Opinion Climate Crisis - The Boston Globe

"You can’t love poutine in the summer or in the south. It’s calorie-dense survival food for the darkest days of winter, those subzero stretches that make us dream of fat and salt and warmth."

Ideas

Lost winter: A season on thin ice is a bad time for poutine

This is the first year when it hasn’t been cold enough to need the warming grace of hot gravy and melting cheese curds on a base layer of hand-cut carbs. 3:00 a.m.

Farmer Byer Junfin, 37, surveyed land and water flow near a Flow Meter Station on Feb. 22 in Quemado, Texas. Agriculture and livelihoods along the Rio Grande are threatened by severe drought conditions as record-high dry spells continue straining the region.

OpEds

The world needs more water flowing where it’s needed most

Better market design paired with deep technology can best address drought. 3:00 a.m.

Claude Monet’s “Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement effet de soleil),” 1903. A study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argued that Monet and his contemporary, Joseph Mallord William (J.M.W.) Turner, were chronicling the worsening effects of air pollution on London and Paris during the Industrial Revolution.

Letters

The dirty truth: Pollution makes the world its canvas

Google “19th century smog” and you’ll find photos of blackened skies in major cities. In the early 1800s, William Blake asked, "And was Jerusalem builded here/Among these dark Satanic Mills?" 2:20 a.m.

A man sits on a picnic table with a view of downtown Cleveland in 2014. Conspiracy theorists are increasingly convinced the concept of a “15-minute city” is the latest plot to curtail individual freedoms. But urban experts say the design principle embraced by cities, including Cleveland, is simply about building more compact, walkable communities where people are less reliant on cars.

OpEds

The pushback against the 15-minute city

It is worth pointing out that the vast majority of these critiques are fundamentally wrong and even dangerous. 3:00 a.m.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry (center) left after a meeting with Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Brazilian Minister of Environment Marina Silva at the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia on Feb. 27.

Letters

John Kerry has a planet to save

Most of us don’t have the position and influence of someone like Kerry, but we can surely be inspired by his example and by the urgency of the escalating climate crisis to do what we can each do personally and in our communities. 2:30 a.m.

Significant flooding occurred across Boston at high tide on Dec. 23, 2022.

OpEds

Massachusetts needs a coastal adaptation agency

The state currently relies on a piecemeal approach, but cities and towns have limited ability to act effectively on their own. Most of their coastlines are privately owned and there are few options for raising funds locally to pay for costly flood control infrastructure. 1:04 p.m.

A blue whale near a cargo ship in the Santa Barbara Channel off the California coast, August 2008.

OpEds

What we know — and don’t know — about offshore wind and whale deaths

The recent deaths show no relation to offshore wind development. 10:04 a.m.

Columns

Social investing isn’t ‘woke capitalism’

Corporations have an obligation not just to shareholders but to consumers, workers, and the planet. 3:00 a.m.