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Motion of the Council of Allegheny County establishing a desired timeline for the creation of an Allegheny County Sustainability Commission and the development of an Allegheny County Climate Action Plan.
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Whereas, Allegheny County established a sustainability program in 2009, which is tasked with improving the County’s overall sustainability; and
Whereas, since the establishment of the sustainability program, the County has reduced its reliance on fossil fuels by purchasing energy from renewable sources, reduced its carbon footprint, and taken additional steps to safeguard the environment, most recently by establishing a clean construction program specifically designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to County construction projects in June of 2020; and
Whereas, in addition to the sustainability office, the County also has a long term sustainability plan in place, which is designed to improve the fashion in which County-owned facilities and County-provided services operate in an environmentally responsible fashion; and
Whereas, as noted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the impact of climate change is becoming significant: “[s]cientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.”; and
Whereas, also according to NASA and IPCC, while the impacts of this climate change will vary from region to region within the United States, common themes across the nation will involve strained infrastructure and human health hazards stemming from rising sea levels, changes in the availability of potable drinking water, extreme heat waves, increases in the strength and number of hurricanes and other da...
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