Recent and Pertinent
Climate News & Opinion
CHRIS LARABEE, Recorder, 3/15
Four Franklin County towns have received Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Planning 2.0 (MVP 2.0) grants totaling $350,000 for climate change planning projects. The MVP 2.0 program... invites municipalities to revisit past studies and plans on environmental priorities, develop a team and begin implementing projects that increase community resiliency in the face of climate change.
CHRIS LARABEE, Recorder, 3/14/25
A growing group of volunteers who have formed a mutual aid network in the city are welcoming folks to a launch event to showcase the web-based and mobile application platform that will connect local nonprofits with volunteers. Resilient Greenfield is an effort founded by resident Bram Moreinis, who is seeking to help transform community service in Greenfield with a grassroots movement that aims to easily connect people to nonprofits in the city and in nearby Turners Falls.
“Resilient Greenfield is based on a vision that if everybody, or most people, volunteered regularly, particularly people who are of working age … then all of our nonprofits that are trying to scale up to increasing need with fewer volunteers would just do a whole lot better,” Moreinis said.
ALEXA LEWIS, Recorder, 2/28/25
[Sunrise Movement Founder] Varshini Prakash no longer believes that we can “stop” climate change as she did when she was an undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, when she was staging sit-ins and protests to pressure her school into divesting from fossil fuels. Today, she said, the climate is changing and will continue to change — with manifestations of that change becoming more and more frequent. But what that means is that investing in community resilience and support, slowing the change, and mobilizing young people who care about their future — and the future of the planet — has never been more important.
GARY GREENBERG, Harpers, 12/2024
The recognition that community is the correct response to the extended emergency we call life, that this must come before everything else, that we are all we have, and that we forget this at our peril, is one thing the Puritans got right, and that we have lost in the floods of time.
UMAIR IRFAN, Vox, 12/23/24
[In October] The Valencia region in eastern Spain saw an unprecedented downpour, receiving a year’s worth of rain in just a few hours. It triggered flash floods across a vast expanse and killed at least 224 people, making it the deadliest flood on the continent since 1967. ...Climate research groups reported that these storms were stronger and more likely to occur due to warming caused by humans.
TURKEWITZ & CABRERA, NY Times, 12/30/24
An extraordinary drought has drained Ecuador’s rivers and reservoirs, leading to power outages of up to 14 hours. Some fear this is the beginning of a larger global crisis....Ecuador has been pummeled by an extraordinary drought, exacerbated by global warming, that has engulfed much of South America, drying rivers and reservoirs and putting the country’s power grid on the brink of collapse.
BRITTNEY PRICE, The Conversation
No sense of how to help: The way in which people talk about or portray an issue – their words, symbols, phrases or images – is called a frame. Frames highlight a subset of an issue, which then generally becomes people’s primary way of thinking about something. Positive self-efficacy frames – in other words, a belief that people can make a difference – have been largely absent from conversations about climate change. Political or distant environmental frames are more common.
MORGAN SHEEHAN, Greenfield Recorder My Turn, 12/7/24
We need to dig in, to actively support our communities, whatever those communities are. But we also need to reach across our communities to people who are not like us, who don’t think like us. We don’t need self-care. We need community care.
MATT SCOTT, Project Drawdown, 10/3/24
As Project Drawdown’s director of storytelling and engagement, I served as a guest speaker. For the first time, because of the largely Spanish-speaking audience, I presented about the power of storytelling with the support of an interpreter and with Spanish captions on my slides and videos.
CHRIS LARABEE, Greenfield Recorder, 9/16/24
Two local farms opened their doors to Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer on Monday morning to talk about the challenges brought on by climate change, as well as opportunities for future investments in the industry.
DOMENIC POLI, Greenfield Recorder, 8/6/24
Scant internet access, inadequate public transportation and other barriers could pose additional problems for Franklin County residents during an emergency, according to a recent report published by the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. ... The reports highlight deficiencies that would complicate ensuring safety during a crisis, such as extreme weather events.
The Deteriorating Environment Is a Public Concern, but Americans Misunderstand Their Contribution to the Problem
A global survey suggests 88 percent of people are worried about the state of nature, but such polling says nothing about where those issues sit among competing concerns, like immigration and the economy.
By Katie Surma
September 5, 2024
Pedestrians cover their faces as smoke from wildfires in Canada has trigger air quality alerts in New York City on June 7, 2023. Credit: Michael Nagle/Xinhua via Getty Images
... Roughly one in two Americans said they are not very or not at all exposed to environmental and climate change risks. Those perceptions contrast sharply with empirical evidence showing that climate change is having an impact in nearly every corner of the United States. A warming planet has intensified hurricanes battering coasts, droughts striking middle American farms and wildfires threatening homes and air quality across the country. And climate shocks are driving up prices of some food, like chocolate and olive oil, and consumer goods.
Americans also largely believe they do not bear responsibility for global environmental problems. Only about 15 percent of U.S. respondents said that high- and middle-income Americans share responsibility for climate change and natural destruction. Instead, they attribute the most blame to businesses and governments of wealthy countries.
Those survey responses suggest that at least half of Americans may not feel they have any skin in the game when it comes to addressing global environmental problems, according to Geoff Dabelko, a professor at Ohio University and expert in environmental policy and security.
Translating concern about the environment to actual change requires people to believe they have something at stake, Dabelko said. “It’s troubling that Americans aren’t making that connection.”
While fossil fuel companies have long campaigned to shape public perception in a way that absolves their industry of fault for ecosystem destruction and climate change, individual behavior does play a role. Americans have some of the highest per-capita consumption rates in the world.
The world’s wealthiest 10 percent are responsible for nearly half the world’s carbon emissions, along with ecosystem destruction and related social impacts. For instance, American consumption of gold, tropical hardwoods like mahogany and cedar and other commodities has been linked to destruction of the Amazon rainforest and attacks on Indigenous people defending their territories from extractive activities. ...
Jessica Wildfire, OK Doomer
"Maybe you fantasize about living in a cave in the woods, but your family doesn't want that. You don't really know where you belong anymore. Part of you wants to be done with industrial civilization, but the other part still kind of likes the internet and hot showers. You also realize the appealing myth of homesteading is not exactly without its own hardships and risks."
MARIANNE COOPER & MAXIM VORONOV, Scientific American
We are living through a terrible time in humanity. Here’s why we tend to stick our heads in the sand and why we need to pull them out, fast. ... [T]he danger here is desensitization: that we meet this unprecedented litany of “wicked problems,” from climate change to the rise of fascism, with passive acceptance rather than urgent collective action.
the intergenerational baton pass of climate work
Britt Wray, Generation Dread
Joanna Macy and Jess Serrante launch a brave, fascinating, and vulnerable new podcast called We Are The Great Turning: a kitchen table conversation between Jess and Joanna about climate grief, aging, emotional resilience, and how to make it through the climate crisis with our hearts protected, but still wide open.
MIT Press Reader, 5/13/24 -Peter Watts
Technology is not going to save us, real or imaginary. If we don’t change our behavior, we are unlikely to come up with a magical technological fix to compensate ...we should not be talking about sustainability, but about survival, in terms of humanity’s future.
Science Advances Magazine, 9/13/23 - Katherine Richardson et al,
From global warming to the biosphere and deforestation, from pollutants and plastic to nitrogen cycles and freshwater: Six of nine planetary boundaries are being crossed, while simultaneously pressure in all boundary processes is increasing...."We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm."
The Recorder, 5/13/24 - Tanisha Bhat
More and more farmers in recent years have been installing machinery and finding ways to protect their crops from worsening and fluctuating weather conditions like increased moisture levels, sudden temperature drops and milder winters. “We really do see climate change as an existential threat and farms are going to have to make big changes..."
The Guardian, 5/9/24
Many people, faced with the worsening impacts of the climate emergency, want to know what they can do personally to fight global heating. The Guardian asked hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists for their views.
Scientific American 4/12/24 - Mark Fischetti
Given the circumstances, Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term “climate emergency” in its coverage of climate change. An official statement about this decision, and the impact we hope it can have throughout the media landscape, is below.
The Guardian 4/14/24 - Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope
Swayed for 30 years by fossil fuel industry propaganda, the media has been as likely to unknowingly amplify falsehoods as they were to bat them down. It’s only in recent years that more journalists started to shy away from “both-sides-ing” the climate crisis – decades after scientists reached an overwhelming consensus on the scope of the problem and its causes.
NY Times 4/16/24 - R. Jisung Park
At present, our social and economic systems are not well prepared to adjust to the accumulating damage wreaked by climate change, even though much of what determines whether climate change hurts us depends on the choices we make as individuals and as a society....Recent research indicates that how temperature affects human health depends greatly on the adaptations that happen to be at play locally.
Bloomberg 4/17/24 - Laura Millan
Climate change will inflict losses to the global economy worth an annual $38 trillion by 2049, as extreme weather ravages agricultural yields, harms labor productivity and destroys infrastructure, according to researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
Guardian 4/6/24 - Robin McKie
On March 18, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research ... recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological center on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 101.3 F (38.5 C) above its seasonal average: a world record.
This startling leap—in the coldest place on the planet—left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey.
NY Times 4/20/24 - Stephen Markeley
In the 12 years it took me to write “The Deluge,” my novel of the climate crisis, I watched as chaotic weather, record temperatures and shocking political events outpaced my imagination. The book depicts the human tipping point, when the damage becomes irreversible and the foundations of our economy, our politics and our world begin to crack.
The Wrong Question to Ask About Climate Change
The New Republic, 4/24/24 - Heather Souvaine Horn
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe has famously argued over the past decade that "the most important thing you can do to fight climate change" is to "talk about it." ... The most important thing you can do to fight climate change may be to talk, specifically, about what policies and steps you support.
Spilka pledges ‘comprehensive climate bill’ in Senate
Recorder, 4/23/24 - Sam Drysdale
Signaling the potential for more change in the transportation and energy sectors, Senate President Karen Spilka revealed Monday that the Senate plans to tackle a major climate bill within the next three months... [T] he “comprehensive plan” to address the climate crisis will be led by Sen. Michael Barrett, co-chair of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, and Majority Leader Sen. Cynthia Creem.
MATT SCOTT, Project Drawdown, 10/3/24
As Project Drawdown’s director of storytelling and engagement, I served as a guest speaker. For the first time, because of the largely Spanish-speaking audience, I presented about the power of storytelling with the support of an interpreter and with Spanish captions on my slides and videos.
BRITTNEY PRICE, The Conversation
No sense of how to help: The way in which people talk about or portray an issue – their words, symbols, phrases or images – is called a frame. Frames highlight a subset of an issue, which then generally becomes people’s primary way of thinking about something. Positive self-efficacy frames – in other words, a belief that people can make a difference – have been largely absent from conversations about climate change. Political or distant environmental frames are more common.