What I’m Thinking

A while ago I sought some help with back pain that I reasonably thought was a back problem. I stretched, iced, heated and otherwise babied my back to no great effect. Once in the care of someone knowledgeable, I came to learn that my back pain originated from a...

Simplicity has an allure. When faced with complex topics, a degree of uncertainty and nuance, many people want direct guidance on whether something is safe or dangerous, right or wrong, good or bad. In reality, few things lend themselves to clear lines of demarcation...

Remember back when the early talk about climate change predicted sweltering heat, long droughts interrupted by tropical downpours, and poor air quality driven by increased wildfire activity? Those predictions describe July on Cape Cod—this July actually. The debate is...

If I were to come to your house and burn it down or bulldoze it to the ground, you might reasonably think that I had done you harm. Most people would apply a common sense standard that harm occurs when the place you live is destroyed. Until last week, that was the...

It is that time of year again. Along with sun-filled days and time outside with friends and family, early summer also brings with it APCC’s Summer Appeal. While no one enjoys asking for money, the hard truth is that the job of speaking for the Cape’s environment has...

The answer could be a lot of things but for this purpose it is cyanobacteria. Along with the transition from cool spring to hot summer, we are starting to see the return of unwelcome but increasingly familiar cyanobacteria blooms. Along with providing yet another...

The overwhelmingly positive reaction to The Cape We Shape campaign has validated one of our foundational assumptions. There is widespread public support for preserving at-risk sensitive open space essential to the protection of water quality and critical habitat....

I spent some time the other day watching a pair of birds taking turns feeding their chicks. Back and forth they went bringing soft caterpillars to drop in hungry mouths making more than 150 feeding trips a day for a few weeks before their hungry chicks fledge from the...

Local elections are a good opportunity to assess what is important to the 10-12 percent of people who show up to vote in most local elections. The majority of registered voters defer decision making to the voting few. For better or worse, the voting minority speaks...

Spring 2026 town meetings have demonstrated the validity of the premise behind APCC’s The Cape We Shape campaign: When given the chance to act, voters will support the preservation of critical natural resources. Thanks to work in the trenches by local activists and...