Most recent 20 articles: Boston Globe
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Beverly mayor takes leading role against climate change - Boston Globe (Dec 18, 2019) |
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Dec 18, 2019 · Beverly Mayor Michael P. Cahill has agreed to play a leading role in a national organization of city leaders working to combat climate change. Climate Mayors recently selected Cahill to serve on its newly established steering committee, joining 23 other mayors from across the country.
Formed in 2014, Climate Mayors is a network of US mayors who have committed to fighting climate change. The organization's ranks has swelled to more more than 400 mayors following the Trump Administration's decision to withdraw from the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, according to the group.
Participating mayors have pledged to take ambitious actions to meet their cities' current climate ... Read more ...
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Brookline's ban on natural gas connections spurs other municipalities to consider the idea - Boston Globe (Dec 16, 2019) |
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Dec 16, 2019 · When Brookline banned new natural gas hookups last month, many in the business community worried it would be the first of many dominoes to fall.
Well, here they go.
Next in line: Cambridge, and then Newton.
On Wednesday, a Cambridge City Council committee held a hearing on a proposed ordinance that would block natural gas connections in new buildings or major reconstruction projects; a Newton City Council committee discussed advancing a similar measure last week.
And officials in more than a dozen other municipalities, such as Lexington and Arlington, have started to consider bans. All this activity reflects the growing concern that not enough is being done ... Read more ...
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Where is Liberty Mutual in the climate change fight? - Boston Globe (Dec 13, 2019) |
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Dec 13, 2019 · Liberty Mutual has been a Boston institution for over a century and, across that span, like any good insurance company, it's been fixated on risk — in 1946, its employees invented the automatic safety switch that stops elevators from crashing to the ground if something goes wrong. (Thank you, by the way.)
But that focus seems to have slipped in the global warming era. Liberty Mutual recently received the lowest grade of 30 global insurance companies from Insure Our Future, a group of climate change campaigners. It refused even to answer the questionnaire the group sent, and probably for good reason. Among other things:
· Liberty Mutual has devoted almost 10 percent of ... | By Bill McKibben Read more ...
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Energy credits can help fight climate change - Boston Globe (Dec 11, 2019) |
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Dec 11, 2019 · When the Oxford English Dictionary names "climate emergency" as its 2019 Word of the Year, it's clear that we have reached a turning point.
People can see a crisis unfolding with our climate, and they know we need bold action. We have the scientific evidence and we have the technological know-how to address this generational crisis. More than ever before, we have the support of a critical mass of Americans — young and old — who are demanding action. Unfortunately, under a government run by Donald Trump, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and their fossil fuel allies, what we don't have enough of is the political will to take action. And unless Congress acts within the ... | By Ed Markey and Michael Brune Read more ...
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The 2020 election must be a time of reckoning on climate change - Boston Globe (Dec 09, 2019) |
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Dec 09, 2019 · The world is warming, and without swift and dramatic action, it's about to get a lot worse. That much is devastatingly clear from scientific reports. At this rate, we can expect the next few decades to bring deadlier heat waves, pandemics, rising seas that flood coastal cities, and the disappearance of coral reefs.
It hasn't gone unnoticed. Youth climate movements have surged around the globe. Solutions abound — from putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions to replacing fossil fuel electricity and gas-powered cars with new technologies, to rethinking how we grow food.
What remains lacking, however, is political will and leadership. And even as some European and ... Read more ...
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Climate change and dark money - Boston Globe (Nov 21, 2019) |
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Nov 21, 2019 · The earth is spinning toward climate catastrophe. The international community has about a decade to take the steps necessary to avoid breaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius safety zone that the scientific community has established. It will take American leadership to achieve that goal, which means not only bold action in Congress, but meaningful leadership from the president, our allies around the globe, and leadership from powerful forces like major corporations.
Unfortunately, much of corporate America so far failed to step up and sufficiently support policies that would begin to address the existential threat of climate change. Many individual corporations, perhaps out of ... | By Chuck Schumer and Sheldon Whitehouse Read more ...
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Holding Exxon Mobil accountable - Boston Globe (Nov 20, 2019) |
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Nov 20, 2019 · Damali Vidot is president of the Chelsea City Council, serving residents who are largely blue-collar ethnic minorities. Vidot and other community activists became concerned about the safety of the ExxonMobil facility that sits low on the bank of the Mystic River in nearby Everett. Scientific predictions suggest that even a Category 1 storm could severely damage the facility, causing toxic chemicals to flood residential neighborhoods and the local produce depots that provide food to the entire Northeast. Vidot joined a group of concerned citizens from Everett, Chelsea, and East Boston to demand that ExxonMobil disclose steps it has taken to prepare the facility for such an event, but ... | By Adam Posluns and Katerina Simonova video Read more ...
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A climate change forum gets the cold shoulder from Joe Kennedy - Boston Globe (Nov 13, 2019) |
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Nov 13, 2019 · Why did US Representative Joe Kennedy III skip a forum on climate change?
Call it a smart bet that the race to unseat Senator Edward J. Markey is bigger than the Green New Deal and the young left-leaning activists who embrace it.
Kennedy, 39, was a no-show at a Sunday forum, hosted by Stonehill College, leaving Markey, 73, able to pitch himself as a New Age climate revolutionary . Yet, even without Kennedy, the event was no slam-dunk for the incumbent. Markey faced tough criticism from challenger Shannon Liss-Riordan, who called him out for a lack of legislative progress on environmental issues during his 43 years in Washington. "It's been a long time, there's been a ... | By Joan Vennochi Read more ...
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Liss-Riordan challenges Markey at climate change forum, with Kennedy absent - Boston Globe (Nov 11, 2019) |
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Nov 11, 2019 · EASTON — Senator Edward J. Markey and challenger Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor attorney, faced off at a forum Sunday on climate change and other environmental issues, tangling over the strength of Markey's legislative record and the importance of the Green New Deal.
The event, hosted by Stonehill College, was the first substantive policy discussion in the marquee race, but the perceived Democratic primary front-runner — Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III — was notably absent. He declined to participate because of the timing, among other reasons.
Kennedy's absence gave Liss-Riordan plenty of space to showcase formidable debate skills. While she and Markey broadly agree ... Read more ...
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Markey and McGovern talk climate change at raucous Worcester forum - Boston Globe (Nov 04, 2019) |
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Nov 04, 2019 · WORCESTER — US Senator Edward J. Markey and Representative Jim McGovern sounded an urgent alert about climate change Sunday at a raucous town hall meeting that repeatedly veered off topic as the audience pelted the legislators with unrelated questions and claims.
Calling climate change "the national security, health care, economic, environmental, and moral issue of our time," Markey told the crowd of more than 500 at Clark University that the Green New Deal proposal he introduced in the Senate in February will help address this "existential threat" to the nation.
"September was the warmest September ever recorded," the Malden Democrat said from the stage. "July was the ... Read more ...
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Climate change is wiping out Harriet Tubman's homeland, and we're doing little - Boston Globe (Oct 25, 2019) |
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Oct 25, 2019 · IN 1849, HARRIET TUBMAN escaped from the Eastern Shore farm where she was enslaved. Over the next several years, she would return 13 times, rescuing more than 70 enslaved relatives and friends, and inspiring many others to find their own path to freedom. She has become a hero, with two national parks established in her honor, several biographies about her feats, and a major motion picture about to be released about her life.
But time has not been as kind to the lands that Tubman left behind, or the descendants of the first free African-American communities that called them home.
The Chesapeake Bay and the rivers that feed it are rising, along with most of the rest of the ... | By Rona Kobell Read more ...
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Want to protect jobs? Protect the ocean - Boston Globe (Oct 23, 2019) |
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Oct 23, 2019 · Our ocean is miraculous and mysterious. When it is healthy, it regulates our climate, supplies three-billion people with food , and contributes $1.5 trillion to our global economy annually . But today we need to navigate not just a roadmap to increase the value of the marine economy's bounty, we need to unite as a blue generation that carves a path to protect the ocean for the next generation, the ocean that our generation pushed to the brink of breaking. Why the urgency? | By John Kerry Read more ...
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New England winters are on the decline due to climate change, study says - Boston Globe (Oct 08, 2019) |
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Oct 08, 2019 · The study was published in July in the journal Ecological Applications.
The study found that the number of frost days, when minimum temperatures are below freezing, declined by 1.1 days per decade. The number of days it snowed or was cold enough to kill mosquitoes and other bugs also declined, ranging from 0.9 to 2.3 fewer days per decade depending on the area.
Cold temperatures are essential to maintaining the ecosystem in the northern forests. One effect of the cold is to keep the insect population under control, including the ticks that spread Lyme disease, the mosquitoes that spread EEE and the West Nile virus, and other bugs that devour vegetation, she ... Read more ...
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Joe Kennedy agrees to Senate debate focused on climate change - Boston Globe (Oct 07, 2019) |
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Oct 07, 2019 · The debate over debates continues in the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary.
Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III agreed Friday to participate in a debate focused on climate change, but his campaign wants the forum to take place early next year "to ensure maximum voter impact and participation," as opposed to next month, as Senator Edward J. Markey originally proposed. But Markey still wants to debate next month.
Team Kennedy also said they wanted to see the climate debate happen as part of a series of six debates held across the state, proposing that the other five forums be "issue-inclusive," rather than limited to a single topic.
"Given the timing of ... Read more ...
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Climate change is making us sick - Boston Globe (Oct 02, 2019) |
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Oct 02, 2019 · NO MATTER WHAT you think about the causes of climate change, we know the planet is getting warmer. What most of us don't realize is the impact climate change has on our health, which is why it's concerning that last week's UN Climate Change Summit did not identify health as one of the key action areas.
While about 70 percent of Americans believe that climate change is real (and in Canada, where I live, it's a key issue ahead of the upcoming election), the majority of Americans surveyed do not believe it will harm them personally, according to a recent Yale Climate Opinion Map of public opinion data. In an earlier survey, less than one-third could name an example of climate ... Read more ...
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Is it too late to do anything about climate change? - Boston Globe (Oct 02, 2019) |
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Oct 02, 2019 · PERHAPS BECAUSE THE OCEAN covers two-thirds of our planet, we think we are intimately familiar with it. But even on the clearest day, we see from the shore only a tiny fraction of the ocean's expanse and sense only a few of the innumerable ways it shapes our life.
It's difficult to overstate how vast the ocean is or how deeply it is intertwined with the health of the planet, particularly our weather and climate systems, and the economy. Last week, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report detailing scientifically measured changes that are taking place in the ocean and its icy sibling, the cryosphere (glaciers, sea ice, ... | By Richard Murray Read more ...
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Ed Markey could get a boost from young climate change activists in a primary against Joe Kennedy - Boston Globe (Sep 18, 2019) |
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Sep 18, 2019 · WASHINGTON — Senator Ed Markey stood in front of the US Capitol on Tuesday surrounded by about 20 climate change activists young enough to be on a school field trip but who are energizing a movement that potentially holds the key to his reelection.
Kallan Benson, 15, from Maryland, said she was terrified of what could happen if legislators don't take action to reverse global warming. Nadia Nazar, 17, of Baltimore, compared the destruction caused by mass flooding in her family's home in India to that of hurricanes increasingly devastating the East Coast.
"We refuse to be the last generation," said Nazar, cofounder of the climate change organization Zero Hour. "We will no ... Read more ...
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Beware Greta Thunberg's science fiction — the end of the world is not nigh - Boston Globe (Sep 03, 2019) |
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Sep 03, 2019 · In 15th-century Peru, we learned last week, children were sacrificed to propitiate to the Chimú gods, in an attempt to end natural disasters caused by the climatic phenomenon we now call, appropriately enough, El Niño.
In our time, the roles have been reversed. Now children warning of an impending climate catastrophe are the ones that have to be propitiated. Now it is they who demand sacrifices.
The arrival of Greta Thunberg in New York on Thursday was one of many recent events that illustrate how rapidly modern environmentalism is degenerating into a millenarian cult.
Thunberg, 16, is in New York at the invitation of the United Nations, having already established ... | By Niall Ferguson Read more ...
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