive industries and petrochemical facility development tied to the region’s shale gas boom, and that must change if the region is to move ahead economically.
Royal Dutch Shell is building an ethane-cracking plant in Potter, Beaver County, and four or five other such projects are under consideration.
“Groups asked me to oppose the Shell cracker plant, but the ring is out of that bell and we can’t put it back,” Mr. Peduto said. “But building more such operations will come at a cost of new companies looking at and locating in Pittsburgh.
“Companies don’t want to live in a frack field or downwind from more petrochemical plants. Living downwind has a direct effect.”
Leann Leiter, Pennsylvania & Ohio field advocate for Earthworks, a national environmental organization, thanked the mayor for taking a stand against petrochemical facility shale gas development.
“This long-awaited statement recommits us to our economic rebound by embracing the future and moving past a fossil fuel based economy that poisons communities and threatens the climate,” she said.
But Darrin Kelly, president of the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, which represents 100,000 workers in the region, said the mayor shouldn’t oppose creating thousands of jobs in the region.
“While I respect the mayor’s opinion, I wholeheartedly disagree with it,” Mr. Kelly said in a Twitter statement. “Calling to banish an entire industry is an insult to a lot of good hard-working men and women in organized labor and their entire way of life.”
However, speakers at the climate meeting said continuing to invest in and operate fossil fuel based industries when scientists say the world needs to quickly end carbon emissions is an insult to future generations who will live on a much hotter and changed planet.
Grant Oliphant, president of The Heinz Endowments, one of the hosts of the summit along with p4 Pittsburgh and Sustainable Pittsburgh, said the shale gas and petrochemical industries are expanding at the same time climate scientists say the globe must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 or face “cataclysmic consequences.”
“The region is transforming into the next petroscape, a landscape of pipelines and wells,” Mr. Oliphant said. “They tell us it’s the price of prosperity, but on a rapidly warming planet it is a false promise.”
David Wallace-Wells, author of The New York Times bestseller “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,” said half of all the fossil fuel emissions by man have occurred in the past 30 years.
“That means that we’ve done more damage in the last 30 years than in all the centuries before that and we’ve done it knowingly,” he said, adding that in 2018 carbon emissions set a new record and this year will set a new record again.
“Not only are we not moving quickly in the right direction,” he said. “We’re also moving in the wrong direction.”
Climate change impacts are already significant and widespread, Mr. Wallace-Wells said. Two examples: Wildfires are five times worse today than in 1972; and Houston, Texas, has been hit by five 500-year storms in the past five years.
Mr. Wallace-Wells said there is a silver lining.
“The climate changes we see are a reflection of the power we have over the climate,” he said. “So since man is the main driver of climate change, we can rewrite the story.”
The future, he said, will be filled with massive solar arrays, a new, non-wasteful energy grid, a new kind of plane that runs on electricity, a new kind of locally based agriculture, meat grown in a laboratory, and massive carbon capture from billions of new trees and carbon capture technology.
“But more than new technology we need new politics,” Mr. Wallace-Wells said. “In a world as divided as ours, we need to pursue a positive, collective and global response. We’re not going to be able to beat climate change, so we have to learn to live with it.”
Joylette Portlock, executive director of Sustainable Pittsburgh, found hope in what she said is a “major shift” in public opinion about climate change.
“Polls show 70% of Americans think climate change is affecting the economy and most think government is doing too little about it. Businesses are building sustainability into their bottom lines.”
Mr. Peduto said there’s a myth that anyone who wants to work on climate change strategies is “bad for business,” and it’s an attitude that goes well beyond the fossil fuel industry.
“If we stay in that culture, in that mindset, the region will be left behind economically,” he said. “There’s $1 trillion on the blocks for green and clean energy in the U.S. presently, and $56 trillion available over the next 10 years globally. The question is do we want a seat at that table or do we bury our heads in the sand?”
The opportunity for investment in green energy and a clean environment also carries with it a responsibility to transition workers from the old jobs to the new employment opportunities in solar, wind and other green industries, Mr. Peduto said.
“People will choose false hope over no hope every time,” Mr. Peduto said. “If we want to move them from opponents to environmentalists we need to put a paycheck in their hands.”
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983 or on Twitter @donhopey.
First Published: October 31, 2019, 10:36 a.m.