This Is How Pittsburgh Is Taking Climate Action

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This Is How Pittsburgh Is Taking Climate Action

By District Energy posted 09-08-2017 11:46

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Clean Technica

With just three words, Pittsburgh was thrust into the center of the global climate fight. And boy, did it come out swinging.

Until earlier this summer, the city of Pittsburgh may not have come immediately to mind when you thought of major cities leading the climate fight. Indeed, anyone outside of western Pennsylvania could be forgiven for having a dated idea about Steel City. Its very name calls to mind blast furnaces bellowing clouds of smoke into the air. Then there’s the “Pittsburgh coal bed,” the thickest and most extensive coal bed in the Appalachian Basin.

There’s a reason for this perception of the city. Thanks to all the industry in the region, by the 1940s, the air was so heavy with soot and smog and smoke that the city’s streetlamps remained lit 24 hours a day. And by the early 80s, as Pittsburgh was weathering the fall of its steel industry and the closure of coal mines, the adjusted unemployment rate hit a devastating 17.1 percent in the greater metropolitan area.