‘In an increasingly unstable world, climate targets have slipped from view’
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
‘Can geoengineering avert a climate catastrophe?’
Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times
Researchers have “floated the idea of building a dam across the Bering Strait,” which “could help to stabilize ocean currents crucial for regulating the climate,” says Anjana Ahuja. The “proposal is not orders of magnitude adrift of other marine megaprojects,” but in “geopolitical terms, with its need for long-term American and Russian cooperation, it seems preposterous.” Still, the “speculative and politically impossible megaproject” can “remind us how vital it is to keep existing climate commitments afloat.”
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‘This Ebola outbreak will be hard to contain’
Katherine J. Wu and Hana Kiros at The Atlantic
Africa has “weathered dozens of Ebola outbreaks before,” say Katherine J. Wu and Hana Kiros. But the “global health backdrop is simply different in 2026, largely the result of a series of public health decisions made by the United States,” including “dismantling USAID, withdrawing from the WHO and ousting infectious disease experts en masse from the CDC.” The “world’s fractured global health community is now playing a lethal game of catch-up with an extremely dangerous virus.”
‘Congress must not walk away from the addiction crisis’
Paul Tonko at Newsweek
Before Congress “found the will to act on the addiction crisis, the recovery community was already doing the hard work,” says Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). They were “organizing, marching, testifying and demanding that their government see what they already knew: Addiction is a disease, and recovery is not only possible — it is happening every single day.” At a “time when the president’s fiscal 2027 budget again proposes large funding cuts,” don’t “cut addiction and mental health services.”
‘Does it matter what Helen of Troy looked like?’
Rich Lowry at the National Review
Elon Musk has “kicked up a fuss by objecting to filmmaker Christopher Nolan casting the black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his forthcoming movie version of ‘The Odyssey,’” says Rich Lowry. But “what the role most requires is luminous beauty, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with casting actors in roles that don’t match their ethnicity.” If Nolan “has done his job, this controversy will be overwhelmed by the power of Homer’s work.”
