A March for Sustainability, organized by the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh chapter of AID was featured in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on October 6, 2006 . The full text of the article is below.
A movement to promote sustainable living in Pittsburgh is beginning Saturday with a few simple steps.
Nearly 1,000 people, including politicians, ministers, university professors and environmentalists, are expected to march four miles through Oakland to share their belief that consumer-driven lifestyles deplete natural resources and result in a poorer quality of life.
"I feel it is the moral responsibility of every city to take care of generations to come and leave the same good environment for them," said Ravikant Pathak, an air pollution researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who organized the march with the Pittsburgh chapter of the Association for India's Development.
Pathak said the march is to show people that doing simple things -- like taking public transportation once or twice a week, lowering the thermostat or using natural light rather than electricity -- add up to significantly decrease pollution.
He also wants people to become aware of how the things they buy, use and discard can have environmental impacts in distant places, such as deforestation for lumber and paper.
"This is primarily because we're in a society where everything is so convenient," Pathak said. "The end-user of a product -- the consumer -- has no clue or idea where that product is coming from."
Myron Arnowitt, director of the environmental organization Clean Water Action in Western Pennsylvania, will speak after the march.
"I always see sustainability from the perspective of, 'When we use natural resources, what happens to the people who are most impacted by the problems caused by using those resources?'" he said. "I know that the more electricity I use, the more the Elrama (Washington County) power plant is putting out black smoke, which falls on the people who live nearby."
