No Place Offers an “Escape” from Climate Change
“The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “excommunicates himself.” The same might be said for those who ask, as...
Category: Coastal Issues
Casting Ballots for the Planet
It’s been a long campaign season, and many of us are ready for a respite from barbed political banter. So let’s take a high-altitude look at what this looming election might mean–for our planet....
Grieving Big Changes along Maine’s Shore
I walk the shore in a place I have known longer than memory stretches. There are wide expanses of rugged beach, a tide-tumbled assortment of small rocks, sand and crushed shells. From afar, it...
Hurricanes: Why Worry
As a child, Kerry Emanuel was captivated by thunderstorms–planting himself by windows to watch them. He has followed that meteorological passion through decades of research and teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to...
Saving Water without a Drought
Even in a spring dry by Maine standards, it’s hard to envision how parched some places can become. Water scarcity is increasingly coming to define landscapes and lives. By the start of 2015, NASA...
Facing the Reality of Rising Seas
From the vantage point of Maine’s rocky coast, rising seas may seem like a prospect remote in space and time. We’re conditioned to respond to felt dangers–things that go bump in the night–not chart...
Plastic Microbeads: A Small Piece of a Vast Problem
Imagine if someone had proposed this idea in a public forum 25 years ago: “Let’s start having microscopic plastic bits in products like facial scrubs. They’ll wash down drains, slide past wastewater treatment plant...
Places of Paradox: the Lure of Maine Islands
Before the sun rises over a neighboring island, a translucent plum of moon slips into clouds tinged pink with the approaching day. The full moon has drawn the tide to an astronomical low, revealing...
