Copley exhibit

As a policy researcher and resident of Jamaica Plain, I find the scene in Copley Square this weekend morally indefensible. While the city enters a cold emergency with life-threatening wind chills, our most iconic public square is being occupied not by an emergency warming station, but by the “Frostival Lodge” — a heated, corporate-sponsored exhibit.

When public land is used to showcase “shoppable” furniture and high-priced lattes while the unhoused struggle to find shelter, the city has prioritized commercial marketing over human survival. We do not need luxury pop-ups; we need a government that ensures every citizen has a dignified, warm space to stay alive — no entry fees or QR codes required.

Ping Xu

Jamaica Plain

Solar projects

Some important questions were raised by the Herald’s report on the cancellation of solar projects in Puerto Rico (“Trump administration scraps multimillion-dollar solar projects in Puerto Rico as grid crumbles,” Jan. 22.) The fragility of Puerto Rico’s grid is very clear to me. At a family wedding in the capital city of San Juan last February, we experienced a short and unexplained power outage.

Moreover, since San Juan gets about 300 more hours of sunlight every year than Boston, and since solar is now the least expensive form of electricity, you would think investing in solar for Puerto Rico would be the most cost-effective approach.

The president’s cancellation of new solar projects for Puerto Rico is short-sighted fiscal policy, another sign of his bias in favor of fossil fuel companies.

Bill Beckett

Watertown

Puerto Rico

Ending solar projects in Puerto Rico is a profoundly wrong-headed decision that reflects an incoherent approach to energy.  When climate change is intensifying (and frequently clobbering the island territory with superstorms and extreme precipitation), the last thing Puerto Ricans need is for their deteriorating grid to be fed by the same fossil fuels which are causing the crisis in the first place.

Trump’s ignorance and mendacity are both on display in the Department of Energy’s email, quoted in your article by the Associated Press.  Rooftop and balcony solar systems are essential components of a genuinely sustainable energy system, while heavily centralized grids are inherently more vulnerable to attack or malfunction.

This incoherent mix of spite and greed is not an energy “policy,” but a show of ignorance and contempt.  Call it what it is: the president’s thirst for revenge, directed at a population of US citizens whose lives he has regarded with dismissive scorn for decades.

Warren Senders

Medford