Making Way for Ducks
As loveable as ducks are, they are – undeniably – fowl, exuberant in start-to-finish mess-making. Domesticated ducks routinely splash into full bowls of food or water, and – if the spirit moves them –...
Category: Pollution/Waste
More Consensus than Controversy
In her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett sidestepped questions about climate change, saying it was a “very contentious matter of public debate.” As a matter of...
Crises Demand Plans
The coronavirus tragedy in the U.S. holds a potent lesson about governance: Facing crises without a strategic plan costs lives. The floundering on display in recent months – with conflicting federal guidance, states forced...
Ending Use of Chemical Weapons for Crowd Control
Braxton Winston, an at-large member of the Charlotte, N.C., City Council, vividly recalls his first encounter with tear gas at a peaceful protest four years ago. “Struggling to breathe. Skin burning. Vomiting. Trying to...
Tailpipe Living: Losing Federal Protections for Clean Air
Before getting new glasses this winter, I’d forgotten what it was like to see distant objects in sharp relief. The glasses improved my vision but far-off vistas remained hazy – until the pandemic shutdown...
Leading the Charge
Our family just joined the one percent in Maine: not the wealthy elite, but the select few who own plug-in hybrid or all-electric vehicles (EVs). Now we’re wondering how to invite others along. Since...
Maine in 2040: Can You Imagine It?
Instead of relying solely on models and charts, what if we tried to visualize just how different our lives might be in a climate-altered Maine two decades hence? What follows is an imaginative portrait...
Facing a Reckoning
Ironies, like onions, come in layers and can make you cry. As I stared at a graphic showing an outline of Maine symbolically shifting down the East Coast (see bottom figure), I had an...
