'Reengineering the environment is unlikely to offer a full solution'
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day


'A dry Panama Canal shows how climate change will scramble globalization'
The Washington Post editorial board
Panama's drought is flashing a warning sign about climate change, says The Washington Post editorial board. Water levels are perilously low in a lake that "feeds the locks" in the Panama Canal, bottling up "traffic in a waterway that handles about 5% of global maritime trade." Panama's government is scrambling to engineer a fix, but "creative engineering" can't resolve all global climate-related infrastructure challenges. "Arresting the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases" is the real solution.
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'The meme-ification of American politics'
Clare Malone at The New Yorker
Americans are losing interest in the news, writes Clare Malone at The New Yorker. Meanwhile, the share getting informed via TikTok "has tripled since 2020." This campaign season, former President Donald Trump will be spending lots of time in court, and President Joe Biden will appear sparingly to avoid "falls" or "gaffes." That means more and more voters will be "forming opinions based on the funny video their cousin's husband's sister shared in the group chat."
'A GOP border reckoning'
The Wall Street Journal editorial board
"Public frustration over border failures is coming to a boil," says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Former President Donald Trump and House Republican hardliners are hoping this will boost them to victory in November. But insisting on "their preferred border" crackdown instead of reaching a compromise with Senate Democrats "would be a self-inflicted wound." It would let President Joe Biden "claim, with cause, that Republicans want border chaos as an election issue rather than solving the problem."
'Gen Z is listening to what Netanyahu is saying. Is Biden?'
Ezra Klein in The New York Times
There is "antisemitism on campuses," but that's not what brings most students to Gaza war protests, writes Ezra Klein in The New York Times. Older Americans "knew Israel when it was young." They remember the "wonder of its creation," and "the wars its neighbors launched to eradicate it." Most young people "see Israel as the aggressor" because they know only "Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel," and think it wants to control Palestinians and, like Hamas, has "no interest in peace."
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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