To bend the curve of climate change takes more than the goodwill of Cantabrigians. In the case of waste escaping into the Alewife Brook and overdevelopment in Cambridge Highlands, the City Council, Planning Board and city manager must work together to ensure all new construction is part of a solution.

An assumption that anything built would be cost-neutral or revenue positive within 10 years is undermined by starting with social justice; there are no current plans for public engagement for a market survey; and the City Council’s work has been slowed to nothing by the manager’s obstruction. Cambridge is far from ready for a decision.

Although I made this decision for my own business and strongly encourage others to do the same, businesses should have the freedom to make their own decisions. Creative approaches such as incentive programs encourage participation without forcing their hand.

Despite the brilliance and breadth of Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice booming with a sad, uncanny relevance related to today’s discussion on voter rights and civic responsibility to the collective, his charge has yet to embolden us to move beyond retrospection and ruminations on equity and onto the battleground to reshape the systems of oppression.

I may not be willing to dine indoors during Covid, but am more than happy to support my local restaurants via takeout orders. If only the resulting plastic trash heaps didn’t leave me wracked with guilt. I am begging Cambridge restaurants: Please stop packaging takeout food with so much plastic!

Only investment in new affordable housing, particularly social housing, can provide a long-term solution to our housing crisis, but a bill enabling municipalities to consider rent control and rent stabilization could provide short- and medium-term solutions. There’s a hearing on it Tuesday.

In the Community Development Department’s proposed end to single-family zoning, the hard work and careful analysis that effective reform would require is characterized from the get-go as taking too much time and effort. “Whatever,” indeed.

Three residents write to urge support of the 100 Percent Clean Act to transition Massachusetts to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and 100 percent clean heating and transportation by 2045. The House version was filed by state Reps. Marjorie Decker and Sean Garballey.

In the pandemic’s second year, is it good that there are “worsts” largely unrelated to it? They include a bike and bus lane breakdown, some bad government and a company that bought up a neighborhood and probably has more of a plan for it than city officials do.

Coronavirus was the unavoidable backdrop to nearly everything that happened in 2021, so much of what good about the year was how we responded, from business revivals and an arts evolution to city-funded Covid testing, tackling hunger effectively and leaving the war on drugs behind.