Pittsburgh’s Breathe Project, Climate Champions–Helping Us Help You Reforest the Planet, the Clean Air Task Force!

PITTSBURGH’S BREATHE PROJECT

Meet the Breathe Project. It’s a clearinghouse for information on air quality in Pittsburgh, Southwestern Pennsylvania and beyond. The organization uses the best available science and technology to better understand the quality of the air folks in SW PA breathe and provide opportunities for citizens to engage and take action. The Breathe Project does that through a variety of campaigns it sponsors or on which it is a collaborator. An example is its improving air quality in the North Boroughs campaign, along with ACCAN—Allegheny County Clean Air Now. 

Breathe also features local climate change community activists like Angelo Taranto—instrumental in the North Boroughs campaign I just mentioned, and Germaine Patterson—who was “called to do this work” starting in 2019 as a community health worker with the Women for a Healthy Environment group. Why does the Breathe Project matter to us? It’s a fully wholistic organization, starting with local community leaders branching out to an entire region by rooting itself in the communities by collaborating with groups already doing great climate work. Groups like the Center for Coalfield Justice, the 350 Pittsburgh and East End Neighbors. 

DEEPER DIVE: BreatheProject, Coalfield Justice, 350Pittsburgh, East End Neighbor

THE CLIMATE’S CLIMATE CHAMPIONS PROJECT–HELPING US HELP YOU REFOREST THE PLANET

Hey, everybody! Jeffrey and I are super excited about this—in honor of our second anniversary of podcasting The Climate Daily, and from input from some of our faithful listeners who kept asking us, “What else can we do to take positive action to combat climate change, aside from listening to The Climate Daily?”, we are launching The Climate Champions project! What’s a climate champion, you ask? A climate champion proves that a small group of people can make a massive impact on the planet in a short amount of time. 

How? Our company, The Climate, is partnering with over 30 international tree-planting organizations–along with our climate champions– to re-plant, and regrow forests all over the world, by planting ten thousand trees at a time. Why? Because science says the best way to combat climate change is to restore nature. And the fastest way to restore nature is to plant and grow a trillion trees, and the fastest way to plant and grow a trillion trees is to replant and regrow forests. The fastest way to do that is to plant ten thousand trees at a time, 

And the fastest and most fun way to plant ten thousand trees at a time is to fundraise with friends, climate champions. When just 33 people commit to just $3/ day for four months, we can plant and grow 10K trees…a 20-acre forest! Which our tree planting partners will do. They’re the tree-planting professionals.

Surf on over to theclimate.org/change hyphen  champions. Click on the donate button and join our team of climate champions today. $3/day? That’s less than the price of coffee, or a slice of pizza or to pay for parking to grab that coffee or that pizza. And when you do it, you’ll get a social media shout out, a receipt for your taxes, and your whole family will be proud of you. 

Again, Surf on over to theclimate.org/change-champions. Click on the donate button and join our team of climate champions today. And if you want to start your own team of climate champions, reach out to us at info@34.203.12.8. Well help you put together your own small group of change champions to make a massive impact on the planet in a short amount of time, planting 10 thousand trees–a 20-acre forest! 

Wouldn’t it be great to be the change you want to see in the world? Go to theclimate.org/change-champions and become part of something special. Become a climate champion.  Thank you!

DEEPER DIVE: CLIMATE CHAMPIONS

THE CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE

In 1996, when the Clean Air Task Force first came into being, its strategy was simple: enact federal policy to force older coal plants to meet the same emission rates as new plants. According to the CATF website, As a result of its initial efforts even prior to the Obama Administration, coal plants were put on the path to significantly reduce their emissions, saving nearly 13,000 lives per year and avoiding hundreds of thousands of illnesses. 

27 years later, the mission has expanded. Now CATF works to Enact direct carbon limits on power plants, gas as well as coal; commercially develop and deploy technologies that can eliminate carbon emissions from the energy sector, including carbon capture and storage (where fossil fuels will remain a part of the global economy for some time), advanced nuclear energy, and next-generation renewable energy; attack greenhouse gas and climate-damaging emissions such as methane leaks from oil and gas production and black carbon emissions from diesel vehicles, marine shipping, and biomass burning; and ensure bioenergy use is at least carbon neutral and, where possible, carbon negative.

That’s because in the early 2000’s the Clean Air Task Force   recognized that energy efficiency and renewables might not, on their own, be enough to slow global warming at the necessary rate and we needed a deeper and broader strategy to address carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from power generation, as well as fuel production and ultimately transportation and industrial sources, the latter two together representing most global carbon emissions.

Why does the Clean Air Task Force matter to us? Simply put its work to safeguard against the worst impacts of climate change.

DEEPER DIVE: CATF, Climate Home News, EurActiv