Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected].
Return to sender
Books banned in Florida are finding new homes — and sometimes making their way back to where they started. That’s according to a Washington Post story that Contributing Editor Michaela Haas shared this week about Firestorm Books, a small shop in Asheville, North Carolina, which took on banned books from Florida’s Duval County. Through an initiative called “Banned Books Back!,” the store is sending out the books for free via an online request form — and more than a third of the requests have come from Duval County.
Michaela says:
Florida’s banned books might benefit from the Streisand effect. The more effort the state puts into banning certain books, the more ways activists find to send them back to Florida.
Restoration and retreat
Restoration and retreatThe idea of managed retreat — planned relocation due to the impacts of climate change — is a fraught one. But could good things come of it? Executive Editor Will Doig shared a Bloomberg CityLab story that takes a thoughtful and hopeful look at the future of climate migration.
Will says:
I sometimes think “managed retreat” will be one of the major issues of the next decade that, as of this moment, most people don’t think a whole lot about. This article has some unusually optimistic thoughts about ways it might play out, including this one: “If we can convince people to move, then what we’re doing is creating public space — a lot of public space. We could subvert the regulatory environment by trying to connect pixels and create this community land trust model, whereby you take the buyout, you convince your neighbor, you work together, and you go back to that land and enjoy it as public land.”
What else we’re reading
🌳 Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds — shared by RTBC founder David Byrne from the Guardian
⚡ Ithaca wants to electrify all 6,000 of the city’s buildings by 2030. Here’s how it’s going so far — shared by Editorial Director Rebecca Worby from Fast Company
🐆 Bounding Toward Recovery — shared by Will Doig from bioGraphic
Elsewhere in our channels…
Michaela drew our attention to some good animal news: 2023 was the first year without elephant poaching in Republic of Congo National Park. “Last July I wrote about conservation success in Zambia,” says Michaela. “I’m happy to see progress in other African countries, too.”
