Rick Shrum joined the Observer-Reporter as a reporter in 2012, after serving as a section editor, sports reporter and copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rick has won eight individual writing awards, including two Golden Quills.
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Bower-Bjornson was raised in Fredericktown, in a region that was once heavily industrial. She remembers coal barges coursing up and down the Monongahela River and steel mills roaring throughout the river towns. She believes many companies at that time operated without concern for the environment or residents, and anticipates that indifference returning.
Bower-Bjornson said she lived in the Mexican War Streets area of Pittsburgh’s North Side as an adult, “where air from the (area’s) steel mills was not going. All the wealthy people lived there because there was no pollution.”
She said residents of other regional communities were accustomed to industrial operations, “so when oil and gas companies came in, they thought they’d revive the old industrial towns and create jobs. You could almost call it a genetic trait.”
She paused before asking, “At what point do you get rid of that? Yes, energy production in this part of the state has been good. But at what point do you let it go? And if this is a clean energy state, why aren’t we producing more clean energy?
“We have people who worked in the energy sector and they could make the transition to clean energy. And there are jobs there.”
Lack of communication among groups is a major issue, Bower-Bjornson said along with panelist Alyssa Lyon.
“When I meet a lot of people, they say, ‘No one will listen to me,’” Bower-Bjornson said. “Most people want someone to listen to them. We have to meet people where they are. Plant little seeds and flowers will grow instead of weeds.”
Lyon, director of Black Environmental Collective, UrbanKind, said: “I think we have to return to a people-centered approach. The urgency of climate change is the urgency of saving people.
“We get in our own way and we do that partly by not listening. We’re too focused on problems and not solutions. If we actively listen to each other, we’ll realize we have common goals.”
Bower-Bjornson closed the one-hour session by saying: “I’m a doer, and I think more people have to be doers. Don’t be a procrastinator. We have to give a voice to people.”
Rick Shrum
Business Writer
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