CLIMATE CROWD
Students lead climate strike in Pittsburgh
Maria Isabel Viegas, a first-year student at the University of Pittsburgh, addresses a crowd of young people on the steps of the Downtown City-County Building on Friday. They gathered for the 2019 Pittsburgh Climate Strike. Story,
Leandra Mira, an 18-year-old from Upper St. Clair, has spent each Friday for the past four months outside the City-County Building in a mostly solitary vigil aimed at alerting local political leaders to what she calls “the climate crisis.”
On Friday she found out she is not alone.
The 18-year-old was joined by more than 500 mostly young, energetic and like-minded friends who, in speeches, chants and song amplified her message that action is needed now to save the planet from the worst consequences of climate change.
“I want Pennsylvania to declare a climate emergency,” said Ms. Mira. “With this big event, we want to send a message to local politicians that we want action. With something like today, there’s hope for change. And whether they want it or not, change is coming.”
The gathering outside the CityCounty Building was part of the Global Climate Strike, in which hundreds of thousands of young people around the world, many skipping school, demonstrated to demand political action now in the run-up to a United Nations climate action summit scheduled for Monday in New York City.
The worldwide strike was inspired in part by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, a Swedish student and activist who views climate action by the U.S. and other nations as shamefully slow. She is scheduled to speak at the U.N. summit on Monday.
Thousands of young people took to the streets in nations around the globe, including Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Germany.
In New York City and Portland, Ore., students were excused from school to attend. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, who briefly attended the gathering, offered to cosign school absence permission slips for those in attendance.
The move by the mayor, a Democrat, was labeled a “stunt” by the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, which said the “debate over climate change and human activity is a complex argument being held at the corner of
science and politics.”
Ms. Mira said local activism is needed to get political leaders to end emissions of toxic compounds and greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
“The scientists are telling us that fossil fuel emissions need to end,” Ms. Mira said. “And that means fossil fuel extraction needs to stop.”
A handful of young speakers made similar points in speeches before the group marched through Downtown, chanting and waving homemade signs with clever and sometimes ominous warnings, including “I’d be in school if the world was cool,” “Make America Green Again,” and “There is no planet B: Act Now.”
Maria Isabel Villegas, 18, a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh who grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said she saw climate change impacts up close in recent years when two powerful hurricanes, Irma and Maria, caused widespread devastation in the Caribbean.
“I’m a survivor of the climate crisis that’s happening as we speak. Those hurricanes are just a taste of things to come if we don’t act now,” Ms. Villegas said. “We still have time, but not much. I encourage all of you to stand up for our future.”
Adam Garber, 11, a fifth grader at Trafford Elementary School, said his family had been unsuccessfully fighting shale gas drilling companies that have placed four drilling pads containing 35 wells around his school during the past four years. He said he told Gov. Tom Wolf about it during a meeting in Harrisburg.
“He wanted to ignore us, but I told him to stop making excuses. We have a right to clean air and water and a healthy planet,” he said. “I learned that a fifth grader can say something and make a difference. But kids should be in school, not here fighting for our future.”
The Mt. Lebanon School District canceled classes Friday due to a water main break, but Noah Klaber, 12, said he and his family were planning to come to the rally anyway.
“Climate change is not a good thing,” said the sixth grader. “We should be helping the Earth, not destroying it. We need to let the world know that we need to make things better or lose it.”
The world has warmed about 1 degree Celsius, equal to 1.8 degree Fahrenheit, since before the Industrial Revolution, and scientists attribute more than 90 percent of the increase to emissions of heat-trapping gases from fuel burning and other human activity.
Scientists say global warming will subject the Earth to rising seas and more heat waves, droughts, powerful storms, flooding and other problems, and that some have already started manifesting themselves, making recordbreaking high temperatures twice as likely as record-setting low temperatures during the past two decades, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.