PBS NewsHour explores Boston’s plans for the impact of climate change on storms and asks: Will it be enough?

PBS NewsHour Science Correspondent Miles O'Brien examines last week's record-breaking weather, as a wintry blast coincided with a full moon high tide, causing icy floods in parts of Boston. "I worry sometimes that we are creating islands of resilience in seas of fragility," Dr. Stephen Flynn told O'Brien. "Where the real challenge lies is that cities don’t control entirely their destinies. They rely on transportation, energy networks, communication networks that sprawl across the country, across borders. It’s so important to have national leadership, in some cases to take this on globally, is because these systems we rely on have to essentially be able to built resilient across multiple jurisdictions."

Palm oil: environmental impact and sustainability

Palm oil, now the world’s most popular vegetable oil, epitomizes global tensions between environmental preservation and economic development of the Global South. Although oil palms are an ancient staple crop, palm oil use exploded in the last few decades due to its versatility and crop efficiency, producing unequaled oil yield per acre. Aside from cooking oil, palm oil is an ingredient in a wide variety of common items such as toothpaste, makeup, baked goods, and bio-diesel. Requiring only half as much land as other vegetable oil sources, palm oil quickly rose to one third of global oil consumption ringing in 72 million tons in 2018. However, as global demand grows, with a projected market value of $88 billion by 2022, concerns regarding its sustainability have risen to the forefront of environmental resilience discussions.

Pacific Northwest endures historic heat wave while smoke from B.C. wildfires pollutes the region

The Pacific Northwest region of the United States is in the midst of a heat wave that has come close to breaking previous temperature records. In the past 123 years, triple-digit temperatures have only been recorded on three days in Seattle -- and though the city remained below triple digits last week, the high reached 94 degrees, hitting a daily record. Meanwhile, Portland experienced even higher temperatures, reaching a high of 105 degrees on Thursday. This was just shy of the warmest temperature ever recorded in Portland, which was 107 degrees.