What we're reading this week | The #FridayFive

Cape Air gets greenlight for seaplane flights
East Boston Times Free Press, February 28, John Lynds
Ever since Cape Air’s CEO Dan Wolf was doing seaplane flight instruction on Cape Cod’s ponds over 35 years ago, launching a scheduled seaplane service has been a dream of his. Starting this spring, Cape Air, one of the busiest air carriers at Logan International Airport with 11 destinations out of Boston, will expand its operations in a unique way. Cape Air received a trial approval from the Boston Planning and Development Agency this month to begin seaplane flights off East Boston’s shores to New York’s for one year. The BPDA approval allows Cape Air to operate four flights a day between Boston and New York. [READ MORE]

Administration freezes a study that considered a NYC sea wall that Trump called ‘foolish’
Washington Post, February 25, Juliet Eilperin & Steven Mufson
The Trump administration has frozen a major study aimed at preparing the New York and New Jersey waterfront from storm surges, sea-level rise and other climate impacts, a month after the president had called one of its proposals “foolish.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been overseeing a six-year, $19 million analysis of what steps New York and New Jersey residents living along the Atlantic Ocean’s coast can take to avert the kind of damage that Hurricane Sandy wreaked in 2012. Scientists predict coastal storms will intensify in coming years and that their impact will be exacerbated by sea-level rise linked to climate change. [READ MORE]

Concerned about climate change? More than 30 percent of Boston residents say they are
Boston Agent Magazine, February 26, Kerrie Kennedy
The vast majority of homebuyers and sellers say they are concerned about climate change, according to a new report from Redfin. Pointing to an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, fires, and other natural disasters, almost three-quarters of respondents (73%) said that climate change “somewhat” factors into their decision about whether and where to buy or sell a home. [READ MORE]

What did you do when you knew climate change threatened our world?
Boston Globe, February 24, Rachel Kyte
Students need to be readied for the world that they will lead, a world of work shaped by digitalization but also decarbonization, and one where the velocity of change is unprecedented. [READ MORE]

Changing Tides Engulf the South Street Seaport
Citylab, February 25, Allison C. Meier
New York was born a maritime city. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville described the pull of the sea on his fellow New Yorkers: “[p]osted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.” Walk towards the East River in Lower Manhattan and the street names anticipate the water: Pearl Street, Water Street, Front Street, and finally South Street. There at the eastern edge of the island, the ghosts of the 19th century can still be made out in the tall masts of ships bobbing at the South Street Seaport piers. Hidden beneath the ground, hulls of other ships are buried, used to stabilize the landfill that extended the island far beyond its original borders. [READ MORE]