Other writing

MYSLOWICE, Poland — The children Karolina Zolna knows huff and puff after a few minutes of exercise. Two years ago, her infant daughter spent four months in the hospital with pneumonia. The doctors did not identify a cause, but to Ms. Zolna, the reason for the baby’s illness was obvious.

With a neatly trimmed moustache and white doctor’s coat, Dr. Krzysztof Czarnobilski, head of internal medicine and elder care at Kraków’s MSWiA Hospital, speaks nervously, his English formal and stilted. His message, though, couldn’t be clearer. The filthy air in Poland’s most picturesque city is making his elderly patients sick ...

SHAFTER, Calif. — On a map he keeps in his office, Tom Frantz, an environmental activist and retired math teacher, notes a spot near his home that he says is within a five-mile radius of 10 big dairy farms and about 60,000 cows. This town, in the very fertile but poor and badly polluted San Joaquin Valley in California, is near the heart of dairy country in a state that produces 20 percent of America’s milk.

The European Union has long been a world leader on climate change, and its new agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 keeps it at the forefront of that effort. But experts question whether the plans European leaders have sketched out are strong enough to meet their ambitious goal, and even whether a 40 percent cut is enough to keep the Continent on track toward its longer-term target.

A strange twist of circumstance and history has left grey, bustling Warsaw with far cleaner air than elegant Kraków – and created a potentially sizeable sustainability-plus in a nation more accustomed to being cast as the environmental laggard of Europe.

Rotterdam is Europe's largest port, a gritty Dutch metropolis with a long history as a commercial hub and a flair for modern architecture. Ho Chi Minh City, half a world away in Vietnam, is a fast-growing megacity clogged with motorbikes; an extraordinary mixture of old and new, rich and poor.