Students: Mayor Gainey, please focus on environmental justice
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Dear Mayor Gainey:
We are high school students concerned about climate change and the environment. Through our firsthand experiences and the stories that we have heard, we believe that it is essential to share our voice for the future of Pittsburgh and the world. We urge you to fulfill and enhance your campaign promises of environmental justice by creating a comprehensive climate action plan.
We find the vague statements of “continuing” the work of the previous administration to be insufficient, since we know that there is much more to be done.
Air quality is a pressing issue in our city that places a heavy burden on its residents. While many of us have lived here our entire lives, others have moved to Pittsburgh from other locations.
Several of us found the air to be detrimental to our health, and one of our members experienced several asthma attacks — which led to pneumonia — within the first few months after moving to the city. Furthermore, respiratory issues are especially problematic for our city’s Black and brown communities, often due to the industrial location of lower-income areas.
Polluters, such as gas-well frackers, will continue to harm these communities, and no argument for jobs or profits can make up for the health deficits that people in those areas suffer. We urge you to join with other mayors to put pressure on Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald to ban fracking in Allegheny County, as has been done in the city proper. More environmental actions on the part of Fitzgerald are essential for our Pittsburgh community and beyond, and you have a unique position to push for this change.
We would also like to see substantial upgrades to our public transportation system. For one thing, Pittsburgh’s bus system is generally untimely. While some routes are packed, others are mostly empty. Both the buses and the city’s light rail system poorly connect many parts of the city. While more lines would be favorable, a bus schedule made to optimize timeliness would also be helpful.
As well as improving the foundational system itself, working conditions for bus drivers must be improved and wages must be increased to reduce strain. Additionally, through public advertisements, we ask that you encourage the use of public transportation and carpooling, which many people do not currently take advantage of. We ask that you take these improvements to the county executive and use your position to fight for our communities.
We also ask you to take more direct actions within the city. We would like to see you expand upon creating more equitably distributed green space and planting trees. While wealthier neighborhoods such as Squirrel Hill and Point Breeze are filled with parks, the green spaces of other areas like East Liberty and Garfield are more limited and not as well maintained. We would also like to see you use your public influence to encourage a shift away from the use of pesticides in yards.
Lastly, we would like you to make sure that a ban on plastic bags gets passed. While this act might seem trivial in the face of the monolith of climate change, decreasing the demand for plastic and lessening the amount of litter in our watersheds would be a big step in the right direction. A ban on other single-use plastics would go even further.
As you consider your future policies, we ask that you keep the looming threat of the climate crisis in mind, because the actions that we take now will be essential in protecting our city and the world from the worst of the effects. We might not be able to vote or run for office yet, but what is done now will be essential to keeping this planet livable for our generation and all those to come.
We admire your thoughtful intentions and believe strongly in your potential as our mayor. Thank you for considering our concerns.
Sincerely,
Vanessa Gonzalez-Rychner
Tadao Tomokiyo
Ilyas Khan
Felix Gamper
Rho Bloom-Wang
Frankie Mizikowski
Brynne McSorley
The writers are members of the Climate Changers club at Winchester Thurston School, Shadyside.