When Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announced a referendum that could relax one of the most restrictive regimes for abortion in Europe, his nod to women’s rights was clear.

“I believe this is a decision about whether we want to continue to stigmatize and criminalize our sisters, our co-workers, and our friends. Or whether we are prepared to make a collective act of leadership to show empathy and compassion,” he said this January.

The announcement came in the months following the #MeToo movement that swept across the West, and the referendum was seen as another gain for women’s empowerment, as well as a next step in a long process of social liberalization in Catholic Ireland. Mr. Varadkar himself is Ireland’s first – and one of the world’s few – openly gay heads of government. He came out as the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, the first country in the world to do so by popular vote.

But on the eve of the historic vote May 25 that many would view as fundamental to feminism, the mood is much darker – and more divisive – than during the other sociocultural shifts that have formed modern Ireland. For those against abortion, opening access is seen as a tragic betrayal of their faith and values. And even for abortion-rights activists who see the referendum itself as a victory, a history of state paternalism and misogyny has weighed heavily. Many women find themselves questioning just how far they’ve really come.

Max Rossi/Reuters

Colleen Ni Fhearraigh holds Saoirse Ui Fhroruisce as she casts her vote in Ireland's referendum on allowing its abortion law to be amended, on Gola Island, Ireland, on May 24.

“It is about abortion, of course, but it is also about something more. It’s about the values of the kind of country that we want to have,” says Ailbhe Smyth, co-director of the Together For Yes campaign group, and a long-time feminist. She says that women are in revolt against the state’s historic mistreatment of women. “All of that is there. It’s the huge baggage that this referendum carries: how deeply oppressive this society has been, misogynistic if you like, particularly toward unmarried women and their babies.”

‘Always has been divisive, always will be divisive’

As the vote nears, polls have tightened. In recent weeks, the lead of the “Yes” side – to repeal the so-called Eighth Amendment in the Constitution that gives equal rights to a pregnant woman and her unborn child, effectively prohibiting abortion unless a woman’s life is at risk – has shrunk. The latest poll, conducted for the Irish Times by Ipsos MRBI, found that 44 percent of voters want to repeal the Eighth Amendment, while 32 percent want to keep it. Seventeen percent said they are undecided.

If Ireland does repeal the constitutional clause, proposed legislation would allow abortion on demand up to 12 weeks into pregnancy, and later in specific medical and psychiatric circumstances. Such a move would bring Ireland into line with most other European countries.

Downtown Dublin is forested in campaign posters, many of them grim. Insults have been hurled. It’s in stark contrast to the atmosphere during the referendum on gay marriage. Hard-fought though it was, there was a sense among many of its opponents that same-sex marriage was a foregone conclusion, and after the referendum passed, there was an outpouring of joy. No one expects that this time.

Abortion “has always been divisive; it will always be divisive,” says John McGuirk, spokesman for anti-abortion group Save the 8th. “On this occasion, should the amendment be repealed, I think you will probably see a great amount of sadness.”

Neither are pro-repeal campaigners apt to be celebratory. “People want to get married,” says Ms. Smyth. “Women don’t want to get an abortion.”

Central to the narrative for the “Yes” camp are stories of women terminating their pregnancies, many traveling abroad alone to do so. British Department of Health figures for 2016 show that 3,265 women with addresses in the Republic of Ireland obtained abortions in Britain that year.

Actress and writer Tara Flynn is among a number of women who have gone public about their experiences. “I felt it was a duty, in a way,” she says. “These are not mythological women [who have abortions], they are real women. ... The Eighth is broken. It doesn’t stop abortions, and we can’t have a state with a lie in one of its foundational documents.”

History and empathy

Many women see a sexist dichotomy running through the course of history up to the present. Although it has not been the center of campaigning, the question of how Irish women have been treated historically – from the use of symphysiotomy, a primitive form of obstetric surgery, to the scandal of unmarried mothers who endured forced labor in the “Magdalene laundries” – has informed opinions here.

The Eighth Amendment was enacted in 1983 in an effort to protect Ireland from the ramifications of Roe v. Wade in the US. And while it has been fought ever since, momentum dates to 2012 after the death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old pregnant woman who died from septic shock after being denied an abortion. Public outrage followed.

Anti-abortion activists say that the “Yes” camp is painting Ireland as a country that needs to modernize in the name of women’s rights – a picture that independent lawmaker and leading anti-abortion campaigner Mattie McGrath says is unfair. He points to a recent scandal about cervical cancer testing failures as an example of how modern, secular Ireland isn’t doing much better for women. “Women have died and they [the government] don’t want to engage.”

He says the odds have been stacked against the “No” camp by a liberal establishment. “All of the institutions of the government, and the media, have been pro-repeal. It’s up to the decent pro-life people of Ireland to turn out and vote.”

Despite the obvious divisions – which could deepen after Friday – the debate has also generated empathy around a complicated issue, just as the prime minister had called for. Even some who are ardently against abortion have conceded it is a complex issue.

Eugene Murphy, a lawmaker in Fianna Fáil, usually considered to be the most anti-abortion among the country’s mainstream parties, says he has made up his mind to vote against repeal, but not without thinking hard about it. Mr. Murphy says he objects to the government’s stated plan to allow abortion on demand, which is likely to pass if repeal is approved. But he also feels that abortions can be required for serious medical reasons, and wants to repeal the provision in Ireland’s current law that allows for a sentence of up to 14 years imprisonment for “unlawful destruction of human life.”

“I haven't campaigned, but reading what is proposed I have decided to vote ‘no,’ ” he says. “I have some reservations about what the legislation will be: I have a problem with abortion at up to 12 weeks unrestricted. Having said that, I have some reservations about some situations that are very, very difficult for women.”

•Sara Miller Llana reported from Paris.

Mike Blake/Reuters/File

Solar power plays a starring role in California's vision for a 'decarbonized' future. Earlier this month, the California Energy Commission unanimously approved a mandate requiring solar energy installations on all new homes by 2020.

Something remarkable happened in California during the day of April 28: The most populous state in America met 73 percent of its electric power needs from renewable energy sources, mostly solar and wind.

That doesn’t even count the gobs of largely off-grid electricity generated by residential rooftop panels in the state – supplies that are poised to surge thanks to a new regulatory mandate that all new homes generate solar power.

So is California heralding a new era of abundant clean energy – and fast “decarbonizing” its economy by leaving fossil fuels behind? 

Not so fast. The reality is that, as some states seek to adjust their energy profile in response to climate change, a big challenge looms. Solar and wind energy, while popular and increasingly cheap to produce, varies based on whether the wind is blowing or the sun shining. Any ideal of “100 percent renewable” energy will need to grapple with how to meet power needs day and night, all seasons of the year.

It’s a formidable task, and it’s actually the tip of a deeper issue: States and nations are entering uncharted waters with efforts to rapidly pivot toward clean energy. Big technical hurdles ​– like what to do after the sun goes down ​– are matched by the political test of maintaining public support for steps that, as much as they may help humanity’s future, also impose some costs.

“There’s more research saying it's going to be extremely inefficient and costly to run a grid solely on variable energy like the sun and the wind – even if you allow for heroic progress on energy storage,” says Danny Cullenward, an energy economist who serves on an independent advisory commission on California’s climate policies. 

And when the price tag rises for action on climate change, he adds, “those costs will eventually be seen and will affect the politics.” 

That doesn’t mean support for greening the energy system is about to crumble in states like California and New York. But costs do matter, even in liberal states, at a time when about one-third of Americans say they doubt global warming is caused mostly by human carbon emissions. 

“I’m optimistic ... we’ll find affordable ways to get this done,” Dr. Cullenward says of the energy transition. But “it's not a small undertaking.” 

States are providing some trial-and-error lessons along the path.

A tale of two states

Where sunny California is going all-in on solar, New York has its own ambitious plans that look more like an “all of the above” clean-energy strategy, including nuclear power.  

California, by contrast, is on course to phase out its remaining nuclear capacity, based on concerns about safety and maintenance costs. But that means that California, like New York, still relies heavily on fossil fuels: natural gas for electricity, plus of course gasoline in transportation.

Climate scientists widely agree that human emissions are behind observed warming in the Earth’s surface temperatures and oceans, and that action to reduce greenhouse emissions is an urgent global priority.

California and New York are arguably America’s leaders on this front, as large states that have set ambitious goals. Yet even they are feeling their way on a journey where it’s a lot easier to get to a 50 percent reduction in emissions than to achieve the more complete “decarbonization” of economies that scientists see as the real target.

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US Energy Information Administration

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Karen Norris/Staff

“We haven't figured it out just yet,” Cullenward says. 

But these states have their feet moving, alongside nations that signed onto the 2015 Paris Agreement to pursue lower greenhouse-gas emissions. Their efforts could bring benefits, not just burdens, to their economies. 

“China is taking lessons from California and New York right now,” says Kate Gordon, a fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy in New York. “We’re in a policy context right now globally where most countries in the world have agreed to bring carbon emissions down 80 percent by 2050…. That just opens the door to technological advances,” including job creation for places that take leadership roles.

“We always underestimate the power of technological innovation to address these issues,” she says. 

Consider that challenge of solar- and wind-power variability. The issue is real, but potential solutions are in view. 

“I think it’s a problem we can solve,” says Ethan Elkind, an energy-law expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “I think we’re heading toward a solar-plus-storage future.”

“Storage” means improved ways of saving variable power for when it’s needed, from batteries at residences to molten salt at larger utility-run solar installations.

But it’s unclear how fast that will become affordable and efficient enough to have a large-scale impact. So other parallel solutions could include:

• Managing the demand for power, such as using apps and price incentives to encourage activities like dishwashing or car-charging when power is most available. 
• Making power grids better connected, so more power can flow across time zones.
• Having an energy mix that includes not just solar and wind but also “dispatchable” or always-on sources like natural gas. That wouldn’t mean giving up on zero-emission aspirations, if carbon-capture technology allowed greenhouse gases to be stored underground or adapted for industrial use. 

Some experts predict that each of those steps will be needed, especially as cars are increasingly electrified.

And alongside the technical challenges are the political ones. Economists say the most efficient way to cut emissions is through marketplace incentives, like a tax on emissions or making the price of electricity vary with undulations in supply and demand. Such price signals, unlike specific government mandates, allow markets to determine which solutions are the cheapest path to less carbon. 

“I believe you can reach any carbon goal using market-based policies,” says Lucas Davis, an energy economist at the Berkeley Haas School of Business in California. But “it would require the political will of maintaining higher prices on carbon than we currently have.”

This issue is a live one. New York is considering a new carbon tax. And on Thursday a legislative committee in California heard arguments that the state’s economy-wide “cap and trade” program for emissions needs to be more stringent.

In practice, states are trying both price signals and regulatory mandates in tandem to coax the energy transition forward. 

The mandate for rooftop solar panels in California is the latest example. Critics say the mandate is a gimmick that will make homes more expensive in an already high-cost state. But another view is that homebuyers will see the panels pay for themselves, and the result will be new fans of clean-energy policies. 

“It turns this from [theory] to something that people can really see and experience,” says Ms. Gordon of the Columbia energy center. “That makes solar real to people, and that makes this whole set of [clean-energy] solutions accessible.”

Michael Bonfigli /The Christian Science Monitor

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, speaks at the Monitor Breakfast on May 24, 2018, in Washington.

Despite all the talk of a “blue wave” this November, Democrats are facing the real possibility that President Trump may break the mold – again – by holding on to his Republican majorities in Congress.

Public sentiment that the country is on the “right track” has risen to a 10-year high. Mr. Trump’s approval ratings are also ticking up. Unemployment has dropped to 3.9 percent.

But Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the Democrat tasked with helping his party win as many Senate elections as possible, is still professing confidence.

“Senate Democrats are very bullish about the direction of the 2018 elections,” Senator Van Hollen, chair of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told a Monitor Breakfast Thursday. “But we are taking nothing for granted.”

That the Democrats can even contemplate winning a Senate majority is extraordinary. It’s true they need only a net gain of two seats to take over, and historically, the president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections. But they face a tough “map” – 26 Democratic senators are up for reelection, including 10 from states won by Trump in 2016.

Senate-race analyst Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report puts the Democrats’ chances of winning a majority at 35 to 40 percent, with an equal chance that the Senate winds up tied.

“There’s a much less chance that we have a status quo election, where Republicans have 51 seats” out of 100, Ms. Duffy says. “There’s almost no chance that [Republicans] actually gain seats.”

Senator Van Hollen argues that red-state Democratic incumbents will win reelection this fall by talking pocketbook issues – especially the cost and availability of health care, and flat wage growth – and focusing on the needs of their voters.

Take West Virginia, a state that Trump won by 42 points. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is vulnerable, but not a goner. The May 8 primary didn’t give Senator Manchin his preferred opponent, retired coal baron and ex-convict Don Blankenship. But GOP nominee Patrick Morrisey, the state’s attorney general, has soft spots – including the fact that he’s a native of New Jersey and failed to win a Republican primary for a House seat there in 2000.

“I don’t think the people of West Virginia will want a New Jersey reject, when they’ve got somebody with West Virginia in his DNA like Joe Manchin,” Van Hollen said.

The Trump effect

The November midterms will test another proposition that’s central to the outcome: Will Trump voters turn out without Trump himself on the ballot? In the Obama era, Democrats learned the hard way that without the president himself on the ballot, they got shellacked. Democrats now hope the same principle holds for Trump voters.

But Trump will do everything he can to turn out his voters, including hold rallies in key states. And some indicators are suggesting a more hospitable environment for Trump-backed candidates.

Polls that gauge public sentiment on whether the country is heading in the “right direction” have moved steadily upward, now averaging almost 40 percent. That could help Republicans, says veteran GOP pollster Neil Newhouse.

“I understand how unpopular President Trump is, and the intensity behind the Democratic vote, but how much does this increasingly positive mood of country, which is economically driven, soften the blue wave?” Mr. Newhouse asks.

The blue wave is real, he adds, “but do the Democrats gain 20 seats or 40 seats in the House?” The Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to take over that chamber.

Peter Fenn, a longtime Democratic strategist, also sees potential that the wave could soften, and take some of the edge off Democrats’ advantage, if they mishandle their message.

“I worry that we stay on Trump’s personal stuff,” he says. “You know, we don’t have to talk about Stormy Daniels.”

At the Monitor Breakfast, Van Hollen pointed repeatedly to Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat who won the special election in Alabama last December, as the model for how to succeed in a red state (though he did not mention Senator Jones’s deeply flawed GOP rival, former Judge Roy Moore).

“He talked about issues that people care about; he didn't get involved in a big polarizing partisan fight,” Van Hollen said “He talked about the Children's Health Insurance Program and how that was important to people in Alabama.”

Impeachment and the Clintons

Of course, there are miles to go before Nov. 6, and the Democrats need to play their hand just right, including winning at least two of the GOP’s three most vulnerable Senate seats, in Nevada, Arizona, and Tennessee. And that means making sure their voters turn out. Democrats still have an edge against Republicans in voter enthusiasm, but there are factors that could mitigate that: impeachment and the Clintons.

While prominent Democrats like Van Hollen and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi discourage talk of trying to impeach Trump if the Democrats retake control of the House, there’s an anti-Trump constituency that wants to go there. When asked about impeachment and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Van Hollen quickly turns the discussion to kitchen-table issues.

“Let’s just let Mueller continue to do his work. Let’s find out what the facts are here,” says Van Hollen. Voters “care about rising health care costs. They care about trying to modernize our infrastructure.”

As for who might show up on the campaign trail, including the Clintons and former President Barack Obama, Van Hollen says he would not discourage anyone from participating – even someone as polarizing as 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

“We welcome support from everybody who wants to help, including Secretary Clinton and former President Obama,” Van Hollen said, adding that “every campaign will decide for themselves whether they want somebody to be out on the campaign trail.”

If Trump’s very being is energizing to many Democratic voters, so too might figures like Mrs. Clinton be to Republicans. Even her husband, former President Bill Clinton – once the gold standard as a campaigner – has become risky as a surrogate. Part of the issue is the #MeToo movement, and his past as a womanizer. Also, says Duffy, “he’s not good at staying on message, and he’s still pretty angry. So he might do more harm than good.”

To view the C-Span video of the Monitor Breakfast with Van Hollen, click here.

When a deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus began creeping across communities in West Africa in early 2014, many on the ground quickly sounded the alarm.

“We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen,” said Mariano Lugli, a coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), that April.

It would take nearly four more months and nearly 900 more deaths, however, before the World Health Organization declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern,” and a massive global humanitarian response shuffled into place. By the time the epidemic was eventually contained in late 2015, more than 11,000 people had died.

But in the past few weeks, as Congo faces an Ebola outbreak, there seems to be a new refrain – “Not this time” – as local and international responders scramble to apply lessons learned from the West African epidemic.

Within two days of the first two confirmed cases, Minister of Public Health Oly Ilunga was on the phone with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, the director general of the World Health Organization, arranging to ship thousands of doses of an Ebola vaccine to the affected region. Two days after that, Dr. Tedros, as he is known, had landed in Congo and was posing with Dr. Ilunga modeling an “elbow bump” (to avoid the skin-to-skin contact of a handshake that can help spread Ebola) and touring hospitals where patients were being treated.

Meanwhile, as news of Africa’s latest Ebola outbreak spread through major Western news outlets, countries including Britain, Canada, Germany, and the United States lined up to donate money. And the World Bank announced that it would give $12 million from its Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, a fund created after the 2014-15 West African epidemic to help prevent disease outbreaks from spreading in poor countries.

Denis Balibouse/Reuters

John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (right), and Margaret Agama-Anyetei, the head of Health, Nutrition and Population at the African Union Commission, attend a news conference on the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Ebola Response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 22, 2018.

“In 2014, it took Westerners getting sick and dying for a lot of the world to wake up,” says Donna Patterson, the director of Africana Studies at Delaware State University, who has studied the West African epidemic. “I’m happy to say that’s not been the case this time around.”

“The response was very quick from the beginning,” says Tarik Jašarevic, a spokesperson for the WHO. “[Two weeks] into the [declared] outbreak we have a vaccination campaign, we’re tracing everyone who’s had contact with those who are sick, and we’re conducting safe and dignified burials” – NGO-speak for burials that conform to local cultural norms but avoid skin-to-skin contact – “so we are preparing for all scenarios.”

So far, 22 deaths have been reported, and 58 suspected cases of the disease, according to figures provided by the Congolese Health Ministry.

The situation, however, has become more complicated since last Thursday, when authorities announced that the outbreak had migrated more than 100 miles from Bikoro, the rural area where it began, to Mbandaka, a city of more than a million people situated on the Congo River.

“There’s obviously increased risk of spread now,” Mr. Jašarevic says, particularly given the fact that Mbandaka is a port city and has a direct flight connection to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital.

But the 2014-15 West African epidemic also offered a useful primer into how to keep Ebola from spreading in dense urban areas, Dr. Patterson says.

As an example, she points to Lagos, Nigeria’s sprawling mega-city of 20 million. When the first case of Ebola was confirmed there in August 2014, many observers were apocalyptic in their predictions. This was an overcrowded city with wobbly public health care, and to top it off – the city’s doctors were on strike. But only two months later, the country was officially declared Ebola-free. In the end, just 20 people had contracted the virus, and only eight had died.

Part of the reason for that, Patterson says, is that Nigerian health authorities quickly identified the source of the disease in the city – a Liberian man who had arrived by flight from Monrovia – and tracked down everyone he had come into contact with. Every time they found a new case, they tracked down all that person’s contacts, too. In all, healthcare workers made nearly 20,000 visits to just under 1,000 people to make sure the disease didn’t spread. And it didn’t.

That tactic – known in the medical world as “contact tracing” – has been a centerpiece of the effort to end the outbreak in Congo too, with one twist.

Now there’s a vaccine.

“A vaccine improves the message you’re able to send to people about Ebola enormously, because you’re telling people if they come forward to say they’ve had contact with the disease, there’s something proactive that can be done to help them,” says Eric Osoro, a Kenyan epidemiologist who worked with the WHO in Sierra Leone during the outbreak there. “That’s a real game changer.”

Before that outbreak, a vaccine had been in development for decades, but there was little money – or urgency – to try to cure a disease that tended to only hit remote, poor communities in rural Africa.

The severity of West Africa’s outbreak changed that. The most promising vaccine was hustled through development, and given to more than 4,000 people in Guinea and Sierra Leone who had been in touch with people infected with Ebola. None of them got sick. Technically, however, the vaccine is still experimental, with its current use in Congo its first real-world application.

Of course, many experts note, even apart from what it’s learned from West Africa, few places know more about dealing with Ebola outbreaks than Congo. Since the virus was first identified after an outbreak in rural Zaire – as Congo was then known – in 1976, there have been ten more reported outbreaks of the disease there.

“They’re experienced, they know how to take the measures to reduce transmission,” Dr. Osoro says. “And now, with this vaccine, we have a new addition to the fight.”

Sara Schonhardt

Larry and Malana Monson stand behind the counter at My Little Bakery in Corning, Ohio. As much a community center as a spot to grab a scone, the bakery is bringing people together in a village of about 600 people where there are few other places to go.

When Larry and Malana Monson packed up their life in California and moved to this tiny town in southeast Ohio, they did so with the dream of opening a bakery and leading a simpler life.

What they found was a community hungry for a place to gather to enjoy some living – and, they hoped, the occasional cream puff.

Built around the railroad when coal and other commodities poured out of Appalachia, Corning today is a one-stoplight village, its main street bookended by an American Legion and an Eagle’s fraternal order. Until the bakery arrived, the street was mostly desolate, marked by buildings long shuttered and empty.

Many of the older folks who’ve grown up here lament the way they’ve seen the town fade. But the Monsons saw something not many did: potential.

“I’m hoping that by [our] coming in, it gets people thinking about the possibilities,” says Ms. Monson. “Here we took an old building and slapped some paint on it and now we’ve got people coming in on a regular basis.” The Monsons see the bakery and as a place for people to come together, at a time when frustrations are running high across rural America. And for them personally, their move represents a chance to start over with a lower cost of living and a higher quality of life. 

People in Corning still speak with pride about the friendliness and sense of security that comes with knowing one’s neighbors. But the loss of local shops to far away chain stores and youths to bigger cities, the rise of drugs, and lower incomes have also weighed on residents. 

Like many small rural towns, Corning has struggled amid a loss of decent jobs and population. Cuts to social services, including welfare payments and food stamps, have hurt at the same time that local governments have less funding. “The thing all these counties in Southeast Ohio have in common is they’re poor communities,” says Jack Frech, former head of Athens County Job and Family Services and a long-time anti-poverty campaigner. 

“Rural America is in a world of hurt,” says John Winnenberg, a consultant working to draw positive attention and investment to overlooked parts of Appalachia. 

Cheaper housing draws outsiders in 

While the region’s housing market has tumbled, it has also helped bring in outsiders looking for affordability, including the Monsons — one of several families from out West who’ve moved to Corning in recent years, injecting some money and energy into the village. These transplants may be part of a trend of slowing growth in large cities, with census data showing that rural areas gained population between 2016 and 2017, according to analysis by Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts. 

The small-town life was a welcome change from Sacramento, says Mr. Monson. “I like the fact that Corning is a town that would look at Mayberry as being the big city,” he says with a chuckle. Malana explains that while there may be better job opportunities in urban areas, the cost of living is higher. So retirees and people like themselves seeking affordability can appreciate what a small town has to offer. 

It has not been easy. They were robbed shortly after opening right after Thanksgiving. Larry, who really just wanted to bake, found himself throwing away more than he was selling. In late January, they announced they were closing until spring. The cold weather, few customers, and rising utility costs left them little choice.

In a place where people have grown familiar with disappointment and empty promises, the bakery’s closure could have put customers off. But many rallied behind them. With promises of patronage, the Monsons reopened on weekends. They’ve started hosting themed dinners, launched a book club, and plan to add a crafting evening. For summer they’re planning barbecues on the lot next door.

“I think it’s a good way for the community to come together,” says Opal Byrum, who moved to Corning in 2014. Her daughter, Naomi, helps wash dishes and gets the odd baking lesson from Larry. Malana wishes they could give more youths such opportunities, particularly those from low-income families. Many parents in town say they wish there were more activities to keep kids occupied, and the Monsons, who have an adolescent son whom Malana homeschools, are brainstorming some ideas.

When lunch means the gas station deli

One Thursday evening, a group of women gathered for the monthly “Paint and Pastry” night led by Malana’s sister, Crystal Atkinson, who moved to town before Malana and runs a dog grooming business. Drinks flowed and plates of cream puffs came out hot from the oven. 

“We could not wait until this bakery opened,” says Patti Anderson, who teaches at a nearby Head Start program. Before the bakery, the only place to get a hot lunch in this town of fewer than 600 residents was at the gas station deli, she says. 

Ms. Anderson says people can be stuck in their ways and too often wait on others to create change. “To see something new come in, it kind of just gives you that renewed feeling for your community,” Anderson says, hoping the bakery might be the spark that’s needed to bring in more business.

The challenge will be keeping that momentum going. “The difficult thing is when they get here most of them are not prepared for how bad the economics are in those places,” says Mr. Frech, who is currently helping mayors in the region address the needs of their communities. 

Mr. Winnenberg, the consultant, says common spaces are critical to society but are harder to maintain where people live on limited incomes. Born and raised in Corning, he’s working to highlight the region’s history, nature, and arts and culture, and believes southeast Ohio can become an alternative place to settle. Winnenberg has already seen the hope and pride people show on social media for the Monsons’ bakery. A place for visitors to stop as they drive through the area is also needed and welcome. “People want these things to work,” he says.

The Monsons still struggle to cover costs. Larry, who used to work in IT, picked up hours at a telecommunications center. But in just a few short months the bakery’s reputation has spread, drawing customers from Columbus, 70 miles away. The bakery needs the tourist business to survive. 

“It’s nice to see something coming up in Corning rather than coming down,” says Tom Gaitten, a local retiree. On Sundays he and his wife Beulah bring more than a dozen churchgoers for lunch and push the tables together. Ms. Gaitten says having a place to go and chat with the neighbors has given the community a boost. “There won’t ever be big changes because we don’t have the population and we don’t have the money,” she says. “But any little thing is an improvement and this is a big improvement.” 

For the Monsons, living in Corning has been an adjustment. While the village appeals to Larry’s more conservative political leanings, Malana has struggled to find her tribe of like minds. But she’s committed to their new home and is relieved by the lack of “keeping up with the Joneses” pressure that comes with life in more affluent surroundings. 

She’s also learned to build on what Corning has, not step on people’s toes. “I think we’re fostering friendships more than anything,” she says.

Photo by Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor

Workers walk past steam storage tanks at Reykjavik Energy's Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant outside Reykjavik, Iceland. Reykjavik Energy is a public utility company providing electricity and geothermal water for heating. To offset global warming, since year 2007, scientists have collaborated with Reykjavík Energy on developing the idea of fixating CO2 into basaltic rock. They recently started working on a revolutionary pilot project to have the world's first carbon negative plant enabled by direct air capture of CO2. The company is working towards carbon neutrality through a pilot program called CarbFix2 that is funded by the EU.

Is the political climate over climate change finally changing for the better in Washington?

Perhaps, if you listen to the buzz about a bipartisan effort in Congress to take action on carbon emissions from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas.

In February, lawmakers of both parties supported a provision in a budget bill that provides tax credits for the emerging technology of capturing carbon emissions from industrial and power plants before the gas enters Earth’s atmosphere.

Then this week, in another show of consensus on climate change, a Senate panel passed a measure to ensure federal agencies coordinate on the building of pipelines to transmit carbon emissions for storage or other use.

In addition, a report by a think tank established by President Barack Obama’s former energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, stated that the tax credits “are a critical step forward and will enable substantial emissions reductions for many facilities, especially industrial sites.”

For years the subject of carbon capture and storage (CCS)has been politically charged. “The Right underestimates the magnitude of the problem [of developing CCS technologies]; the Left underestimates the magnitude of the solution,” says Howard Herzog, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But that political debate over CCS has run into a stubborn fact: In the past three decades, the world’s use of fossil fuels as a proportion of total energy consumption is still the same – about 80 percent. Despite progress on renewable energy and conservation, humanity must recognize its dependency on dirty fuels for now and act to clean up their use.

The solution to reducing emissions “is not [a choice between] renewable energy or carbon capture; it’s a combination of both,” says Niall Mac Dowell, who models low-carbon energy systems at Imperial College London. “It’s everything, all at once, now.”

Currently 17 CCS demonstration projects around the world are capturing nearly 40 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. But that’s not making much of a dent: The world’s energy industry emits 32 billion tons. Various technologies to solve the problem are at roughly the same stage today as solar and wind were 20 years ago, says Julio Friedmann, one of the authors of a 2017 United Nations Environment Program report on global options for emissions reductions.

“We have to scale up all [carbon] removal approaches. All of them have limits. All of them are nascent,” he says. “All of them have some mix of technical or societal or political or financial issues. [But] there’s nothing in physics or chemistry that says we can’t scale up.”

The International Energy Agency estimates that the new tax credits could generate $1 billion in new investments in CCS technologies in the next six years. In addition, fossil fuel companies may now adopt the concept of “extended producer responsibility,” or the idea that they are responsible for the “life cycle” of the resources they exploit.

Some environmentalists fear that CCS may be seen as a panacea, an easy answer to climate change that will stunt research into other needed efforts. But every promising avenue for solutions should be explored – and CCS is one of them.

Environmentalist Paul Hawken founded Project Drawdown to combat fear-based responses and instead highlight the myriad ways to combat climate change that are constantly emerging.

“Ninety-eight percent of all climate communication is about the probability of what’s going to go wrong and when. Those probabilities are based on impeccable science, for which we have profound respect, but constant repetition of a problem does not solve the problem. It shuts people down,” he told The New York Times recently.

At Project Drawdown, he said, “we don’t blame, shame or demonize. We don’t use fear as a motivating theme. We explore possibility because virtually all human beings move toward the possibility of a better life.”

The immense benefits that would emerge from a technologically and economically feasible means of capturing carbon emissions make CCS one of the brightest possibilities in climate science.