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By JOHN BOS

Our embattled planet’s capacity to sustain humankind’s “lifestyle” is about to run out.Global warming has increased the number of extreme weather events around the world by 400% since the 1980s. Countries really do know how to stop these events: just...

By KARL MEYER

On Jan. 12, 2023, Vince Yearick, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Division of Hydropower Licensing, gave a new fat gift to FirstLight Power for its Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station in Massachusetts. Parent-owned...

By WILLIAM LAMBERS

With the Doomsday Clock now 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to nuclear war ever, it’s clear diplomacy must be brought back into action to reduce the threat.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just made the annual Doomsday Clock announcement...

By Richard Fein

The new coalition government in Israel is the most ultra-nationalist, theocratic in that nation’s history. Many of Israel’s friends are deeply concerned about Israel’s future as a Jewish Democratic State living up to the ethical standards enshrined in...

By RUSS VERNON-JONES

Sometime on Nov. 15, 2022, according to demographers, a baby was born somewhere in the world who brought the number of humans living on the planet to eight billion. That’s a lot of us!How does population growth relate to our efforts to solve the...

By ALLEN WOODS

The images are tragic for anyone with a bit of empathy: three women and three children, including a 1-year-old baby, die in a desperate attempt to flee a homeland filled with violence and instability. The country they had hoped to reach did not want...

By David Gottsegen

With the approaching anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked onslaught on Ukraine, I think back to the Dec 5 column in the Gazette by the Rev. Peter Kakos on “defusing Ukraine.” He wrote of his hopes for an “irenic” peace, a hope that “both warring...

By JOHANNA NEUMANN

How many Americans does it take to change a light bulb? To change one bulb now should only take one of us. However, to change all our bulbs in the coming years will require millions of us — and the best way to initiate that action is through the...

By MICHAEL H. SIMPSON

For us that love the winter in hills of the northern Pioneer Valley, this winter season has been a challenge. There is not enough snow for cross-country skiing or snowmobiling and a bit too warm for safely skating on the lakes. This is just the luck...

By DANIEL A. BROWN

I collect old LIFE magazines and was recently surprised to see a two-page advertisement in a February 1962 issue by Esso (Later Exxon) boasting that each day, they “Supply enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!” Those were the exact words...

By Razvan Sibii

For more than two years now, my MO for this column has been this: I pick a topic related to incarceration or immigration that I think is important and interesting, I research it, I interview experts and people affected by the issue, and then I write...

By AL NORMAN

Ellie Mandell and her husband moved from Watertown to Greenfield in 2013. “I have environmental illness. Over time it became clear that our 1920s home in Watertown was making me ill,” she explains. “One of the reasons we chose Greenfield was that we...

By SHERRILL HOGEN

Thirty men have died since they were cleared and released from Guantanamo prison. What did they die of? Where were they? Does anyone know? Did we here in the U.S. care? Weren’t they “the worst of the worst” who plotted 9/11?Our government, through...

By KATE LINDROOS CONLIN

The Massachusetts-based Partnership for Policy Integrity has been a vocal opponent of wood harvesting on public lands. They believe that ceasing to harvest wood would “expand our natural forests’ ability to store carbon.” This, of course, assumes that...

By ELLEN S. DICKINSON

On Dec. 27, 2021, my cousin Peg took death-with-dignity in New Mexico after a 7-year struggle with ovarian cancer. Peg’s story illustrates how important it is to have assisted dying legislation available.Because she and I grew up and settled almost a...

By ROBERT KUBACKI

The harsh tone of Opinion Page letters and their vilification of Mayor Roxann Wedegartner and her decision not to re-appoint Greenfield Human Rights Commission (GHRC) Commissioner, Daniel Cantor Yalowitz, to another three-year term compelled me to...

By WILLIAM LAMBERS

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in writing letters. Dr. King wrote frequently, including the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he encouraged activism for human rights stating, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”Martin...

By JUDITH TRUESDELL

The movie “Spotlight” showed how The Boston Globe uncovered and published the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic church. The Spotlight team of investigative reporters, having found six priests who had abused children and been covered up by the church,...

By MICHAEL SEWARD

Last month, the 2022 Massachusetts Climate Change Assessment was released. Among the most urgent impacts of climate change to the commonwealth stated in the report was forest health degradation, caused by warming temperatures, increased precipitation,...

By MADDIE RAYMOND

Sometimes I forget that I’m not a kid anymore. Last April I turned 18, my early spring birthday marking the line that, at least on paper, separates childhood and adulthood. Yet there is more to being an adult than being able to get your ears pierced...