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INTO THE RED

Climate and the fight of our lives

The climate crisis is now an emergency. We believe solutions must begin here, in our communities, state, and region. Globe journalism will shine light on obstacles to decisive action, illuminate paths toward solutions, and hold to account elected leaders responsible for guiding us to a better future.

Latest climate stories

Mayor Wu announces new citywide composting program

Taking aim at what some say is a critical piece of the climate fight, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday said the city is launching a citywide composting program.

How inequality makes climate change worse

Study after study has found the climate crisis is compounding global inequality. A new peer-reviewed analysis suggests inequality is also exacerbating climate change.
CHESTO MEANS BUSINESS

First life sciences, now clean energy: Baker eyes next big industry for Mass.

Governor Charlie Baker and legislative leaders want to pump up the state’s clean energy industry, but they differ on how to do it.

Biden administration, settling a long fight, plans to block a mine in Alaska

The Biden administration on Wednesday took a major legal step toward protecting Bristol Bay in Alaska, one of the world’s most valuable sockeye salmon fisheries that also sits atop enormous copper and gold deposits long coveted by mining companies.

State sues chemical companies for pollution from ‘forever chemicals’

More than a dozen manufacturing companies are responsible for millions of dollars in damages to communities across Massachusetts by “knowingly contaminating” drinking water sources, groundwater, and other natural resources, the lawsuit alleged.

Featured projects

As Earth’s temperature rises, Massachusetts residents’ sense of urgency on climate change declines

Despite increasingly urgent international warnings, fewer Massachusetts residents see the climate crisis as a very serious concern than they did in 2019, a new poll from MassINC and the Boston Globe shows.
The Lobster Trap: Part 1

The lobster trap

The plentiful catch that brought wealth to fishing families is at risk, as climate change warms the Gulf of Maine. A way of life is on the line, but lobstermen can't, or won't, imagine another.
Climate change on Cape Cod

At the edge of a warming world

The flexed arm of Cape Cod has challenged the power of the sea for centuries, but the contest has escalated. Climate change is altering our vacation paradise in myriad ways, perhaps forever. The message in the sand is clear — if only we will look.

Accountability

McGovern calls on Biden to pardon embattled attorney Steven Donziger

A group of lawmakers is urging President Biden to pardon Steven Donziger, the embattled human rights lawyer who won a groundbreaking multibillion-dollar case against Chevron over pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

MWRA fails to protect water quality in Boston Harbor, lawsuit alleges

The agency has failed to enforce requirements that industrial facilities pretreat waste water containing elevated levels of toxic substances that were ultimately discharged, the suit claims.

Municipal electric companies slow to incorporate clean energy, often rely on nuclear power

The state’s 40 municipal light plants make up 14 percent of the state’s energy grid. According to a new report from the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, they may represent some of the dirtiest energy in the state.

Biden restores parts of environmental protection law, reverses Trump policy

The Biden administration will announce Tuesday that it is restoring parts of a bedrock environmental law, once again requiring that climate impacts be considered and local communities have input before federal agencies approve highways, pipelines and other major projects.

Climate Science

Towns across New England set daily temperature records
It’s not even Memorial Day yet, but it felt like peak summer this past weekend.

Summer is starting earlier. Massachusetts is not prepared.

Maine dam company to make changes to try to save salmon

Politics and Policy

Mayor Wu announces new citywide composting program

Taking aim at what some say is a critical piece of the climate fight, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday said the city is launching a citywide composting program.

How inequality makes climate change worse

Study after study has found the climate crisis is compounding global inequality. A new peer-reviewed analysis suggests inequality is also exacerbating climate change.

State sues chemical companies for pollution from ‘forever chemicals’

More than a dozen manufacturing companies are responsible for millions of dollars in damages to communities across Massachusetts by “knowingly contaminating” drinking water sources, groundwater, and other natural resources, the lawsuit alleged.

New England climate activists sentenced for anticoal civil disobedience action

Four climate activists have received suspended jail sentences for attempting to stop a train from delivering coal to a power plant in Bow, NH in 2019.

An interactive look into climate change

How Massachusetts feels about climate change in 12 graphics

The percentage of Massachusetts residents who believe climate change is as a very serious concern has decreased since 2019. That’s just one finding from a new poll conducted by MassINC Polling Group for the Boston Globe.

Maps: These parts of Boston, Revere, and Quincy are vulnerable to rising sea levels

One measure of a warming planet and human-caused climate change is rising sea levels, which Massachusetts’ coastal towns are increasingly grappling with.

Boston’s ‘heat islands’ turn lower-income neighborhoods from hot to insufferable

In a recent city report, officials noted that temperatures in leafier neighborhoods are often significantly lower than in more densely populated areas.

Into the Red: How the Globe will cover climate change

To report on the most pressing issue of our time, the Globe’s climate team is expanding and rethinking its coverage.

The Globe's climate team wants to hear from you

Share your thoughts and questions about the impact of climate change in your community.

How-Tos

As war rages, a struggle to balance energy crunch and climate crisis

Biden bill includes boost for union-made electric vehicles

Heat pumps could be key to fighting climate change, but how? We answer your burning questions

More Climate stories

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey at the groundbreaking site of the Embrace Memorial on the Boston Common on April 27.

ExxonMobil must face AG Healey’s climate lawsuit, Massachusetts supreme court rules

Massachusetts’ high court on Tuesday struck down ExxonMobil’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Attorney General Maura Healey, alleging that the company knew its products were contributing to dangerous changes in the climate yet hid that information from Massachusetts consumers and investors.

Emergency vehicles respond to evacuate people at a mass shelter Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021 in Independence, Louisiana. Multiple nursing home residents died after Hurricane Ida, but full details of their deaths are unknown because state health inspectors said Thursday that they were turned away from examining conditions at the facility to which they had been evacuated.

Stormy repeat: NOAA predicts busy Atlantic hurricane season

Federal meteorologists are forecasting a record-shattering seventh straight unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season.

Katherine B. and her family used a bike lane in Cambridge. Because she uses the bike lane with her young children daily, she is hoping the protected bike lanes will come together as soon as possible.

In Porter Square, a fight rages for the future of Cambridge streets

An ambitious plan to add protected bike lanes around the city has spurred a raucous public spat between businesses, city officials, and transit advocates.

António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, attended a Security Council meeting that addressed conflict and food security in Ukraine at the UN headquarters on May 19, 2022 in New York City.

UN chief urges college grads to shun companies funding fossil fuels

The head of the United Nations implored graduating college students on Tuesday to reject jobs at companies that fund the fossil fuel industry he described as “killing our planet.”

A graduate held a fan to cool down as temperatures soared in to the 90’s during Boston University’s Commencement on Sunday.

Towns across New England set daily temperature records

It’s not even Memorial Day yet, but it felt like peak summer this past weekend.

Natalie Santos-Castillo, manager of Family Hardware on Blue Hill Avenue, arranged room and window fans on a shelf in Dorchester.

Summer is starting earlier. Massachusetts is not prepared.

As New England warms thanks to the climate crisis, summer-like temperatures in May are becoming the new normal — and local institutions and cultural practices are struggling to keep up.

A plume of steam billows from the coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H.

New England climate activists sentenced for anticoal civil disobedience action

Four climate activists have received suspended jail sentences for attempting to stop a train from delivering coal to a power plant in Bow, NH in 2019.

The Barnstable Clean Water Coalition installed a KleanTu septic system in the Sandy Shores neighborhood around Shubael Pond in Marstons Mills. On Cape Cod and in many other places, poorly maintained and aging septic systems are a primary cause of the nitrogen pollution that plagues coastal ecosystems.

As pollution worsens on Cape Cod, some are investing hopes in a new type of septic system

A coalition of groups in Cape Cod is pressing local and state officials to consider installing a new kind of septic system that they say would curb the vast majority of nitrogen that leaks from traditional systems.

Opinion

Michael E. Mann and Wanjira Mathai

UN IPCC report can lead governments to the climate action door, but they must walk through

We have the technology to achieve the necessary reductions in carbon emissions. The obstacles that remain aren’t technological, they’re political.
Ko Barrett

Humans are responsible for climate change and humans have the capacity to solve it

Bill McKibben

Heat pumps could help ease the climate crisis — and the war in Ukraine

Tim Fitzgerald

We can eat our way out of climate change

Sharon E. Burke and Bram Govaerts

Multiple breadbasket failures: Nations must address looming food emergencies