‘There is a better way’: Local activists rally against Peoples Natural Gas, fossil fuel industry

Standing outside of the Peoples Natural Gas building, protesters gave speeches, chanted and held cardboard signs expressing their frustration with the company and the fossil fuel industry.

“We want people to understand that there is a better way,” Ilyas Khan, a sophomore linguistics major at Carnegie Mellon University, said. “We want Peoples Gas to understand that there is a better way and that companies also have to take responsibility for their shortcomings, for their own destructive practices.”

About 20 people gathered outside the corporate office of Peoples Natural Gas for a rally on Friday afternoon to protest the company’s practices. The rally was organized by Fossil Free Pitt Coalition and Sunrise Movement Pittsburgh.

The organizations’ demands, which were presented on flyers given to passersby, include making Peoples Natural Gas a public utility, banning gas hookups from new constructions and increasing subsidies for installing more sustainable appliances.

Khan, a coordinator at Sunrise Movement Pittsburgh, said seeing students mobilize against the climate crisis makes them hopeful for the future of climate action.

“It’s incredibly encouraging for me as a college student, and I also think to other college students and to our elders, to see that there is action coming out of these college campuses, there is movement happening here,” Khan said. “It shows that we are capable of, you know, mobilizing our generation to make the change that we all, to some degree or another, understand is needed.”

Lucas Basualdo, a Fossil Free Pitt Coalition member, said having the rally outside of the Peoples office helps students understand the real-world impacts of what they’re fighting for.

“I think it’s important that these activist groups are not just on campus, because then we become sucked into the very insular world of campus politics and we don’t see how we affect our city in our larger community,” Basualdo, a sophomore urban planning major, said.

George Fritze, a Fossil Free Pitt Coalition member, said he hoped the rally would raise awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels.

“I would hope that we can show more with the Pitt community, that they can be involved within the process of protesting these organizations and making more ease of access and showing that everybody needs to be involved in order to make a change,” Fritze, a senior chemistry major, said.

Recent Pitt studies found a link between unconventional natural gas developments and increased rates of childhood lymphoma, asthma attacks, and adverse birth outcomes. Matt Nemeth, a member of Sunrise Movement Pittsburgh, said he hopes more people will learn about the negative health impacts of using natural gas.

“I think a lot of people have been lied to for so long and they’re either unsure or they firmly believe that gas is safe, that it’s not contributing to any kind of problem over the time of their lives to their health, and I think we really need to talk more, both with our neighbors and in the media, and be really honest about the impact that this has on our well-being,” Nemeth said.

Meredith Felde, a Fossil Free Pitt Coalition member, added that showing the impact a local company like Peoples has on the community helps “connect these issues to Allegheny County and Pennsylvania in a broader sense.”

“Thinking about how your own infrastructure and energy connects to the climate crisis, we want more Pittsburghers to connect that because so much change can be enacted on a local level,” Felde, a senior sociology major, said.

Sam Schmidt, a candidate for county council in District 13 who attended the rally, said “the very existence of Peoples is kind of unacceptable” and hoped the rally will influence local government officials to create change.

“I would hope that people in the area, people walking by, people that hear about us later are inspired to use their voices, especially at the local government level, just to let their legislators know that solutions like natural gas as an alternative to coal are not real solutions, and just to further the dialogue and to put pressure on local governments to start changing those things with their climate action plans,” Schmidt said.

Maren Cooke, an environmental educator and activist, added that  the economy of fossil fuels “seems to be based on maximizing profit instead of maximizing good.”

“I don’t think this kind of utility should be in the hands of private companies, period,” Cooke said. “The fossil fuel companies are clinging with every possible means to their extractive model. If they could only begin to consider themselves as energy companies. Because people don’t want methane. People want a warm house and their dinner cooked. And they don’t want gasoline, they want to go somewhere.”

The continuation of building natural gas infrastructure is an “absolute travesty,” according to Thomas Allen, a member of Fossil Free Pitt Coalition and junior political science major.

“Critical to climate action is that we electrify essentially everything, we move away from gas, and bringing methane emissions down is extremely, extremely important,” Allen said.

Khan said the rally showcases the strength of environmental activists.

“Is this going to change them into an amazing renewable energy-focused company? I highly doubt it,” Khan said. “But it lets Peoples Gas know that there is a population that is demanding of them that they start changing.”