DOUBLE ISSUE NOV. 7 / NOV.

14, 20 22

THE PLANET WE MADE

STARE AT THE GREEN HEART FOR 12 SECONDS,
THEN TURN THE PAGE AND KEEP STARING

time.com
DOUBLE ISSUE NOV. 7 / NOV. 14, 20 22

THE PLANET WE NEED

YOU HAVE JUST CREATED A SOCIAL SCULPTURE.
TO PROTECT THE EARTH, WE MUST SEE IT ANEW
ART WORK BY OL AFUR ELIASSON

time.com
CONTENTS

Alexis Grefa, a Kichwa

Indigenous activist, takes a dip
in the Piatúa River, which he
seeks to protect
Photograph by Andrés Yépez for TIME

4 Time November 7/November 14, 2022

 VOL. 200, NOS. 17–18 | 2022

13
The Brief
29
The View
38
Gathering of the Vibes
How voters feel about the candidates
may matter more than the issues
By Charlotte Alter
Plus: Arizona gubernatorial hopeful
Kari Lake, rising Republican star
By Eric Cortellessa 44

49
Climate in the Balance
Appealing to wealthy countries’ sense
of climate justice hasn’t worked, but
reframing the conversation around
issues of self-interest could
By Justin Worland

The importance of loss and damage

By Aryn Baker 53

Viewpoints: The Bridgetown Initiative

By Mia Mottley A climate migrant in
Uganda By Nyombi Morris What the
world can learn from Bangladesh
By Saleemul Huq How Egypt stifles
environmental activism By Sahar Aziz 56

In Ecuador, green-energy developers go

head-to-head with river defenders
By Mélissa Godin 58

66
Disrupter Maestro
Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic’s artistic director, brings
classical music to the masses
By Ed Leibowitz

71
Time Off
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5
BEHIND THE COVER
A different way to
see our planet
BY D.W. PINE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Time has released more than 5,000 covers
since our founding almost a century ago. But
this is the first one where the viewer’s eyes cre-
ate the image. In the run-up to the COP27 climate
conference—the U.N. meeting at which global
leaders will negotiate the next steps toward man-
aging that crisis—we sought a cover image that
could speak to the intensity of the current climate
situation. So we turned the cover (or rather, cov-
ers) over to one of the world’s most prominent
contemporary artists, Olafur Eliasson.
Eliasson creates sculptures and large-scale in-
stallations that employ elemental materials such
as light, water, and air to enhance the viewer’s ex-
perience of the ordinary. To accomplish the effect
on TIME’s cover, the Icelandic Danish artist used
a technique called afterimaging. Following the
instructions on the page allows your eye to “re-
imagine” our overheated planet in the greens and
blues that are the colors of a healthy earth.
“An afterimage is basically created within your
own perceptual apparatus—by your eyes and
brain, that is—whenever you look at something.
You don’t generally see or notice them unless you
look at something for a long time and then turn
away to look at a blank surface,” he says. Look-
ing twice is what Eliasson’s cover asks us all to
do, and it’s no coincidence that the visual an-
chor at the center of it all is a heart. “This image
is not actually there on the page but inside you,”
he says. “You create it. You make the world.” He
spoke to TIME about the thinking behind the
cover. Read more on time.com.
Can you point to a singular moment when
you discovered that you could tell the story of
the climate and nature through your art?
Like many people of my generation, I grew up
taking nature for granted as something un-
changing. My interest in working with materi-
als like light, color, water, fog, and other natural
phenomena grew out of my desire to demateri-
alize the art object, to make things that were less
physical than, say, ephemeral or atmospheric.
In 2003, around the time I created The Weather
Project—the artificial sun in the Tate Modern, in
London—I began thinking about the weather,
about how it affects our lives, and our moods,
and our experiences, and how we in turn affect
it. From there, it was not a great leap to thinking
about how we are affecting the planet as a whole
through human-induced climate change.
6 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
When TIME declared the “Endangered
Earth” to be Person—or rather Planet—of the
Year for 1988, the cover featured a plastic-
wrapped globe by the artist Christo. In the
years since, despite a trove of urgent scien-
tific facts, the issue has still struggled to gain
global acceptance. Why do you think that is?
There is a lot of evidence that fear-based com-
munication about the dangers of climate change
are not as effective as communicating concrete
actions, but this is still the main way that the cli-
mate emergency is communicated in the media.
I think the experiences of the pandemic, and
the struggles to enact comprehensive, science-
based policies to combat the virus, have taught
us a lot about the limits and possibilities for
enacting change to habits on a large scale. I
do think that you need to give people a posi-
tive image of the future that they are working
toward—a more equitable, sustainable world for
all, both humans and nonhumans alike.
I love that your work makes the viewer expe-
rience something—whether it’s the sun in-
side the Tate Modern or huge chunks of gla-
cial ice for Ice Watch. Can you talk about the
importance you place on actually experienc-
ing nature and the climate through your art?
There is something extraordinary about the di-
rect experience that art can offer at a moment
when so many of us encounter the world via
digital devices. Whether it is a live music perfor-
mance, theater show, or art exhibition, there is
something about being in one’s body at a certain
place and at a certain time, sharing an experi-
ence with others, that cannot be replaced by our
devices—as we learned during the pandemic.
Especially when you think about something
△ as large-scale and seemingly distant as climate
Eliasson, top, uses change, it is often precisely this experiential
an optical illusion level that is missing in motivating action.
to create a new
image of our planet What would you like the reader to experience
on what looks like in the afterimage on this cover? It is my hope
a plain gray page that viewers take away from this some idea of
how much their own perception of the world
contributes to making it. And if we can see the
world anew—or even just our representations of
the world—then we can think about it in a new
way too, and I hope even change it.
What gives you hope for the future of our
planet and the climate? I have the feeling that
the young people today are thinking very much
from a standpoint of the future—unlike my gen-
eration, which often seeks refuge in history and
L ARS BORGES
visions from the past. This gives me great hope
for the future of our planet. □
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 CONVERSATION
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11
 THE
BATTLE FOR
UKRAINE’S
INTERNET
BY VERA BERGENGRUEN

Attempts to maintain online

infrastructure—seen here
in Kharkiv—have become
critical in the ongoing war
S

THE FIGHT OVER SOMALIA'S SLOW-MOTION THE TROUBLE

STUDENT-LOAN FORGIVENESS HUMANITARIAN CRISIS WITH AMBITION

PHOTOGR APH BY LEO CORREA 13

THE BRIEF OPENER
I
n the wake of the counteroffensive that
reclaimed vast swaths of Ukraine from Russian
forces, teams of local technicians and engineers
quietly arrived. Wearing helmets and bulletproof
vests amid the ongoing shelling, often escorted by Ukrai-
nian troops to avoid land mines, the workers barely
waited to see the last of the retreating Russian soldiers
before beginning to repair the damaged base stations and
fiber-optic cables that left hundreds of towns and villages
cut off from the outside world.
Ukraine’s dogged efforts to restore internet and mo-
bile connection underscore the urgency with which gov-
ernment officials view the communications blackout in
previously occupied areas. “The first thing the Russians
do when they occupy these territories is cut off the net-
works,” says Stas Prybytko, head
of mobile broadband develop-
ment in Ukraine’s Ministry of
Digital Transformation. “The
people living there don’t know
what’s happening in Ukraine,
‘It’s not a
they can’t call family to describe
the situation, they don’t know
situation
whether their relatives are alive.”
The battle for control over someone
could imagine
Ukraine’s internet shows how
both sides view online access as a
critical weapon in a 21st century
war. After Russian troops invaded
Ukraine in February, their occupa- in the
tion of Ukrainian towns followed
a pattern. Upon establishing con-
trol, their first stop was often the
21st century.’
offices of the local internet service —STAS PRYBYTKO,
UKRAINE’S MINISTRY OF
provider, Ukrainian officials tell DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
TIME. There the Russians often
seized telecommunications net-
works at gunpoint.
More than 4,000 base stations belonging to Ukrai-
nian telecommunications providers have been seized or
destroyed by Russian soldiers since the beginning of the
war, according to Ukraine’s Special Communications Ser-
vice. More than 60,000 km of fiber-optic lines used for
the internet have been captured or damaged, and Russian
forces destroyed 18 broadcasting antennas that provided
television and radio signals. In some areas of southern
Ukraine, Russia appears to have rerouted internet traffic
through their own providers, exposing it to the Kremlin’s
vast system of surveillance and censorship. Since the in-
vasion began, the number of users connecting to the in-
ternet in Ukraine has shrunk by at least 16%, according to
London-based industry research group Top10VPN.
Ukrainian telecom workers have been working just
as hard to get the country back online. Mobile opera-
tors have rebuilt 71 of their base stations in areas liber-
ated from Russian occupation since the beginning of
the counteroffensive in September, according to figures
shared with TIME by Ukraine’s digital ministry. In total,
The Brief is reported by Tara Law, Sanya Mansoor, and Julia Zorthian
Ukrainian telecommunications workers have restored
1,232 base stations in areas occupied by the Russians
since March. Before repairs are even completed, officials
have been setting up makeshift wi-fi spots where locals
stand in long lines to access the internet for 15 minutes
apiece to avoid overwhelming flimsy connections.
This work has come at great risk to the technicians them-
selves. A vehicle carrying four employees of Ukrtelecom, one
of the country’s leading service providers, recently drove
over a land mine in the Sumy region, injuring three people
and killing the driver. In Russian airstrikes on Oct. 10—some
of which targeted telecommunications buildings—four em-
ployees of Ukraine’s department overseeing digital infra-
structure were killed. “These restorations are being made
with some really heroic efforts
from these guys,” says Prybytko.
“It’s still very dangerous to do
this work, but we can’t wait to
do this, because there are a lot of
citizens in liberated villages who
urgently need to connect.”
Prybytko’s 11-person team
in Ukraine’s digital ministry are
spending their days trying to
navigate a patchwork of basic
fixes to restore a connection
to parts of the country and
meeting with other government
officials in a new working group
set up to coordinate these
efforts with local authorities
and mobile providers. They
have scrambled to make safety
assessments, provide military
escorts to areas that were
occupied by Russian troops
until recently, and find the
necessary equipment in local warehouses. Many recently
liberated areas are without power, requiring teams to run
manual diesel generators.
The biggest challenge has been ensuring the physi-
cal safety of the repair teams. In addition to the threat of
bombardment, “the mining of base stations is a big prob-
lem,” Prybytko says, because the Russians have used land
mines “to avoid faster restoration of service.”
While the war continues, Ukrainian officials and
internet providers say they’ve already won on the digital
front. Rival carriers have worked together to provide
roaming coverage for Ukrainian users, who are able to
jump from one network to another if their provider’s
coverage goes down. They’ve also collaborated to repair
one another’s bombed-out base stations. “We really
have brave technical teams and mobile operators,” says
Prybytko. “They know the importance of what many
people treated as trivial before: make a phone call, browse
the news. It’s not a situation someone could imagine in
the 21st century.” 
 Artists’ statement
Iranian artists unfurled banners with the face of Mahsa Amini—the 22-year-old who died in Iranian police custody in
September after being arrested for wearing her headscarf improperly—at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City on
Oct. 22. The artists were protesting what they see as inaction by Western museums to human-rights abuses in Iran.
O P E N I N G PA G E : A P ; T H I S PA G E : G U G G E N H E I M : C O U R T E S Y A N O N Y M O U S A R T I S T S F O R I R A N ; S U N A K : D A N K I T W O O D — G E T T Y I M A G E S

WORLD

Britain’s newest leader faces a tough road

BRITONS HAVE CERTAINLY HEARD
this one before: after a period of tu-
mult and uncertainty, the U.K. has
a new Conservative Prime Minister.
The Tory is Rishi Sunak, who en-
tered 10 Downing Street less than two
months after losing his first leader-
ship bid to Liz Truss, who took over
from Boris Johnson in September.
HISTORY- MAKING Sunak’s appoint-
ment may mark one of the swiftest
political comebacks in British history.
Sunak, who is of Indian origin, is the
country’s first Prime Minister of color.
At the age of 42, he is also one of the
youngest British leaders yet. And with
a net worth of over $800 million, he
is likely the first Prime Minister to be
wealthier than even the royal family.
POUNDS AND SENSE The scale of chal-
lenges facing Britain obscures the his-
toric nature of Sunak’s premiership.
His in tray is filled with problems left
over from his recent predecessors, in-
cluding a cost-of-living crisis, rising
energy costs, and soaring infla-
tion. While Sunak’s reputation
for fiscal conservatism may work
to calm financial markets and
help balance the government’s
books, it will do little to
comfort many Britons brac-
ing for the return of auster-
ity. That budget-tightening
measures will be intro-
duced by a millionaire may
make them particularly
hard for ordinary people to
swallow.
TORY TROUBLES Aside from the steep
economic challenges, Sunak will have
to go about the difficult business of
uniting his fractious party, which is
polling at its lowest level since modern
polling began. While Sunak claimed
the support of the majority of Con-
servative lawmakers, they can be
a mutinous bunch. The fact that
polls show the Tories facing oblit-
eration at the next election—
which is due to take place
by January 2025—might
keep rebellious MPs in
line. That, of course, could
all be moot if Sunak suc-
cumbs to intense pub-
lic pressure to call a snap
election long before then.
—YASMEEN SERHAN
15
THE BRIEF NEWS

BUSINESS

Student-debt forgiveness is on hold—for now

GOOD QUESTION

What’s next in the fight over debt forgiveness?

Cody Hounanian submiTTed His concrete, imminent injury in order to
application for student-loan forgiveness bring a lawsuit. Student-loan balances
as soon as the site launched on Oct. 14. can’t be forgiven until there’s a ruling
The executive director of the nonprofit from the appeals court.
Student Debt Crisis Center is himself “I think this is the case that is
among the 22 million borrowers who most likely to get the farthest of all
have already applied to receive up to the lawsuits that have been brought,”
$20,000 in debt relief under the Biden says Tara Grove, a University of Texas
Administration’s program. School of Law professor who focuses
“It shows you how eager and, in some on the federal judiciary and separation
cases, desperate these borrowers are to get of powers. “And even this one, I think,
this relief,” Hounanian says. is a stretch under current
But a week later, the case law.”
program—and any potential ‘Even this No matter what happens
debt cancellation—was put [lawsuit], with this case, more legal
on hold as a federal appeals challenges are sure to
court considers one of several I think, is follow, possibly halting
legal challenges brought a stretch.’ the process again. There’s
against the program. Legal —TARA GROVE, widespread debate about
experts are skeptical that UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS the shaky legal justification
this case, or the others, will SCHOOL OF LAW for Biden’s policy, but
ultimately prevail in court opponents of the plan have
and reverse the student-loan forgiveness struggled to find someone with standing
B I D E N : J O S H U A R O B E R T S — R E U T E R S; D E B T: S E T H W E N I G — A P

program, which could affect 40 million
borrowers.
The case now before the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit was
brought by six Republican-led states,
which argue that President Biden
overstepped his authority and that the
plan will cost them future tax revenue.
The states appealed a decision by a
district judge, who had dismissed the
lawsuit for lack of legal standing—which
requires a plaintiff to have suffered a
16 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
to sue over the program. And once
borrowers begin receiving debt relief,
it will become much harder to reverse,
legal experts say.
Meanwhile, the Education Depart-
ment and advocates have encouraged
borrowers to apply as soon as possible.
“We are optimistic,” Hounanian says.
“We do not want borrowers spending
their energy and worry on tracking a
multitude of lawsuits that are already
going out the door.” —kaTie reilly
Y E : R A N D A L L H I L L— R E U T E R S; M A N N : S PA C E X / N A S A

DIED

FALLEN
CHARGED

REJECTED
APPOINTED

SENTENCED
MILESTONES

SPLIT
LAUNCHED
THE BRIEF NEWS
Alaska this year canceled its lucrative snow crab harvest for the first time
CLIMATE
The curious case of
the cannibal crabs
BY ARYN BAKER
Snow crab legS, The cenTerpiece of
any self-respecting seafood platter, are no
longer on the menu.
They are the victim of a massive popula-
tion crash that led Alaska to cancel its Ber-
ing Sea snow crab harvest for the first time
in recorded history this year. The $132 mil-
lion-a-year industry saw the state’s snow
crab population drop 87%, from 8 billion
in 2018 to 1 billion last year. Officials sug-
gested that climate change might be to
blame; Alaska is the fastest-warming state
in the U.S. But that’s only part of the story,
says Wes Jones, an Alaska-based fisheries
expert. According to the marine biologists
he works with, the most immediate cause
of snow crab death is something even sea-
soned fishermen didn’t see coming: a mass
cannibalism frenzy.
Back in 2017, Jones says, local crabbers
started reporting a population explosion
of juvenile snow crabs. The boom contin-
ued into 2019, creating what Jones says
was the largest population on record.
At the time, the young crabs were too
small for a legal harvest—juvenile snow
crabs take four to five years to mature.
Meanwhile, Bering Sea temperatures,
which usually hover around freezing,
18 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
TECH
were on the rise, spiking several degrees
from 2017 to 2019 and causing the crusta-
ceans to speed up their metabolisms. “All
of a sudden you had this huge number of
little crabs coming up, eating themselves
out of house and home,” says Jones. “Then
the water warmed, which meant they had
to eat more.” It was a double whammy, he
says, and the results were inevitable for a
hungry, omnivorous species that has run
out of its usual food source: “They basi-
cally cannibalized each other.”
Snow crabs are only the latest victims
of climate change in the Bering Sea. Rising
temperatures have often led to unpredict-
able boom-and-bust cycles, which have
had unanticipated consequences up and
down the food chain. A population explo-
sion of sockeye salmon is one likely reason
for the recent collapse of Alaska’s red king
crab harvest, which was also canceled this
year. Meanwhile, the warming waters of
the Bering Sea have opened the door for
Pacific cod, a predator of juvenile crabs.
It will be years before the Alaskan
snow crab population recovers to harvest-
worthy levels, says Jones. And that’s only
if temperatures in the Bering Sea stay cool
enough for the cold-loving juveniles—
and climate change is making everything
harder to predict. “When you start seeing
things outside of the range of what you’ve
seen before,” says Jones, “you don’t
SHUT TERSTOCK
know how that’s gonna affect something
until it’s happened.” Like rising water
temperatures. And cannibalism. □
THE BRIEF WORLD

Somalia faces its worst drought

ever, as the world looks away
BY BELINDA LUSCOMBE

AfTer A series of pArTiculArly devAsTATing fAm-

ines in East and West Africa in the early 1980s—the ones
that sparked the Live Aid concert and set Bono on his path
from rock star to humanitarian dynamo—the U.S. set up an
early-warning system for when a region’s food supply was
going to fail. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network,
or FEWS-NET, as it’s known, monitors weather patterns,
agricultural production, conflict, and aid budgets to give
wealthier nations and relief agencies timely information
about likely crises. With enough awareness, the thinking
was, there would be time to head off the worst ravages.
For months now, that system has been sounding a major
alarm about the situation in the Horn of Africa, which, after
four meager rainy seasons over two years, is enduring its
worst drought in recorded history. Many aid agencies be-
lieve that a declaration of famine is imminent. Such decla-
rations are made only under extreme conditions: when a
third of a region’s children are severely malnourished, a fifth
of the population has no access to food, and there are two
hunger-related deaths per 10,000 people each day. The only
two official famines ever declared using this system were in
South Sudan in 2017 and Somalia in July 2011. On Oct. 18,
UNICEF warned that the current situation in Somalia looks
even more dire than in 2011, especially for children.
Despite the precision and volume of the data, however, △
many people are unaware of the situation. A recent poll of Somalians line IT’S A SLOW-MOVING CRISIS
Americans ages 19 to 34 conducted by the International up for water at In 2011, when famine was declared in
Rescue Committee (IRC) and YouGov found that almost a camp near Somalia, things escalated to a critical
70% did not even know there was a drought in East Africa Dollow for point, but only briefly. This time—
until they took the survey. This is despite the U.S.’s having those who have partly because of the early warnings—
given over $700 million in aid this year to the region, more fled drought- the situation is grinding inexora-
stricken farms
than the rest of the world combined. “This seems to be an bly on. December to March are dry
invisible famine,” says Gayle Smith, CEO of One.org and months in Somalia, and the 2023 rainy
former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) season is predicted to be sparse. Thou-
administrator. “It’s on the horizon; it’s happening. There’s sands more people will leave the land
been plenty of warning from the Somalian authorities, from to gather in camps, which could spark
NGOs, from others. I think there’s some awareness, but it disease or overtax the water supply
has not triggered the kind of international response that and eventually lead to many more
one would expect.” deaths than in prior crises. So even
The low profile has surprised even longtime watchers if famine is not declared, says Max-
of the region. “It has been, you know, third- or fourth-page well, “we may not avert the kind of
news,” says Daniel Maxwell, the Henry J. Leir Professor in mass mortality that we saw last time,
Food Security at Tufts University, and a member of the Fam- just because of the magnitude and the
ine Review Committee for Somalia. While there were big likely duration of the problem.”
awareness campaigns for Darfur and Sudan in prior years,
he says he doesn’t see efforts for the region gaining the same IT ISN’T JUST A NATURAL DISASTER
traction. “I don’t know what it is that captures the imagina- People understand and respond
tion of the public.” quickly to tsunamis and earthquakes,
Obviously, the war in Ukraine is dominating the attention but famine is about more than bad
of news outlets and humanitarian agencies, especially those weather and failed crops. A lot of the
in Europe. But that’s not the only reason this famine is get- failures are social or economic. Soma-
ting less attention. Here’s what else experts think is going on. lia has been terrorized by militants
20 Time November 7/November 14, 2022

linked to al-Qaeda, decreasing the
West’s ability—and appetite—to offer
help. South Sudan is still dealing with
long-running civil unrest. Ethiopia has
seen regional skirmishes. And the war
in Europe has made unstable econo-
mies even less viable. Much of the food
consumed in the Horn of Africa is im-
ported. Broken supply lines do not
feel as urgent as crop failures, yet they
make a disastrous situation more per-
ilous. “It is probably the most severe
combination of drivers [of famine], but
also ones that are likely to last for a lon-
ger period,” says Maxwell.
PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE,
BUT LESS URGENT
During the famine in Somalia in 2011,
a quarter of a million people died, half of
them children, many before the famine
declaration drew the world’s attention.
The humanitarian sector vowed to head
J E R O M E D E L AY— A P
off such disasters. But it’s difficult to
direct hard-won funding to something
that may happen, in the same way that
it’s tougher to make time for a regular
medical checkup than a visit to the ER. “Governments and
international actors are still responding to the impacts of the
drought, instead of managing the risk ahead of the drought,”
read an Oxfam report in May.
SOME WEALTHY COUNTRIES ARE STRUGGLING
The U.N. allocated $100 million to address the crisis in So-
malia in April. In July, the head of USAID, Samantha Power,
said the agency would provide $476 million. In September
she added $151 million, noting the “narrow window of op-
portunity to stave off famine in the Horn.” Later that month
President Biden announced that the U.S. would contribute
$2.9 billion to address the global hunger crisis, $2 billion
of which was direct food aid. But other countries have not
stepped up. “One of our key partners has been the U.K.,
which has unfortunately dramatically reduced its aid bud-
get,” says Smith. “So there’s a deficit.”
IT SEEMS LIKE THE FUNDING SHOULD COVER IT
The amounts of money that have been donated sound huge
enough that people could believe the problem is solved. But
money doesn’t go as far as it used to. “Food prices were at
near record levels [in Somalia] even before the invasion of
Ukraine,” says Maxwell. The aid has helped, but “we’re still
at a worse place now than we were in February.” As prices
went up, people lost their livelihoods. Drought “reduces
the value of anything that people have to sell to buy food—
either livestock or their own labor,” says Maxwell. “So we’re
at near historic lows in terms of people’s purchasing power.”
At a recent IRC presentation, one of the Somalian field-
workers noted that Plumpy’Nut, the nutritious food used
by UNICEF and other aid organizations in emergency situa-
tions, had more than doubled in price from $50 per 15 kg to
$130—and that’s before the cost of transport.
THERE ARE MANY DISASTERS
Conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan,
and Yemen, plus floods in Pakistan and an earthquake in
Haiti, are taxing the world’s main providers of aid—and the
world’s attention. “We’re dealing with more crises than we
ever have,” says Smith. “And stretching the funding risks
elongating the crises and failing to assist people we can
actually reach.” Smith would like aid budgets to be bigger.
“To mobilize the kind of response that’s needed, you not
only need to get the attention of governments,” she says,
‘Food “you have to get the attention of the public.”
prices were
already at THE ATTENTION ECONOMY IS FRAGMENTED
Back when Live Aid was shown on TV globally, snagging a
near record few key media outlets meant catching the eyes of millions
levels even of viewers, with headlines the next day. This year’s Global
before the Citizen concert, featuring Mariah Carey and Metallica, was
streamed on outlets from Amazon Music to YouTube, but
invasion of seemed to make little dent in the news cycle. And it too had
Ukraine.’
a long list of causes it needed to support. “We’ve got a very
crowded media space,” says Smith, “and we’ve got multiple
—DANIEL MAXWELL,
PROFESSOR IN FOOD issues on the international agenda, and unfortunately, this
SECURITY, TUFTS falls near the bottom.” 
21
Strive for growth Practice gratitude
THE BRIEF TIME WITH

In search of a hero,
biographer Stacy Schiff
pulled Samuel Adams
out of the shadows
BY KARL VICK

WiTh our foamy liTTle coffees, sTacy

Schiff and I have set up at a small, round, metal
table under the trees of Bryant Park, the great
green oasis that shares a block of midtown Man-
hattan with the New York Public Library. It’s in
that grand building at the other end of the block.
Or so one assumes.
“We’re sitting on the stacks,” Schiff announces
with a smile and a nod toward the ground. She’s
serious. Beneath the walkways and the grass and
the squirrels—all the things that make a park—
is most of what makes a library. “I’ve been down
there twice,” she says. “Crazy. It’s this amazing
warren of books. It’s just, like, miles and miles.”
This is not only a genuine secret of New York, it’s
one Schiff imparts with a particular kind of arch
humor, a pleasure gathered from the informa-
tion being shared. These are qualities familiar to
readers of her best-selling, award-winning, really
good biographies, the latest of which, The Revo-
lutionary: Samuel Adams, she spent many months
researching at the other end of the block.
It wasn’t easy. Samuel was the Adams who did
not save his papers—partly because he cared so
little whether he was remembered. In this he dif-
fered, Schiff notes, from his cousin John, who,
like many of the founders, turns out to have been
deeply preoccupied with what today would be
called brand but was known at the time as poster-
ity. “The John Hancocks of this world, the John
Adamses of this world, they’re always the people
who succeed because they seem to let everyone
know they succeed,” she says.
The other reason Samuel Adams is so hard to
capture is the reason to try: more than anyone
else, he led the effort to break the American colo-
nies free of Britain. Much of that work was done
in secret, and an effective conspirator takes pains
to hide what he’s doing while he’s doing it. The
Revolutionary includes a scene of Samuel Adams
scissoring incriminating letters to scatter like
confetti out a window, “sparing his associates
if stopping the biographer’s heart.”
He is the hole in the center of the nation’s ori-
gin story. Every schoolchild remembers Paul Re-
vere’s midnight ride. But who recalls whom he
galloped to warn—the man the British were com-
ing for? Not even Schiff, who (“so embarrassing”)
grew up in Adams, Mass., a town named for him,
24 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
Long distance
Tinseltown
Prescient began her project with much more
than a glimpse of the fellow.
“If you read his contemporaries,
everybody else says he was the most
active, the earliest, the most perse-
vering man of the Revolution—the
Father of the Revolution,” she says.
“And he’s ... gone. So what did the
founders know that we don’t? That’s
just pretty much the question I was
trying to answer.”
As a biographer, she is drawn to
the underdocumented. Her 2000
Pulitzer Prize was for Vera (Mrs.
No cigar Vladimir Nabokov), all of whose letters
were “lost.” In Cleopatra: A Life,
Schiff revivified the most powerful
ruler of her era by drawing from the
likes of images on coins and a text
written 100 years after her death.
After Schiff’s last book, The Witches:
Salem, 1692, she found herself craving
“someone noble, someone who I could
admire, someone who stood up for
what he believed in ... someone who
could fairly be said rerouted history.
And that’s not that many people.”
But Samuel Adams filled the bill.

About the beer. The real Samuel Adams was
not a brewer. He drove the family malt business
into the ground and, Schiff writes, “was called
many names in his life, but one thing he was
never called was Sam.”
He was a downwardly mobile yet powerfully
driven man, animated by idealism, liberty, and
a Puritan sense of righteous justice. If we don’t
always know what Samuel Adams did (the Bos-
ton Tea Party almost certainly belongs on his
résumé, but was never put there), it was never
hard to see what he thought. He published con-
stantly, if pseudonymously, in the colonial Mas-
sachusetts newspapers that drove the Crown’s
men batty. “The officials are often saying, How
do you govern a colony with five newspapers?”
Schiff says. “And it’s not unlike today, where ev-
eryone is tweeting, and everybody’s on social
media. What does that do to government stabil-
ity? There’s this question of how much does rev-
olution, or at least an upsurge in thinking, coin-
cide with an explosion of new media?”
The author raises her voice to be heard above
the thuddering of construction equipment in-
A D A M PA P E F O R T I M E
stalling the Bryant Park ice rink. “There are a lot
of resonances,” she says, meaning between the
1770s and the 2020s: “The feeling that people
have that their rights are not being attended to.
The whole idea that the elite is deaf to everyone
else.” She pauses. “It seems like it’s that same
kind of crease in history, when some of us are
thinking: When is the world going to go back to
normal? But it’s already changed. You don’t re-
alize that the evolution has already been done.”
Samuel Adams has something for every
modern patriot. His passion for personal lib-
erty chimes for conservatives. Liberals can
hark to his calls for activism. But the man had
no truck for insurrection. The revolt he led by,
as Schiff puts it, taking “ambient ideas” and
“wrestling them on the page” was against an
overseas despot. When, in 1787, former sol-
diers attacked courthouses and other govern-
ment properties in the newly minted United
States, Adams urged hanging for the ringlead-
ers of Shays’ Rebellion. His view, Schiff says,
came down to legitimacy: “Once it is the gov-
ernment that you yourself have established,
there’s a legitimate means of redress, and that
is called elections.”
If he’d kept his letters, Schiff might have
been able to put her finger on what she consid-
ers the central question. “What is the moment at
which resistance melts for him into revolution?”
she asks. Instead, she’s fashioned Adams’ story
from the accounts of others, often his enemies.
“You’re having to piece together, you know,
△ who’s creating a loophole, who’s lunging through
Schiff at the the loophole, and then there’s covering up the
New York loophole after that,” she says. “So it is a book of
Public Library, skulduggery, in a way.”
home of what But the hero is finally drawn into the light,
papers Samuel having found a biographer who also writes
Adams left in longhand, and can make fresh the history
we all thought we knew already. At about the
midpoint of the book, Schiff describes the re-
lationship between the English King and the
Massachusetts colony in the mid-1760s. “A
dangerous dance, familiar to every adolescent,
had begun: hints of refractory behavior pro-
duced assertions of authority, which produced
refractory behavior.”
When I ask Schiff what counts as a good
day, she lights up. “This is the best thing for me
about writing ever, ever, ever,” she says. “You sit
down and you have a thought you didn’t know
you had. Suddenly there’s this explosion on the
page. And you didn’t see it coming. And only as
you’re writing your way past do you even realize
‘One thing it’s happening. And, like, you’re so excited that
you can barely sit to write the next line.
he was “My thinking gets done as I’m writing,
never which is perhaps why I write longhand. But
that’s something that you hope the reader is
called coming to the same way you’re coming to it:
was Sam.’ fresh and unexpectedly.” 
25
LIGHTBOX

Another aftermath
Students grieve together after a gunman opened fire at
Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis
on Oct. 24. The shooting left a 16-year-old student and
a teacher dead, and seven others injured. The gunman,
a 19-year-old former student, armed with an AR-15-style
rifle, was killed after a shoot-out with police. So far in
2022, 28 students and six adults have been killed in U.S.
school shootings, according to a tally by Education Week.

Photograph by David Carson—St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP

▶ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox
ECONOMY

A PAINLESS
INFLATION FIX
BY ZACHARY KARABELL

INSIDE

EMMANUEL MACRON’S CREATIVE READING THE ART OF PERSUASION

DOMESTIC BATTLES OF POLLS IN AN AGE OF DIVISION

29
THE VIEW OPENER

The Fed’s moves represent a broad

consensus that high inflation imperils
the stability of the system, erodes liv-
ing standards, and must be brought
down even at the risk of squashing
growth and triggering a recession.
The lack of doubt by the Fed, most
economists, and many businesses
about what the problem is and what to
do about it is a troubling sign of eco-
nomic groupthink. In short, the Fed is
making an epic mistake. It should not
have done what it has done, should
not be doing what it’s doing, and
should not do what it plans to do. Past
mistakes can’t be undone, but future
ones can be avoided. Groupthink is
standing in the way.
There is, of course, inflation right
now, in the U.S. and in most countries
throughout the world. There’s also
broad agreement about what caused
this inflation: too much government Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell at a news conference in
spending as the pandemic began sub- Washington on Sept. 21
siding in the spring of 2021; too much
pent-up demand from pandemic lock-
downs exploding in the summer of demand, and high wages. That is not recession. Recession means a halt to a
2021 onward, which created massive the case. This time it’s different. stupendous rise in wages that has seen
supply-chain bottlenecks and demand Inflation as a statistic measures the bottom quartiles reap meaning-
for labor; too much easy money from year-over-year price increases, which ful wage gains for the first time in de-
global central banks that kept assets means that until October, all the high cades, and the deflation of asset prices
such as stocks and homes elevated; inflation was relative to depressed ranging from stocks (and hence retire-
too little action from the Fed until it economic activity caused by pandemic ment funds) to houses in the belief
was too late; and Russia’s invasion of shutdowns. Inflation started to rise in that doing so is necessary medicine.
Ukraine leading to a doubling or more May 2021, with a reading of 5%, rose With signs of a sharp slowing of the
of the price of oil and gas. to 7.5% as markets began anticipat- economy, with the housing market not
The belief that this period of infla- ing the disruptive energy effects of just cooling but nearing freezing, as-
tion is so dangerous that it is worth the Ukraine war, then accelerated to sets prices dropping, and the public
the price of squashing the strongest 9.1% before moderating over the past mood darkening, the Fed can at least

job and wage market in a generation
has taken hold in almost every central
bank and every government in the de-
veloped world.
But that leaves one rather cru-
cial question: is it true? Must central
banks take aggressive measures to cool
the labor market, dampen financial
markets, and likely cause a recession?
Is it a fact that waiting longer would
lead to elevated levels of inflation be-
coming intractable and entrenched? If
you listened to what the Fed and many
economists are saying, you’d hardly
be aware that this has been a two-year
period unlike any other. You’d think
today is a normal and regrettable
bout of too much money, too much
The View is reported by Mariah Espada and Anisha Kohli
months to 8.2%.
Starting now, inflation will be mea-
sured from a much higher base. That
means inflation is peaking regardless
of whatever the Fed did and will do. It
is commonly understood that interest-
rate increases work on a substantial
lag, that it takes many months before
the effect of those increases show up
in changing spending patterns and
falling prices. The recent softening of
inflation, therefore, cannot be attrib-
uted primarily to rising rates. As the
effects of pandemic stimulus and the
commodity-price shock of the Ukraine
invasion wear off, and as supply chains
slowly work through bottlenecks, in-
flation is moderating—on its own.
Now the Fed is poised to force a
P O W E L L : D R E W A N G E R E R — G E T T Y I M A G E S; M A C R O N : M O H A M M E D B A D R A — A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S
stop what it is doing, halt its interest-
rate increases, and slow its attempts
to shrink its balance sheet. It doesn’t
even have to admit mistakes. And in
doing so, it might just stave off a future
where unemployment surges, wages
stagnate, retirement funds bleed value,
and vast numbers of people are made
even more economically insecure in
order to satisfy economic orthodoxies.
There is still time to halt the on-
ward rush. Pulling back from an out-
moded script will at least avoid fur-
ther damage. Or else we may end up
burning the village to save it.
Karabell is the author of Inside Money:
Brown Brothers Harriman and the
American Way of Power
THE RISK REPORT BY IAN BREMMER

31
THE VIEW INBOX
The D.C. Brief
By Philip Elliott
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
FOR MOST OF ANY TWO-YEAR ELEC-
tion cycle, but especially as we get
closer to Election Day, we are flying
blind. Despite all the campaign ads
and rehearsed speeches and faux scan-
dals and, in some rare cases, actual in-
person debates, we don’t know which
team is going to do better. We don’t
like that uncertainty. As in sports, we
like to glance at a scoreboard to have
a clear marker about whether the Red
Team or the Blue Team is up. So in the
interim, we turn to the political junk-
ie’s drug of choice: polls.
Voting began way back in the tail
end of summer, when the most ag-
gressive early-voting states of Minne-
sota and South Dakota started casting
ballots in September. The first batch
of real results don’t come until after
polls close on Election Day, and at that
point, they come with such ferocity
that it’s easy to lose track of surprise
wins—and losses—as all 435 House
seats, roughly a third of the Senate,
and three dozen governorships are
decided.
While we wait, those of us who
make careers in the political ecosys-
tem substitute proxies: campaign-
32 TIME November 7/November 14, 2022
finance reports, TV ad reservations,
digital and social outlays, candidate
visits, voter-registration data, even
armchair psychoanalysis of the con-
tenders and consultant gossip about
who’s in and who’s out. But we lean
more on polling than any of those
other vices. And the problem there is
that what should be just another in-
formative input is too often treated as
predictive.
“You’re reading these as tea leaves.
They’re hieroglyphics,” one pollster
told me. “If you don’t know how to
read them, you’re doing major harm.”
That’s not an uncommon grievance
among polling pros, for good reason.
And I am as guilty as anyone.
Public-opinion surveys have be-
come a substitute for actual analysis.
Take, for instance, the shift in a recent
New York Times/Siena poll’s most-
predictive question. When asked who
‘If you don’t know how
to read them, you’re
doing major harm.’
◁
More than 7 million
votes had already been
cast as of Oct. 24
should control Congress next year, Re-
publicans appeared to have a 4-point
advantage over Democrats; read
the actual numbers, it’s closer to 2.5
points. Negligible? Sure. But not en-
tirely a rounding error in a survey that
drew headlines over the 49% to 44%
GOP advantage.
Go a little downstream in the poll-
ing numbers, and it gets far dicier. The
Times’ September poll showed inde-
pendent women favoring Democrats
by a fulsome 14 points. A month later,
they were backing Republicans by 18
points. That’s an epic 32-point swing,
one that is almost impossible to imag-
ine in practice. But then you look at
the details; the embedded margin of
error for the small sample size is 20
points. Put simply: they didn’t talk to
enough of those independent women
to know what they’re talking about,
but the rest of us can’t shut up about
the finding.
AND THIS IS THE PROBLEM with poll-
ing right now: we treat it as gospel.
Sometimes, some of them are garbage.
There’s a reason the industry-wide
standard of accuracy is only 95%—
meaning one of every 20 results is
simply a statistical outlier.
Polls have consistently—with the
exception of 2012—given Democrats
too much of a leg up in recent cycles.
Pollsters have missed on turnout by
measures of 2 to 8 points. The Trump
era contributed to a surge in voters re-
fusing to engage with pollsters, result-
ing in bogus numbers. The pros are
already anticipating garbage data in
the stream. And fickle analysis has left
confidence in the polls shaky at best
and ruinous in reality.
Still, most of the armchair politi-
J O H N T U L LY— T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S/ R E D U X
cal analysts look at the numbers as
though they hold answers. Frank
talk: they do not. They inform part
of the discussion. They spot which
campaigns might be toast. The polls
can help decide whether a campaign
should follow Twitter’s advice and
make social justice the hill to die on
or stick with the economy. Kitchen-
table issues like inflation and gas
prices have dinged Democrats plenty
hard, but it’s also been a half century
since abortion was as in play the way
By Belinda Luscombe
it is now. Polling provides some hints
as to what is resonating and what
isn’t, but no politician who wants to
be seen as a leader defaults to what a
pollster tells them.
In this, Speaker Nancy Pelosi
wasn’t wrong when in recent weeks
she began telling allies that every
single race is its own universe with
its own peculiarities. National head-
winds don’t necessarily blow so hard
in the Richmond suburbs, for in-
stance, as they do for a presidency.
Then there’s this fact that House
Democrats have been passing around
as a salve for their chapped optimism:
if the GOP holds every seat that was
in Trump’s column in 2020 and car-
ries all of the Biden districts that ‘I think
Biden won by five points or less, Re-
publicans will still have only a six-seat
faith can be
majority—hardly a landslide. At that restored by
margin, Republicans would have to getting it
remain unified on an agenda, some-
thing no one believes can happen in a right.’
caucus where fringe figures like Rep-
resentative Marjorie Taylor Greene
and pals could wield effective veto
power, much the way the Freedom
Caucus did when it badgered Speak-
ers John Boehner and Paul Ryan into
early exits from the top of their party.
While there’s plenty—emphasis:
plenty—of reason to roll eyes at the
assertion that Democrats could gain
seats this cycle, there’s at least a ra-
tional argument that things might
not turn out as dire for them as na-
tional forecasts anticipate. Anecdot-
ally, it doesn’t feel so despondent out
there for liberals. The airwaves are
packed with ads, and residents of
competitive House races have come
to dread the doorbell again, the pan-
demic canvassing reprieve over.
But there’s no real evidence to
support that optimism for Demo-
crats. At least none beyond the cre-
ative reading of polls.

For more from Washington, sign

up for TIME’s politics newsletter
at time.com/theDCbrief

33
THE VIEW ESSAY

POLITICS

The art of persuasion in a polarized age

BY ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

The holidays are around organizers, who I believe show a way

forward even when things can feel so

the corner. A time for families

perilous and bleak.
Though their projects differ, what
this group shared was an approach
to come together and, more to changing minds in the face of
rampant disinformation; social
and more, to come apart. media platforms that reward dunking
and hate rather than the pursuit
As the nation fractures politically, so do our households, of common ground; lie- and hate-
neighborhoods, and communities. For the majority of spewing demagogues; and more.
Americans who still believe in liberal democracy, in the idea Their methods aren’t useful just for
that humans are created equal, and in fact-based reality, policymakers and party leaders.
talking to those we care about on the other side can feel I believe they have much to teach all
hopeless. Is there any point trying to reach these people? Is of us who want to get the country back
changing minds that don’t want to change a lost cause? on track, protect liberal democracy,
It isn’t. heal our divides, and change what
A few years ago, as I felt myself succumbing to the needs changing—if that is work we
same fatalism afflicting so many Americans, I set out are ready and willing to do.
to report a book on people swimming against the tide, What follows are some of the
refusing to write their fellow citizens off, pursuing lessons I learned from these gifted
persuasion in a time of polarization. I came upon a citizens about how you and I,
group of educators, activists, elected leaders, scientists, working in our own communities,
cult deprogrammers, messaging experts, and, above all, can be better persuaders.
34 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
1.Dig for what’s reasons, and they never want to visit that on anyone. A
remarkable experiment called deep canvassing, in which
going on beneath organizers around the country are going door to door,
the opinion ▽ spending extended time with their neighbors, eliciting
their opinions and trying to get them to grapple with these
sources of dissonance, has shown great promise in pitting
In an age of dIvIsIon, we tend to beliefs against other deep-seated intuitions people hold but
assume that people on the far side of perhaps haven’t connected to their prejudices.
an issue from us are fervently commit- What also often lurks beneath opinions is pain, stress,
ted to that stance. We know ourselves confusion, fear, and anxiety, especially in moments of
to be complicated and torn, subject to profound change. In every area of American life, dramatic
all sorts of doubts, but we deny others shifts over the last generation—in technology; trade; race
that complexity. We imagine them to and demographics; gender and sexuality; the economy;
have a single story. and more—have left Americans unsure of who they will be
There are at least two problems and how they will fit on the far side of change.
with this attitude. One, it’s empiri- This doesn’t excuse the racism and misogyny that
cally false. Two, it’s self-defeating. grow out of an allergy to change. But it does suggest that
Sure, some of our fellow citizens— the remedy is helping more people make sense of these
a large minority—are passionately changes and find a healthier relationship to progress. It
committed to their ideological stands isn’t enough to be right about the future you seek. You have
and have buttressed them with their to sell it, even to those you fear and those who fear you.
reading and watching and associa-
tions. But a great many others are less
steeped in the thinking behind the po-
sitions, more joiners than vanguards,
more open to completely opposite
ideas, too. This latter group holds
strong opinions lightly.
What many of the persuaders
I studied for my book taught me is
that this less certain group is ripe
with opportunity. But winning them
over requires discipline, empathy,
and strategy.
Above all, it requires digging for
what is going on beneath the outward
stance—the candidate they adore, the
position they hold on the border issue,
the aversion they have to a policy you
care about. “If we approach people
with the idea that it’s normal to have
complicated feelings, even if they
have a Trump sign on their front yard,
even if their public face expresses one
thing—if we approach them with the
assumption of ‘There’s something
more going on underneath,’ often-
times we find out that there is,” Steve
Deline, a veteran organizer on LGBT
rights issues, told me.
What may lurk underneath is the
seedling of a contradictory opinion:
they may fear invasion by “the
illegals,” but they may also identify
as champions of the underdog. They
are put off by a trans relative, but
they may once have been scorned
and marginalized for their own
ILLUSTR ATIONS BY K ATIE K ALUPSON FOR TIME
THE VIEW ESSAY
2.Focus on the world
you want, not what
you oppose ▽
as i was reporting The Persuaders,
one of the most meaningful lessons I
learned came from the political com-
munications expert Anat Shenker-
Osorio. In discussions about politics,
she explained to me, the most impor-
tant thing isn’t what you’re saying in a
given conversation. It’s what conversa-
tion you’re having.
If someone at work or at the
Thanksgiving table says to you, “Im-
migrants are animals,” and you re-
spond that “Immigrants are not
animals”—well, you’re right. But
here’s the problem: you have now got-
ten yourself into a conversation about
the animalness of immigrants. This
36 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
is a bad conversation to have, because it takes place on the
terrain of those who despise and degrade immigrants. Your
position is the accurate one, but you are living inside their
mental frame.
This has been a reality for millions of us in recent years.
There are so many outrages all around us, 24/7—shocking
legal infractions, barbaric comments, brazen power grabs.
It can feel like a moral duty for a well-meaning citizen to
pay attention to these outrages and respond to each one,
to register that this is not okay, to tweet and vent to friends
and family, so as not to let the unconscionable slowly be-
come normal.
But here’s the thing. These outrages have locked many
of us in perpetual reaction mode. The first thought we have
in the morning and the last thought we have at night are
rooted in something They Did. Not in the world we want,
not in the beliefs we have, not in the policies we favor. Even
in feeling like we are civically engaging by paying heed to
moral outrages, we are living on the conversational turf of
others. We are kept off our game. We are living in someone
else’s moral universe.
Instead, Shenker-Osorio says, “say what you’re for.”
Paint for your relatives and friends and co-workers and
neighbors a vivid picture of the community and country
you want to see. Make them see it. By no means should you
ignore the monstrosities around you. But fit them into a
bigger story of those who seek to obstruct the good things
you’re fighting for, for their own narrow, nefarious ends. A
great deal of research shows that what moves persuadable
voters isn’t watering down your views, despite this being
the common approach of so many politicians. It’s making
undecided voters feel that your ideas are the more nor-
mal ideas, that they are common sense, that everyone they
admire subscribes to them. Make the people around you
know that’s true.
3.Don’t blame the
victims of disinformation.
Help them ▽
Frighteningly powerFul actors are, for purposes of
profit, spewing false information into the ether. Millions
of our fellow citizens are ingesting it and poisoning their
minds. By some estimates, more than 40 million Americans
believe in the delusions of the QAnon conspiracy complex
alone—beliefs that helped motivate the deadly insurrection
at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Media barons and
conspiracy theorists are minting money and influence by
spreading lies about vaccines, about racial “replacement”
theories, about mass shootings.
These lies aren’t finding their deserved place in an open
marketplace of ideas. They are forced into the minds of
millions by people with the influence to make their content
unignorable and the ability to calibrate them to the fears
and anxieties permeating society.
 When our friends and neigh-
bors fall prey to these cons, we in the
evidence-based world often make
the mistake of condemning them as
harshly as those who have conned
them. On one level, this is natural. We
know our outlandish climate-denier
uncle and can access him; we don’t
know Rupert Murdoch or have his cell
number. But on another level,
it makes no sense. If we truly believe
the spewers of disinformation are
abusing their power and manipulating
people who lack the resources to
resist their sway, why do we also
blame their manipulees?
This isn’t just a moral issue. It’s a
practical one. When we make people
who have succumbed to disinforma-
tion or cultlike manipulation feel stu-
pid, we can drive them further into the
arms of the con, as the cognitive sci-
entist John Cook, who studies disin- 4. Talk less. Do more ▽
formation and its remedies, explained
to me. What I learned from Cook
and others is that there is a primal The anger and viTriol and division all around us
need all of us have that disinforma- seem to suggest the need for more dialogue as a path to
tion taps into: the desire to have the healing. But something I learned from many of the or-
world make sense. ganizers and educators I studied for The Persuaders is
But there is a second need we tend that dialogue stands on a foundation of trust and good
to share, which has the potential to faith—and words actually may not be the best way to lay
compete with that first need: the de- that foundation.
sire not to be anyone’s fool. What What if, as Americans, we need to do more with each
works in winning people back from other in this moment rather than talk more? Attend
disinformation and manipulation is meetings together, build things together, administer
showing genuine concern for them— bodies of water and develop kids’ sports leagues and build
concern that people with a vested in- community centers together?
terest in toying with their minds for The kind of civic repair America requires depends on
selfish purposes are tricking them people not thinking their peers are out to destroy them. It
through classic methods of manipula- depends on a reduction in the present levels of contempt
tion. If explained, these methods can and dismissal in society. Anger and division are one thing—
be seen for what they are. and frankly, they’re normal in a democracy. But contempt
For his part, Cook has created a and dismissal, which have exploded in the U.S. in recent
project called Cranky Uncle, which is years, are different. They don’t drive people toward further
teaching people how to talk more ef- engagement with the ideas of others; they turn people
fectively to their own relatives and away from engagement. They undermine the premise of
friends. And he is building a suite of democracy: that it is possible to choose the future together.
educational tools to help fortify the And we’re not going to fix that by talking. Not at first.
next generation of students against Instead, find ways to associate again—association being
disinformation by teaching them the one of the key words used by the French aristocrat who
most common tactics employed by best observed America in the 19th century, Alexis de
those who would con them. Tocqueville. Focus on creating spaces where it is possible
for people to meet and engage and trust each other despite
their differences. Let the talk happen when it does.

Giridharadas is the author, most recently, of The Persuaders:

At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and
Democracy, from which this essay is drawn
37
BY CHARLOTTE ALTER/PHILADELPHIA

Plus
POLITICS

JOHN
FETTERMAN IS
A VIBE GUY.
It’s the salt-and-pepper goatee and the
tattoos, the shorts and Carhartt sweat-
shirts instead of suits, the campaign
merch with local slang like yinz. (That’s
Pittsburgh for y’all.) If the Pennsylva-
nia lieutenant governor and Democratic
nominee for the U.S. Senate is able to
prevail in November, it will be thanks
to his everyman vibe.
The race in Pennsylvania could de-
termine control of the Senate, and for
much of it, Fetterman had the clear
edge when it came to vibes. He was
able to tag his Republican opponent,
Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime New Jersey
resident, with carpetbagger vibes, rich-
guy vibes (Fetterman mocked Oz for
owning 10 homes and using words like
crudité), and quack-doctor vibes (sev-
eral Fetterman videos lampoon Oz’s
history of pushing “miracle cures” as a
daytime-TV doc).
But at the candidates’ lone tele- Ezra Klein,” Fetterman told me earlier Mike Pence has a church-deacon
vised debate on Oct. 25, the vibes on this year. But for most voters, “it’s not vibe that plays with conservatives
display were very different. Fetter- like they have their position papers laid but not with the MAGA crowd; Pete
man suffered a stroke in May and has out.” He’s hoping they don’t care much Buttigieg’s what-a-nice-young-man
been dealing with the lingering effects about debates, either. vibe wins over educated boomers but
of what his doctor calls an “auditory- doesn’t particularly endear him to his
processing disorder.” Even with the What’s a political vibe, anyway? own generation. Vibes are so power-
aid of closed captioning, he struggled If a candidate’s character is revealed ful, they can overcome policy differ-
mightily to string basic sentences to- by their choices, and their personality ences or political gaffes. Just ask Joe
gether. Suddenly, a contest the Fetter- is observed through their public ap- Biden, who won the presidency partly
man campaign had cast as a Pennsyl- pearances, then their vibe is a vapor- on the strength of his grandpa-with-
vania native son vs. a slick huckster ous mixture of both of those things: ice-cream vibe. Or Donald Trump, the
seemed to morph into a race be- the general impression they make ultimate vibes guy, whose I-win-you-
tween a stroke survivor grasping for on a normal person who isn’t paying lose vibe was powerful enough to pro-
words and an articulate doctor with close attention. (Which is, of course, pel him through countless scandals
plenty of them. the vast majority of Americans.) Your and usher in a new political era on the
If Fetterman is able to eke out a win vibe is what people who don’t think force of his personality alone.
in November despite the debate disas- about politics think about you. Un- The 2022 midterms should be a rel-
ter and the political headwinds buffet- like a brand, which can be constructed atively straightforward referendum
ing the Democrats, it will be a valida- and curated, a vibe can be enhanced or on the party in power. But the Demo-
tion of his central political insight. You shaded but cannot truly be faked. An cratic Senate candidates who may buck
might call it the Vibes Theory of Poli- image is crafted by strategists; a vibe is the historical trend are doing it partly
tics. The people who decide elections, experienced by the voters. with vibes. In Arizona, Democrat Mark
Fetterman thinks, don’t obsessively Most very good politicians have a Kelly maintains his Senate lead partly
follow the polls or listen to wonky definable vibe. John McCain was the because of his Buzz Lightyear vibe.
podcasts. They vote based on vibes. war-hero maverick. Bernie Sanders is The Ohio Senate race is competitive
“People assume that everyone reads the gadfy uncle, cranky but authentic. because Democrat Tim Ryan has
40 Time November 7/November 14, 2022

△ was off the campaign trail for three
Fetterman on Aug. 12 at
his first campaign rally since
suffering a stroke in May
a hometown- quarterback vibe—a
favorable contrast with Republican
F E T T E R M A N : D U S T I N F R A N Z— A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S; I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y B R O W N B I R D D E S I G N F O R T I M E
J.D. Vance’s Trump-suck-up vibe. Dem-
ocratic incumbent Raphael Warnock is
holding his own in the Georgia Senate
race at least partly because his affable
pastor vibe strikes many as more ap-
pealing than Republican Herschel
Walker’s domestic-abuse vibe.
“Voters aren’t issue calculators,” says
J.J. Balaban, a veteran Democrat poll-
ster from Pennsylvania. Issues are ob-
viously important, Balaban adds, but
“that tends not to be how people decide.
It really is a feeling that people get of:
‘Will this person look out for me? Do I
trust them?’”
The Pennsylvania Senate race has
been heavier on vibes than perhaps
any other key contest in the coun-
try. More than $167 million has been
spent on ads, and roughly a quarter
of those ads have been about the can-
didates’ personalities, according to an
Oct. 24 analysis from AdImpact. Even
as consequential events unfolded across
America, it has been a vapid election
fought through memes and defined by
ad hominem attacks, and for much of
the summer, Fetterman seemed to be
winning it.
But lately the vibes have started to
crash against the real issues at play in
the race. Republicans have whacked
Fetterman for his flip-flop on frack-
ing. They’ve pummeled him on
drug policy—accusing him of wanting
to decriminalize heroin and fentanyl—
and portrayed him as soft on crime
based on his record of supporting clem-
ency during his time serving on Penn-
sylvania’s board of pardons. Fetterman
is the “most pro-murderer candidate
in the nation,” says Oz communica-
tions director Brittany Yanick. (Fetter-
man regularly cites his work granting
clemency to people unjustly impris-
oned and supports marijuana legal-
ization, but a campaign spokesperson
says he does not support decriminaliz-
ing heroin or fentanyl.)
Then came Fetterman’s stroke. He
months, and when he returned in Au-
gust, he was visibly affected by the lin-
gering auditory-processing disorder.
He mushed words together and re-
lied on closed-captioning aids in in-
terviews. Dr. Oz’s response was ruth-
less: a campaign spokesperson for Oz’s
campaign said Fetterman wouldn’t
have had a stroke if he “had ever eaten
a vegetable in his life.” Fetterman, in
contrast, tried to embody the role of
the relatable underdog. His team cut
an ad about how the stroke made him
realize that “politicians spend so much
time fighting about the things that
don’t matter.”
“Let’s also talk about the elephant in
the room: I had a stroke, he’s never let
me forget that,” Fetterman said in one of
his smoother moments at the debate. “It
knocked me down, but I’m gonna keep
coming back up.”
That’s the thing about vibes: they
can change.
about 10 days before the debate, I
interviewed Fetterman for the first
Answering common
questions about how
to cast your ballot
By Solcyre Burga, Mariah Espada,
Anisha Kohli, and Simmone Shah
Is it better to
vote early, by mail,
or on Election Day?
The best option for voting is the
one that works best for you.
Every vote is counted equally,
whether it is cast early or on
Election Day, in person or via a
mail-in ballot. “People should
vote the way that they’re most
comfortable, but make sure that
they know their state’s rules,”
says Sean Morales-Doyle, the
director of the Brennan Center for
Justice’s Voting Rights Program.
What’s the best
time to vote to
avoid long lines?
Long lines can be a strong
deterrent to voting, especially in
Black and Latino communities,
where the wait is often longer
than in white communities,
according to a June 2020
report by the Brennan Center
for Justice. Wait times at
polling places can often
be unpredictable and vary
significantly by location. But
early mornings, lunch hours,
and late evenings tend to be
the busiest hours as people
try to vote around their work
schedules. And lines tend to
be longer on Election Day
than during early voting.

Can I still vote if I
don’t have a valid ID?
The rules around identification
and voting vary by state. If you’re
a first-time voter, federal law
requires that you show ID if you
did not register in person, but
otherwise whether you need an
ID to vote depends on where you
live. Thirty-five states require
voters to show some form of
identification. Some of them, like
Wisconsin and Missouri, have
strict photo-ID requirements
at the polls, while other states
allow voters to sign an affidavit
or have their signature verified
against their record if they
don’t have a valid ID.
How do I know if
my mail-in ballot
was received?
Most states offer online ballot
tracking for all mailed ballots,
according to Vote.org. In
Illinois, New York, Texas, and
Wyoming, online ballot tracking
is offered only in some districts
or for overseas and military
voters. If you live in Mississippi
or Missouri, you can’t track
your ballot online. Each state’s
tracker is a little different, but
most allow you to log in with your
voter-registration information.
In states that don’t offer ballot
tracking, your local election
administrator might be able
to answer questions about
your ballot status.
time since his stroke. We had spoken a
couple of times a year since 2018, each
time on the phone or in person. This
time, we talked on Google Meet so he
could use closed captioning. “I don’t
want to put you on the spot,” he asked.
“Do I sound differently after we spoke
for years?”
Fetterman remembered details from
our earlier conversations with perfect
clarity. I detected nothing different
about his ability to recall facts, even if he
flubbed some words and his communi-
cation was slightly garbled. Then again,
he has never been particularly smooth
on this score. Even before the stroke,
Fetterman spoke haltingly, frequently
interrupting himself before he finished
a thought. He has often seemed self-
conscious or tongue-tied, an incongru-
ous personality for his towering frame.
An adviser once described him to me as
“shy.” He bombed the Democratic pri-
mary debate that took place before his
stroke, sometimes stammering to de-
fend himself as his opponents presented
deft arguments and fluent attacks.
Supporters say this lack of polish
is also part of his vibe. “There is no
question to me that the fact that he is
6-ft. 8-in., goes around in hoodies, talks
like a normal person,” the veteran Dem- can understand and bring in words, but
ocratic political strategist Lis Smith told just in terms of captioning, it helps to
me before the debate, “that all these make sure, to be precisely.” (He meant
things have helped inoculate him from “be precise.”)
some of the typical attacks you get from The conversation convinced me that
Republicans.” Fetterman’s mind was clear, even though
But the effects of the stroke are harder his language was more disjointed than
to spin. How, I asked Fetterman, could usual. This was also the assessment of
he serve as a U.S. Senator if he struggles his physician: after weeks of demands
to conduct in-person conversations? to be more transparent about his condi-
How could he huddle with Pennsylvania tion, Fetterman released a statement on
Senator Bob Casey, or schmooze with Oct. 19 from his doctor confirming that
Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, or he “can work full duty in public office.”
woo Joe Manchin? “Having a conversa- (He still refused to release his full medi-
tion, that’s not the same as having an in- cal records.)
terview on a national network,” he told But the Fetterman who showed up
me. “It’s just about the reality of where at the debate sounded much worse than
I’m at in terms of my abilities to fully the one I heard in our one-on-one con-
make sure I’m being understanding.”
(He meant “being understood.”) When
he’s at home with his family, he told me,
he doesn’t use captioning. “When it’s ‘VOTERS
very specific kind of questions in that
kind of situation, it’s important to fully AREN’T ISSUE
understand so I can give you the right
answer,” he said. “It’s part of under- CALCULATORS.’
standing exactly what’s being asked. I —POLLSTER J.J. BALABAN

△ advisers did not return at least a dozen
Oz, with supporters on
Oct. 13, has made crime a
centerpiece of his closing pitch
versation. Facing rapid-fire questions
before a national audience, looking un-
comfortable in a suit and tie, he was rat-
tled and unsteady, laboring mightily to
express his positions. It was a drubbing
O Z : M A R K M A K E L A — G E T T Y I M A G E S; I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y B R O W N B I R D D E S I G N F O R T I M E
his team seemed to expect. Ahead of the
debate, Fetterman’s advisers circulated
a memo attempting to lower expecta-
tions for his performance. “We’ll admit:
this isn’t John’s format,” they wrote.
“John did not get where he is by winning
debates or being a polished speaker. He
got here because he truly connects with
Pennsylvanians.”
Until recently, Oz’s vibe didn’t
seem to be going over too well. I fi-
nally caught a glimpse of it at a “Safer
Streets” campaign event in South Phila-
delphia on Oct. 13. The candidate had
gathered friendly supporters for a dis-
cussion on violent crime, at Galdo’s, one
of the city’s “newest upscale catering
facilities,” which normally specializes
in wedding receptions and funeral lun-
cheons. Just beyond a lobby with white
leather couches and fake flowers in
crystal vases, Oz was delivering a grim
diagnosis about Philadelphia’s prob-
lems with drugs and crime. Drugs, he
warned, were “the gateway to hell.”
The event had the vibe of a daytime
talk show. The doctor held court in the
middle and called on various support-
ers who had been invited by the cam-
paign to share their own experiences.
(A recent investigation by the Intercept
found that on at least one occasion, a
tearful “community member” at Oz’s
event was actually a paid staffer.)
“What should we do with all the il-
legal guns in Philadelphia?” Oz asked
the group. After each confessional, the
guests would clap, as if they were both
talk-show guests and studio audience,
and Oz would thank them for sharing
and turn back toward the cameras. “One
of the most important things a doctor
does,” he announced, “is listen.”
It was part of Oz’s ongoing effort to
make the race about Fetterman’s soft
spots instead of his own New Jersey
mansion or his stint promoting prod-
ucts like “sea buckthorn” on TV. He’s
trying to transform the campaign from
a contest of vibes to a battle of issues,
where Oz has a better chance to win in
a year when polls show that many of the
top ones—the economy, immigration,
crime, inflation—favor Republicans.
Talking briefly to reporters after the
event, Oz recalled asking his father—an
immigrant from Turkey—why they were
Republicans. “Republicans have better
ideas,” said Oz, his monogrammed cuff
flashing beneath his suit. “So if I’m in
the U.S. Senate, the No. 1 thing to hold
me accountable for is: make sure that
I have better ideas.”
What exactly Oz’s ideas are can be
difficult to discern. He seems to be try-
ing to craft a talk-about-the-issues vibe
without actually talking about the is-
sues. He does not have a drug-addiction
plan on his website. He didn’t offer his
own vision to combat illegal guns at the
Safer Streets event, and only released a
detailed crime plan on Oct. 24, roughly
two weeks before Election Day. Oz’s
calls seeking to schedule an interview
with him or return emails seeking de-
tails about his drugs plan.
But the man emptying the dumpster
outside of Galdo’s was happy to talk.
“You can’t trust nothing Oz says.
All these pills supposed to help you,
it’s a bunch of crap,” says Anthony
Matthews, 44. “Ain’t he from Jersey?”
candidate vibes aren’t the only
ones that matter. Party vibes, economic
vibes, and historical vibes all play a
role too. Across the country, Demo-
cratic candidates are struggling to sur-
mount their woke-liberal vibes while
Republicans are battling against scary-
conspiracy-theorist vibes. The econ-
omy has been giving off bad vibes for
months, which is usually disastrous for
the party in power. Add in the historical
precedent of the President’s party los-
ing big in the midterms, and it’s look-
ing like a bad year for Democrats. Polls
suggest that Republicans are more mo-
tivated to vote than Democrats heading
into November, and that the GOP has
43
POLITICS

regained its edge on the generic ballot.

“If it is a wave year, vibes matter less,”
says Smith, the Democratic strategist.
All this put Fetterman’s vibes offen-
sive to the test. At a recent campaign
event in Bucks County, the candidate
climbed onstage to the sounds of AC/DC
and immediately gestured across the
river behind him. “That, over there,
that’s New Jersey,” he told the crowd of
roughly 1,200 people. “The land of Oz!”
The Fetterman supporters at the
event in Bucks County all had different
priorities: abortion, union wages, de- BY ERIC CORTELLESSA
mocracy reform. But Fetterman’s “vibe
goes a long way,” says Bob Cook, 59, an
energy-management technician. “He
seems like a real person.” Nathan Frey,
who works in manufacturing, nodded to
Fetterman’s unique candidate uniform
of a hoodie and shorts. “If you wear a
suit or something all the time when
you don’t have to, that turns me off,”
says Frey, 47. Fetterman, he added, has
“appeal for people who like his vibe.”
None of the voters I spoke with then
seemed concerned about his stroke.
Whether that changes in the wake of
his debate performance is an open ques-
tion. At the Bucks County event, Jim
Hendricks, a 55-year-old steamfitter,
cited Fetterman’s vibes as a key part of
his support for the candidate. “It’s just
something you can feel,” he says. “He’s
not phony at all.”
After the debate, I checked with
Hendricks to see if his impression had
changed. The performance, he acknowl-
edged, could taint Fetterman’s vibe with
voters who were not paying close at-
tention to the race. But his own faith
in his candidate had not faltered. “His
vibe can still be as an everyday person,”
Hendricks told me, “and everyday peo-
ple have strokes and other issues that
they have to fight and battle back from.”
Will voters decide that Fetterman is
not up to the demands of the Senate be-
cause of his health condition? Will they
view his willingness to soldier through
those challenges as a test of character
that shows he will be a champion for
struggling Pennsylvanians? Or will the
whole thing amount to a pundit obses-
sion that voters basically ignore? At
the moment, it’s hard to read the vibe.
—With reporting by LesLie DicksTein
and JuLia ZorThian □
44 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
△
 -

What should I do if
someone tries to stop
me from voting?
Voter intimidation is illegal
and relatively rare. If someone
tries to stop you from voting,
you should alert nearby poll
workers and your local election
officials, who can determine
if law enforcement should be
involved, says Morales-Doyle.
You should also contact the
nonpartisan Election Protection
hotline for assistance: English -
speakers should dial 866-OUR-
VOTE; Spanish speakers can
call 888-VE-Y-VOTE; speakers
of Asian languages can call
888-API-VOTE; and Arabic
speakers can call 844-YALLA-US.

What if I planned to
vote in person but I get
sick on Election Day?
Check your state’s guidelines
on emergency voting. Some
states offer emergency absentee
ballots for voters who are in the
hospital. If you’re concerned
that your health may prevent you
from voting on Election Day, it
may make sense to plan to vote
early or absentee to ensure your
vote is cast. “It’s always a good
idea to vote as soon as you can,”
says Jeanette Senecal, the senior
director for mission impact for
the League of Women Voters.


CLIMATE

NO NATION CAN ESCAPE THE IMPACTS OF

CLIMATE CHANGE—AND WEALTHY COUNTRIES
WILL HAVE TO GIVE THEIR VULNERABLE
NEIGHBORS MORE THAN JUST SYMPATHY

MUTUALLY
ASSURED
SURVIVAL
ILLUSTR ATION BY GREG MABLY FOR TIME 49
CLIMATE
THE SELFISH
CASE FOR
CLIMATE
JUSTICE
Appealing to rich countries’ self-interest may be
the best way to their wallets By Justin Worland
The year is 2040. CounTries have blown
past global targets to limit temperature rise, and
the world is paying the price. The migrant flow
north from Central America and the Caribbean
has become a flood, but government cooperation
on national security has waned. In the worst-hit
nations, some leaders are considering the last-
resort method of trying to lower temperatures on
the ground by spraying sulfur aerosols into the
stratosphere, a bit of geoengineering that no one
heretofore has dared risk.
This is not the grim vision of science-fic-
tion writers but rather drawn from the assess-
ment laid out in a U.S. National Intelligence Es-
timate last year. Government analysts warn of 15
climate-related threats to U.S. interests that orig-
inate abroad but have a medium or high likeli-
hood of threatening the country by 2040; seven
of those threats stem directly from countries in
the Global South lacking the resources, capac-
ity, and support to manage the realities of climate
change. “When instability happens in a coun-
try, it doesn’t usually remain contained within
that single country,” says Maria Langan-Riekhof,
director of the Strategic Futures Group at the
50 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The U.S. intelligence community is in the busi-
ness of gathering information and analyzing how
it may shape the future, not offering policy rec-
ommendations. But it doesn’t require a huge
stretch of the imagination to understand the in-
terplay between these scenarios and government
decisionmaking. Wealthy countries can embrace
an agenda that helps the most vulnerable parts of
the world address catastrophic flooding, deadly
famines, and unchecked migration, and in doing
so help prevent destabilizing ripple effects. Or
wealthy countries can dismiss the concerns of their
developing counterparts and hunker down to await
the inevitable shock waves.
“If you’re not going to address climate change
equitably, then you will have conflict,” says Sherry
Rehman, Pakistan’s climate minister. “Multilateral
systems will start breaking down.”
For years, decades even, providing assistance
to the Global South has been framed as a “climate
justice” agenda. The justice framing was straight-
forward: wealthy countries have spent more than
a century emitting carbon dioxide unchecked,
and they owe it to the rest of the world to pay for

the damage they have caused. Words like justice,
equity, and responsibility sat at the center of the
plea. This logic is understandable, and the moral
case is compelling, often poignant, even.
But after some 30 years of the climate-justice ar-
gument delivering mixed results, a new framing is
slowly gaining traction: an appeal to self-interest.
European Commission Executive Vice President
Frans Timmermans, who oversees climate policy in
the E.U., says that the moral argument can lack per-
suasive power for some audiences—even if there’s
“some truth in that argument.”
“‘You have had 200 years of fossil fuels, that’s
what’s created the problem’ . . . I could take that
argument to my constituents, but I don’t think it
would convince them,” he says. “What does con-
vince them is that if we don’t increase our efforts in
this area, there will be even more disruption; there
will be more migration; there will be less opportu-
nity for investment and economic development.”
The challenge now is to make that under-
standing sink in—not just among the politicians
and policymakers who consult with experts,
but among the citizens who put them in power.
The annual U.N. climate conference—known
△
this year as COP27, and to be held this November The border wall
in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—offers an opportunity between the
to embrace the reality that when it comes to cli- U.S. and Mexico
mate, helping poorer countries helps everybody. at the Pacific
“At the moment, there’s a lot of discussion about Ocean
the moral objective that anyone can forget once the
meeting is closed,” says Laurence Tubiana, the pres-
ident of the European Climate Foundation and a key
framer of the Paris Agreement. “This could really
be a problem of macroeconomic and global stabil-
ity; the discussion should move in that direction.”
For the past three decades, the moral case for
aggressive climate action has been front and cen-
ter in international climate talks—and with good
reason. A century of industrial development and
high-carbon living in the Global North has directly
caused problems of cataclysmic proportions in the
Global South. In any typical conception of fairness,
the parties most responsible for causing the prob-
lem should be responsible for cleaning it up.
Developed countries, most prominently the
U.S. and European nations, are responsible for
79% of historic emissions despite being home to
just a fraction of the global population. And yet the
NICOLÒ FILIPPO ROSSO
CLIMATE
▷
Flood victims
relocate in
Pakistan’s Sehwan
Sindh province in
September 2022
effects of climate change are—at least for now—
being felt disproportionately in places that did lit-
tle to cause the problem. Flooding now regularly
puts 25% of Bangladesh underwater. Countries on
the African continent have emitted less than 3% of
global emissions but are experiencing the brunt
of the impacts in the form of drought, flooding,
and coastal degradation. Drought-driven famine
in East Africa is killing a person every 36 seconds.
The continent already loses up to 15% of its annual
GDP per capita because of climate effects; that fig-
ure could double in the coming decades.
Many prominent climate advocates have high-
lighted this sheer and in some ways outrageous
injustice, from leaders of small island nations to
Greta Thunberg to Pope Francis. And international
climate agreements have reflected climate justice
over and over again, emphasizing the principle of
“common but differentiated responsibilities,” a
wonky way of saying that wealthy countries owe
it to the rest of the world to move aggressively.
But they haven’t followed through. The poli-
cies countries have enacted to cut emissions would
limit global warming to around 2.7°C, according
to Climate Action Tracker. That’s far greater than
the “well below 2°C” that countries agreed to in
the Paris Agreement. At the current expected level,
we will likely see the inundation of small island
states and tens of millions of climate migrants in
sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change. Developed coun-
tries have also failed to live up to their commitment
52 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
to help their poorer counterparts adapt. The year
2020 passed without countries in the Global
North meeting their longtime promise to provide
$100 billion in climate finance annually beginning
that year, half of which was supposed to finance ad-
aptation. About $80 billion flowed from north to
south in 2020, according to the Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development. Some
assessments suggest that countries in the Global
North will make up for that deficit in the coming
years, but that number is now outdated. Trillions
will be needed because of the effects we’ve now
baked in with decades of inaction.
These failures have put finance for what’s
known as loss and damage—essentially funds
to address the unavoidable harm from climate
change—at the center of international discussions.
The climate costs to physical infrastructure, indus-
try, and economic output will be enormous, poten-
tially adding up to $1 trillion annually by 2040,
according to a 2019 study. The risk of having to
pay up is precisely what has historically kept the
U.S. and European countries from a full-throated
J A N A L I L A G H A R I — A N A D O L U A G E N C Y/G E T T Y
embrace of policies to address loss and damage.
But there are risks in sidestepping the issue too.
It’s impossible to know exactly how the effects of
climate change will unfold and how these damages
will ripple across the globe, but the vast body of
research, government analysis, and academic lit-
erature on future scenarios suggests some com-
mon expectations. Chief among them is migration.
Already, drought has uprooted communities in
Central America, driving migrants to cities and,
eventually, to the U.S. Meanwhile, drought in Syria
has contributed to the struggles driving over a mil-
lion migrants from the war-torn country to Europe.
These movements of people have, respectively,
stoked political upheaval in the U.S. and helped By Aryn Baker
topple governments in Europe. And it’s just a taste
of the expected hundreds of millions of migrants
expected in the coming decades.
There’s also the economic damage that may
begin in the Global South but is likely to spill over.
A 2018 study from Cambridge University, for ex-
ample, found that extreme weather events may
begin in one country but create economic waves
elsewhere, affecting everything from household
income to bond yields thousands of miles away.
Global supply chains will struggle to rearrange
themselves in a constantly evolving constellation
of climate risks—harming consumers and busi-
nesses in the north.

All of these chAllenges, and many more, cre-

ate a threat to the geopolitical order that the U.S.
has seeded, fostered, and administered for most
of the past century. The U.S. and Europe will have
less credibility as countries grapple with the dam-
age caused by a century of unchecked emissions.
Countries crippled by internal conflict may see
governance break down, allowing extremist fac-
tions to rise in the vacuum and creating space for
terrorist cells. As the climate situation gets more
extreme, some may experiment with untested
technologies to try to shape weather patterns in
their favor. A few billion dollars, for example, can
buy a country the technology to spray sulfur diox-
ide into the upper atmosphere to reduce tempera-
tures in a target region. That may be cheap in the
scheme of a country’s budget, but these technolo-
gies, known broadly as geoengineering, have un-
known implications for the global climate.
It may be too late to avoid some of these conse-
quences, but there’s still an opportunity to reduce
their impact. Funding adaptation measures—think
of education for rural farmers or upgraded munici-
pal infrastructure—will help reduce the impact of
a disaster and the chance that its effects will ripple
across the globe. When disaster does hit, paying
to help communities rebuild will help limit spill-
over and keep the global economy humming. The
most important thing may simply be engaging ear-
nestly to build confidence that the Global North
can still be trusted and that all countries can work
together—on climate and other issues.
If the coming U.N. climate conference can fos-
ter a renewed sense of mutual faith, it will have
succeeded, by many accounts. “One of the main
objectives that we are aiming for is to regain the
trust between the parties,” says Sameh Shoukry,
CLIMATE

the Egyptian Foreign Minister who is also lead- publicly committed the U.S. to advancing policy
ing COP27, “to provide the confidence that we on loss and damage at COP27 and said the U.S. will
are all in this together and that no one is going double down on climate funding initiatives in the
to be left behind.” Global South. “We have to find a way for more cap-
For anyone with a sense of humanity, it can be ital to flow into developing countries,” he told me
downright depressing that it takes hearing about on Oct. 26. And leaders from both developing and
the threats to their own self-interest to make lead- developed nations have supported a wholesale re-
ers in wealthy countries pay up to save lives in the form of the Bretton Woods institutions—the World
Global South. And some may recoil at the focus Bank and International Monetary Fund—with cli-
on secondary effects in the Global North rather mate change in mind. The World Bank could com-
than the immediate effects on the ground. And mit to taking the “first loss” on big climate projects,
yet there’s a simple logic to it: it works. for example, and in doing so make such projects
Dallas Conyers, international liaison at the U.S. more attractive for private-sector investors. The
branch of the activist group Climate Action Net- IMF could allocate hundreds of billions in finance
work, says that officials in the Global North need to give developing countries the space to pursue
to be spoken to in terms that they care about. “Be- climate projects. These moves could, in turn, cata-
cause of the history of our government, there’s very lyze trillions in investment from the private sector.
specific language that we have to use,” she says. “There is more of a willingness on the part of all
“We need to start talking to them about money.” the parties to come together and try and move this
discussion forward,” says Alok Sharma, a former
NoNe of this is going to be easy. Last year, I minister in the British government who led last
spoke with John Kerry, the former U.S. Secretary year’s COP26 conference in Glasgow. “It is a very
of State and current climate envoy, on the sidelines difficult discussion; that’s why it’s taken so long.”
of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. By all accounts, the weight of recent climate-
Climate watchers were waiting in anticipation to related disasters has helped move the needle. From
see whether President Joe Biden would commit the Nigeria to Germany to India, the world has been
U.S. government to upping its financial commit- inundated with a tide of extreme weather events
ment to aid developing countries’ climate efforts. in recent months signaling that the era of loss and
Kerry described such a commitment as “the damage has indeed arrived.
ticket of admission” for the U.S. to remain cred- The conversation about the on-the-ground dev-
ible, and said he was “optimistic” it would come astation in the most vulnerable parts of the world
through. But he also said it was politically chal- needs to continue. But the reality is that we also
lenging for the Administration as it sought to pass need to be talking about the ripples. Pakistan offers
infrastructure legislation and manage other con- a prime example of the selfish case for the Global
cerns in Washington. “It’s just that it comes at a North. It’s a nuclear-armed state that collaborates
tricky time,” he told me. “The bandwidth can only with the U.S. to address terrorism in South Asia. It
take so much.” exports billions in textile and food products around
The next day, Biden committed the U.S. to con- the world, including to the U.S., its largest trading
tributing more than $11 billion annually to climate partner, and Europe.
initiatives for developing countries; climate advo- Sending aid to Pakistan will help it cope with
cates from the Global South dismissed it as the bare its precarious climate. Glaciers in its mountaintops
minimum. A few months later at the U.N. climate are melting, contributing to flooding. Meanwhile,
conference in Glasgow, delegates from the Global the country is home to some of the hottest spots in
South demanded recognition of loss and damage the world, where heat waves already kill residents
and took negotiations into overtime until the U.S., on a regular basis. Pakistan now estimates recent
the E.U., and other reluctant flooding will cost it $40 billion;
parties agreed to a “dialogue” as of late October, it had re-
on the topic—a small step for- ‘IF YOU’RE ceived $129 million in aid.
ward with only a few details
agreed at the outset.
NOT GOING But helping tackle Pakistan’s
issues will help everyone else
But since then, a surprising TO ADDRESS too. “The entire bargain in cli-
momentum has emerged. With CLIMATE CHANGE mate negotiations now is pre-
the support of partner coun-
tries in the G-7, Germany pro- EQUITABLY, THEN mised on climate justice,” says
Rehman. “And that bargain be-
posed an insurance scheme to YOU WILL HAVE tween the North and the South
help protect the most vulnera-
ble countries from the costs of
CONFLICT.’ has to be working now.” —With
reporting by Simmone Shah/
—SHERRY REHMAN,
climate disasters. Kerry has PAKISTANI CLIMATE MINISTER new York 
54 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
CLIMATE
BANGLADESH’S
MEDIA LESSON
By Saleemul Huq
All lighTs Are ouT here in my
home city of Dhaka as I write these
words. Cyclone Sitrang has knocked
out the electricity in Bangladesh’s
capital, plunging this city of 22 mil-
lion people into darkness.
But one thing we Bangladeshis
are not in the dark about is climate
change. We understand that overheat-
ing the planet has made cyclones—or
hurricanes, as they’re called in other
parts of the world—stronger and more
destructive. We know this largely be-
cause our media have long treated
climate change as a major news story
that the public needs to know about.
As record heat, drought, fires, and
floods afflict more and more of hu-
manity, it is clear that our planetary
house is on fire. Our experience in
Bangladesh illustrates that more and
better news coverage is also an es-
sential climate solution, because it
fosters the broad awareness and pub-
lic pressure on governments that’s
needed to put the fire out.
Unfortunately, mainstream news
outlets in the U.S. have a long history
of downplaying or misreporting the
climate story. During Obama’s presi-
dency, U.S. news outlets devoted 40
times as much coverage to the Kar-
dashians as to how global warming was
overheating the oceans, analysis by the
nonprofit watchdog Media Matters
found. In 2021, climate stories still ac-
counted for only 1% of total coverage
by ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News.
Not so in Bangladesh. Situated
on the delta of two of the world’s
biggest rivers—the Ganges and the
Brahmaputra—Bangladesh has a very
low-lying coastal region that fronts
on the Indian Ocean. Tens of millions
of people live in that coastal region,
where they are threatened by flood-
ing from the rivers as well as cyclones
from the ocean and sea level rise,
which is gradually making coastal soil
saltier and endangering rice yields.
56 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
Climate change is therefore a life-
and-death issue for Bangladesh, and
our media cover it accordingly. Most
news outlets—TV, radio, print, and
digital—run climate stories on a reg-
ular basis. And they play the story
big. State-run channels such as Ban-
gladesh Television as well as private
competitors such as Channel i run
well-informed climate stories at the
top of their broadcasts, and explore
the issue in popular talk shows.
Bangladeshi journalists and news-
rooms woke up to the climate story
because they were lobbied by experts
and, not least, by reality. Extreme
weather events kept illustrating how
vulnerable our country was. Cyclone
Sidr, a category 4 storm that struck
in November 2007, particularly got
newsrooms’ attention.
When world leaders met at COP26
in November 2021, three Bangladeshi
TV channels traveled to Glasgow
to report live on the deliberations.
As a result, the average person in By Mia Mottley
Bangladesh is quite well-informed
about climate change and what can be
done about it.
The contrast with the U.S. is
stark. When Hurricane Ian was
bearing down on Florida, only 4%
of U.S. national-TV networks’ initial
coverage even mentioned climate
change. Is it any surprise, then,
that Americans know so little about
climate change? For example, only
39% of Americans know that most
scientists agree that climate change is
happening today.
More and better news coverage is
not a silver bullet. It cannot defuse
the climate emergency by itself. But
it is indispensable to changing course
in time to preserve a livable planet,
for all of us.
Huq is director of the International
Centre for Climate Change and
Development in Dhaka
◁
I AM A
CLIMATE
MIGRANT
By Nyombi Morris

I was 10 when floodIng dIsplaced

my family from the Butaleja District of
eastern Uganda in 2008—illegal sand
mining along the riverbanks exacer-
bated flooding already made worse by
climate change. We lost our farm and
home, so we moved over 130 miles
away to Kampala, Uganda’s capital
city, where we lived with my maternal
grandma. But her home quickly be-
came crowded, so we moved to a one-
room rental—much smaller and less
beautiful than our old home. It was too
much for my father. My mother raised
my siblings and me after he left. She
often struggled to find enough food or
money. I can’t count how many times
we went to sleep hungry because we
couldn’t afford food. Back on our farm,
we had plenty to eat.
And we still couldn’t escape the
impacts of climate change. I’ll never
forget one night in November 2014. It
began to rain, the power went out, and
water flooded our room. We stood out-
side all night. The next morning, we
moved back into our grandmother’s
house for four months until my mom
could afford to rent a new home.
Living through endless flooding
made me realize I had to protect the
environment. In 2020, I founded Earth
Volunteers, a climate-justice nonprofit
currently supporting youth climate ed-
ucation. That knowledge is essential:
I believe my father wouldn’t have aban-
doned us if he had known why those
floods hit in 2008, or how to respond.
We had no help or compensation for
losing our home. To this day my family
still lives in a single room. I’ve wanted
to go back to my old village many
times, but people there are now living
in a swamp. This doesn’t need to be the
story for the rest of the Global South.

Morris is a climate activist in Uganda

C A R O LY N VA N H O U T E N — T H E W A S H I N G T O N P O S T/G E T T Y I M A G E S
CLIMATE
 A
RIVER’S
DAY IN
COURT
An Indigenous community
in Ecuador fights to save
its river from the green-
transition fallout
By Mélissa Godin | Tena, Ecuador
PHOTOGR APHS BY
ANDRÉS YÉPEZ FOR TIME

Juan Grefa, an
Indigenous activist
who lives near and
works to protect the
Piatúa River
CLIMATE

What Clemente Grefa remembers

most about his childhood are
the sounds of the Piatúa River:
the hum of insects, the chatter
of children playing, the women
whistling as they clean clothes,
and the burble of water trickling.
“Living here has always been magnificent,” says
Clemente, a 67-year-old Kichwa man who lives off
the land. “We’ve been blessed with all the enchant-
ments of the river.” The Piatúa, a tributary of the
Amazon located in the Pastaza region of Ecuador,
is thought to be millions of years old. It is one of
the most biodiverse areas of the world; scientists
believe it is home to many flora and fauna yet to
be cataloged by academia. For the Kichwa Indig-
enous people of Piatúa, the river is sacred. It is a
living being, with its own temperament, mood
swings, and pulse. It is revered and feared, loved
and protected.
Early one morning in 2018, while Clemente and
his family gathered around the fire to drink their
daily wayusa tea, they heard a crash. Upstream, a
hydropower-dam company was blasting dynamite
to clear the way for a $60 million project that if
built would generate some 30 MW of electricity—
but would also threaten the river’s ecosystem, and
the lifestyle and cosmologies of the people who △
inhabit the area. Since 2014, the Ecuadorean elec- Clockwise from say they feel the project is being pushed on them.
tricity company Genefran S.A. has been approved top left: Mónica The people of Piatúa have not relented: while
by the Ministry of the Environment, Water, and Tanguila near a a date has not yet been set, they hope their case
Ecological Transition to build a hydro dam along cable car connecting will soon be heard at the Constitutional Court, the
the Piatúa River. Though the project is part of the communities on country’s most powerful judicial body. It would
government’s larger strategy to shift away from fos- opposite sides of be the first time a renewable-energy project is ac-
sil fuels toward clean energy, the people of Piatúa the river; a sign in a cused of violating the rights of nature as enshrined
local tourist center
don’t see it as a green endeavor. For them, the in Ecuador’s constitution. “This case could set a
reading “I defend
dam’s construction is an environmental death sen- my Piatúa River”;
precedent worldwide for how we think about the
tence: an estimated 90% of the river’s water vol- impacts of renewables,” says Natalia Greene, a
ume would be lost, according to Yajaira Curipallo, rights-of-nature expert and an executive commit-
who works for a governmental environment watch- tee member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of
dog, and a potentially dangerous flood risk would Nature. But for the Indigenous communities, there
be created at the nearby Jandiayacu River. “If they is a bigger question at stake: Will their voices be
B O T T O M L E F T: C O U R T E S Y T H E P I AT Ú A R E S I S T E D E F E N S E F R O N T

destroy the [Piatúa] river that gives us life,” says
Clemente, “what will we be left with?”
For years, the people of Piatúa have resisted
the dam. In 2018, when the initial construction
began, Kichwa people took their case to the pro-
vincial courts. The judges granted the river partial
protection, ruling the hydro dam could not be built
until Genefran S.A. received consent from the In-
digenous people. But in interviews, multiple river
defenders reported receiving threatening phone
calls and being told not to protest. Though they
could not prove whom the calls came from, they
60 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
heard in the green transition?
Ecuador madE history in 2008 when it be-
came the first country in the world to recog-
nize, and legally protect, nature’s right to exist
and thrive under its constitution. The goal was
to incorporate Indigenous worldviews into the
country’s legal system, and to reflect the belief
that nature is alive and thus has value that can’t
be accounted for in a capitalist market system.
“When we’re talking about the rights of nature,
we’re not just talking about protecting plants

and animals, but about respecting nature’s cos-
mologies and its spiritual worlds,” says Greene.
Although Ecuador’s constitution states compa-
nies have to get prior free and informed consent
from Indigenous communities before an infra-
structure project begins, there is no clear definition
of what consent entails. Oil and mining companies
have exploited this legal loophole by withholding
information about their activities when consult-
ing with communities, in order to secure a few sig-
natures of consent, and both Indigenous people
and environmentalists have grown to expect this
behavior from them. But these groups are disap-
pointed to see renewable-energy companies in-
creasingly taking advantage of the same loopholes.
Ecuador is not the only country grappling with
this issue. Around the world, some clean-energy
companies are being scrutinized for wreaking
havoc on biodiversity, and perpetuating many of
the same human-rights abuses as polluting indus-
tries, with Indigenous communities often paying
the price. Experts say part of the challenge in hold-
ing these industries to account is that people are
hesitant to critique the renewables sector over
fears this may temper enthusiasm to move away
from fossil fuels. But as Greene notes, “You cannot
justify biodiversity loss and injustice on the basis
that a project creates clean energy.”
Many experts feel the outcome of the Piatúa
trial will reveal a lot about whether the movers
of the green transition will be made to uphold
their ostensible commitment to biodiversity and
Indigenous rights—or if these companies will
drive yet another industry that destroys Indig-
enous communities. “If the judges rule in favor
[of the river], it will send the message that no
activity—regardless of whether it’s extractive or
renewable—can be allowed to cause damage to
biodiversity,” says Greene.
When a group of men from Genefran S.A. came
to visit Ines Alvarado’s community in 2016, prom-
ising jobs for the people of the Piatúa River, she
was wary. Alvarado, a 58-year-old Kichwa woman
living along the river, had heard of outsiders mak-
ing promises to Indigenous communities, only
to turn around and destroy their environment.
“I might not be educated, but I have the wisdom
of my ancestors,” she says. “It never even crossed
my mind to sign their paper.”
But many others living along the Piatúa signed,
thinking it would be a financial boon for their fami-
lies. And many say they didn’t know what they were
signing. Some didn’t even know Genefran S.A. was
an electricity-generation company: they say they
were told by Genefran S.A. that it would be doing
some nonintrusive work upstream, and that if
communities agreed, it would bring scholarships
an image of Yaku and jobs to the region. They didn’t hear back from
Warmi, which Genefran S.A. for two years. “We just assumed they
means “woman of were another group of people promising us things
the water” in the and failing to deliver,” says Clemente, who signed
Kichwa language their paper. Then, in 2018, the company returned
and is the name to the region not with jobs or scholarships but with
given to the sacred bulldozers and dynamite.
rock of the Piatúa,
where a mermaid
“We did not know what we had signed,” says
is said to live; the Clemente’s brother Juan Grefa, 68, who lives along
Genefran S.A. dam the river. “They took advantage of our needs and
project area on our innocence. But we fought back.” Shortly after
April 27 the first blasts of dynamite were heard that year,
over 19 communities in the region gathered in the
town of Santa Clara to talk about what they could
do to stop the construction. As night fell, around
300 women, men, and children headed to the con-
struction site along the Piatúa River, armed with
hand-carved wooden spears. People piled onto
motorbikes and into cars; taxis gave protesters
free rides to the site. When the workers arrived,
the crowd surrounded them, as Kichwa leaders
told the company they had 24 hours to get out.
The government sent in the police, then the milita-
rized police. Eventually, the Confederation of In-
digenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorean Amazon
(CONFENIAE) reached an accord with the head
61
CLIMATE

of Genefran S.A., who said the company would re-

move its machinery from the site if the protesters
dispersed.
In the following days, however, CONFENIAE
realized Genefran S.A. was not going to comply; it
was keeping vital machinery next to the river, sug-
gesting the company was pausing, not halting, its
work. Kichwa communities responded by closing
the main road between Puyo and Tena, piling rocks
into the middle of the street and bringing a criti-
cal highway in the Amazon to a stop. “It doesn’t
take very long for people to pay attention when
you close that road,” says Darling Kaniras, 29, an
environmental engineer, river defender, and local
tourist guide.
Company records show that Genefran S.A. is
majority-owned by ElitCorp, an energy and infra-
structure company, with a minority share held by
Gustavo Rafael Villacreces Oviedo, an ElitCorp ex-
ecutive who appears to be related to the listed gen-
eral manager for Genefran S.A., Roberto José Villac-
reces Oviedo. TIME reached out to both companies
to comment on the nature of their relationship and
this story, but did not hear back from either.
The battle eventually moved from the road to
the provincial court in May 2019, after the case
was brought to the court’s attention by Curipallo,
who heads the provincial office for a branch of
the government that serves as a watchdog to en-
sure the state upholds the rights of people and na-
ture. Curipallo was convinced the evidence clearly △
showed that Genefran S.A. had failed to explain Alexis Grefa, problem is that Indigenous communities have to
to those who signed the contracts what its activ- a 26-year-old demonstrate their expansive land-based world-
ities in the area would entail. But the provincial activist with the view within the logic of the courtroom, the same
court judges ruled in favor of Genefran S.A., on Piatúa Resiste logic that has brought about colonization and re-
the basis of what they said was insufficient evi- Defense Front, source extraction,” says Alex Knott, an anthropolo-
dence that the river was home to a “culturally and near one of the gist working with Piatúa River defenders to docu-
river’s sacred
spiritually significant” community. In September rocks
ment cultural heritage. “They are being asked to
2019, Aurelio Quito, one of the judges who pre- show that their culture still exists by pointing to
sided over the hearing, was arrested over accusa- things that can be easily seen and heard, but so
tions by a colleague that Quito had been bribed much of culture is intangible.”
by the construction company and tried to bribe Curipallo hopes the Constitutional Court will
another judge to vote in favor of the dam’s con- rule in favor of the river, protecting it from exploi-
struction. A new hearing was held later that month tation once and for all. But it’s not just about the
in which the river was granted partial protection: outcome for Curipallo; it’s also about how the case
the court ruled that Genefran S.A. could not con- is argued. While the prosecutors could build their
tinue construction until it redid proper technical case on the grounds that the dam would lead to the
studies of the project’s environmental impacts and extinction of certain plant species and cause irre-
got informed consent from communities. Kichwa versible damage to the river’s life cycles, Curipallo
communities celebrated, but Curipallo was wor- thinks there is a bigger argument to be made: “The
ried there would be further issues on the horizon. rights of Indigenous people have to be upheld by
That’s because the court had not actually agreed renewable companies.”
that the Kichwa people of the Piatúa constituted
a “culturally and spiritually significant” commu- Over the past 10 years, the Ecuadorean gov-
nity. The court cited the Kichwa witnesses’ lack ernment has embarked on a mass effort to intro-
of traditional dress, and the fact that they gave duce hydroelectricity throughout the country. In
their testimonies in Spanish, as evidence that 2015, then President Rafael Correa announced
these Indigenous cultures no longer exist. “The eight new hydropower plants would be operational
62 Time November 7/November 14, 2022

in 2016. But the projects have been delayed be-
cause of their failure to meet environmental and
engineering standards. One of the dams, the Coca
Codo Sinclair, caused a river to dry up and the
country’s highest waterfall to disappear; ero-
sion from the project also ruptured two pipelines,
causing an oil spill. The people of Piatúa care
deeply about the climate crisis. But for them, the
hydro dam is not a path away from environmen-
tally harmful industries: it is a new form of eco-
logical devastation. “It is the same injustice and
destruction,” says Kaniras, the engineer and river
defender, “it’s just being called green to get the per-
missions and satisfy the international community.”
Along the Piatúa River, people young and old re-
peated that they were not interested in the money
a hydro dam would generate. This is partly because
they do not believe they would reap the financial
benefits of the project. “Look at what is happen-
ing with petroleum elsewhere in the Amazon,” says
Clemente. “The money leaves.” More important,
many people living along the river care more about
maintaining their spiritual, cultural, and ecologi-
cal richness than about filling their bank accounts.
“The river gives us water, and the land gives us
food,” Alvarado says. “Yes, we are poor, but we
don’t need more.”
This report was made possible in part by the
Fund for Environmental Journalism of the
Society of Environmental Journalists
All of the elders who have lived their lives on
the banks of the Piatúa will tell you stories of the
wilder river they knew in their youth: it stole ani-
mals and gifted them; it made some people sick
and healed others; its spirits appeared in the form
of superhuman beings. The people of Piatúa fear
that a hydro dam could bring an end to their way
of life. “There are spirits here because there is bio-
diversity,” explains Knott, the anthropologist. “If
you cut off the river and kill the biodiversity, you
would in essence be severing people’s connection
to their spirituality.”
IndIgenous communItIes across Ecuador are
watching closely for the moment when the river
gets its day in court. Until then, the people of
Piatúa are continuing to push back attempts by
Genefran S.A. to get the project restarted, by orga-
nizing gatherings to educate the public about what
signing consent forms actually means, and work-
ing with anthropologists to help classify the river
as a cultural-heritage site. “We’re doing what we
have to do,” says Alexis Grefa, 26, a Kichwa river
defender (who is not related to Clemente and
Juan). “We’re defending our part of the earth.”
For many, such resistance has taken a toll. Some
of those who have been outspoken about the proj-
ect report receiving menacing phone calls or being
followed, with those threatening them demand-
ing they back down from their activism. Though
they do not know if Genefran S.A. is behind these
threats—many river defenders said the actions
were carried out by third parties and cannot be
traced back to the company—the threats have
caused many river defenders to uproot their lives.
Cristian Aguinda, the former president of the Na-
tive People of the Kichwa Nationality of Santa Clara
Canton, spent much of the past decade leading the
movement against the hydro dam. But eventually
he moved away from the area, fearing for his fami-
ly’s safety. “I’ve had to give up jobs and have missed
my oldest daughter’s childhood,” he says.
The younger generation is now picking up the
fight. Clemente’s children had left for Santa Clara,
a nearby town, but are now moving back to the
river’s banks. For young people, the river is a sanc-
tuary where nature and Indigenous culture can
thrive, in a region increasingly under pressure
from extractive industries and globalization. “It’s
the only place where there is peace,” says Kaniras.
“The river is like a part of me.” Like many others
fighting the project, he dreams of a future where
the transition away from fossil fuels allows Indig-
enous communities to finally live peacefully, not
in resistance. “I don’t want my daughter to inherit
fights or conflicts,” says Kaniras. “I just want her to
swim in the river, to fish, and to know the people
of the communities.” □
63
CLIMATE
WHAT EGYPT’S
MISSING AT COP27
By Sahar Aziz
climaTe change has no regard for sTaTe
borders. Nor does a nation’s wealth or power im-
munize it from the annual rise in temperatures
exacerbating extreme flooding, droughts, and
storms. This reality is bringing together nearly
200 nations for COP27, to be held in Egypt—a
nation highly vulnerable to climate change but
antagonistic toward an essential stakeholder in
the climate conversation: independent civil soci-
ety. Indeed, the Egyptian government has given
summit access only to local nongovernmental or-
ganizations (NGOs) that support the regime.
With only 3.4% of its land arable and more
than 30% of its population living in poverty,
Egypt cannot afford contractions to its domes-
tic food and water supply. Rising temperatures,
water scarcity, and soil salinity are shrinking
crop yields in the Nile Delta, which account for
nearly all the nation’s domestic food supply, 11%
of gross domestic product, and 21% of its labor
force. Egypt has failed to fully address climate
realities and stymied Indigenous voices calling
for more progressive approaches to the changing
environment. COP27 should be an opportunity
for Egypt to lead by example; instead, hosting
the event seems to be political cover for its self-
defeating repression of civil society.
Since coming to power in 2013, the regime
of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has treated civil
society as enemies of the state. NGOs that refuse
64 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
to support government policies have had their
assets frozen, leaders arrested, and activities
surveilled by security forces. Some civil-society
leaders have been kidnapped and tortured.
Environmental activists are among those tar-
geted by the state’s crackdown on dissent. A re-
cent report by Human Rights Watch found, for
example, that when environmental groups op-
posed the government’s reintroduction of coal
in cement factories, campaign supporters were
summoned by the state security forces, harassed
at airports, or threatened with terrorism-related
charges. An Egyptian law passed in 2019 re-
stricts NGOs from conducting opinion polls or
field research without government approval.
In the rare case when approval is granted, the
NGO can’t publish results without further gov-
ernment blessing. Nor can civil society cooper-
ate with foreign organizations or receive foreign
funding without prior government assent—
rarely given. Further, the government can at
any point declare illegal any activity that under-
mines “national security, public order, or public
morals”—based on opaque, unilateral criteria.
Civil-society organizations that fail to follow
the law are subject to fines or dissolution. Their
△ leaders are arrested and charged with trumped-
A mural of up terrorism charges while their personal assets
Egyptian are frozen, all without due process. Moreover,
President Sisi, the Egyptian government has blocked more than
who came to 500 websites and severely restricted access to
power in 2013 information and reporting on human rights and
and has not environmental issues. Debates that implicate
been a friend of industrial pollution, as well as corporate inter-
environmental
activists in the
ests in real estate, tourism development, and
country agribusiness that exacerbate the impacts of cli-
mate change, are politically off-limits. The con-
sequence is an absence of climate activism and
public awareness about the grave environmen-
tal challenges facing Egypt. Field research, data
collection, and policy recommendations by in-
dependent experts are vetted by government
security forces whose priority is preserving the
regime—not saving Egypt from natural disasters.
The stakes of climate change are too high for
this punitive approach to an engaged, indepen-
dent civil society. Widespread hunger and water
shortages are potent ingredients for civil unrest
and revolution—the very thing the Egyptian gov-
N AT H A L I E G U I R O N N E T — H A N S L U C A S/ R E D U X
ernment wants to prevent. COP27 should be a
wake-up call for autocratic regimes across the
world that the effects of climate change will end
their rule long before any real or imagined politi-
cal opposition.
Aziz is a professor of law at Rutgers University
and author of The Racial Muslim: When Racism
Quashes Religious Freedom
IN DUDAMEL’S 13 YEARS WITH THE
L.A. PHILHARMONIC, AUDIENCE SIZE
AND REVENUES HAVE SKYROCKETED

66 Time November 7/November 14, 2022

 LEADERSHIP SERIES

PRE-EMINENT CONDUCTOR
GUSTAVO DUDAMEL
WANTS TO TAKE CLASSICAL
MUSIC OFF ITS PEDESTAL
BY ED LEIBOWITZ

Gustavo DuDamel has been lureD back onto the

stage for his second encore.
It’s Oct. 9, opening night of the Los Angeles Philhar-
monic’s 2022–23 season. As the crowd spots the conduc-
tor, the volume inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall surges.
He acknowledges the accolades, steps onto the podium,
tilts his head back, lifts his arms, and hurls himself forward
like a battering ram as the orchestra explodes into the first
note of the Star Wars theme.
Dudamel’s curly mop of brown hair has a touch of gray
now, but at 41, over a decade into his time as the L.A. Phil’s
music and artistic director, it roils atop his head with as
much vigor as when he conducted in his 20s. His pat-
ent leather shoes are a riot of activity.
When Dudamel is done, the audience leaps to its feet
with the kind of reaction you’d expect to see at a Taylor
Swift concert. Dudamel doesn’t take a bow—he never
bows. Instead, he motions for the orchestra to stand up and
share in the acclaim. He gives a big hug to Anne-Sophie
Mutter, the virtuoso violinist and tonight’s featured solo-
ist, and another to John Williams as the 90-year-old com-
poser of the scores for Star Wars, Jaws, and many other
classic movies navigates his way toward center stage. Wil-
liams and Mutter keep waving Dudamel over to join them,
but he refuses to make it a trio. Instead, he stays on the
sidelines, turning toward them in profile, just one more
adoring face in the crowd.
“Music is not only an element of entertainment in the
society,” Dudamel says. “It is a power of transformation.
You’re sitting there for a symphony that is, like, 30 or 50
minutes, and time is gone. It unites us, even if we come in
feeling completely different.”
Under Dudamel’s aegis for the past 13 years, the L.A.
Phil has spread classical music’s unifying power well past
its traditional confines—across divides of class, race, gen-
der, and age. It’s an eventuality the New York Times did
not envision in June 2005, when it published an article
titled Decline in listeners worries orchestras.
In places, the piece, written by the Times’ classical-music
PHOTOGR APH BY JEENAH MOON 67
C U LT U R E

critic, reads like the prelude to an obituary:

“Orchestra subscription sales are drop-
ping widely, in some cases by as much as two
percentage points a year. Ensembles are not
balancing their budgets. Audiences are get-
ting older; young people are turned off by
classical music.”
What was creeping toward death’s door
wasn’t classical music itself, but classi-
cal music as an elite and exclusionary art
form. Within this framework, the great or-
chestras were dominated by towering white
men of genius who safeguarded and ele-
vated a canon dominated by towering dead
white men of genius—among them Mozart,
Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. Performances
of these masterworks were geared to an au-
dience prideful of its refined tastes and get-
ting a bit long in the tooth.
The emergence of Dudamel as per-
haps our greatest living conductor is itself
a disruption. Dudamel and the L.A. Phil
often provide orchestral accompaniment
for pop icons like Billie Eilish, who bring
in hundreds of millions of teens and
20-somethings. Their Youth Orchestra Los
Angeles (YOLA) has outfitted 1,500 of the
city’s most vulnerable children with free vi- DUDAMEL LEADS YOLA, them that he couldn’t stay for the meal—he’d de-
olas, trumpets, and other instruments; pro- A YOUTH ORCHESTRA
THAT PROVIDES FREE
cided to celebrate at a local hot dog stand. He left
vided free lessons; and put them on a stage. INSTRUMENTS AND LESSONS the room and flew out of town the next day. “I love
(The high school graduation rate for YOLA this, because it’s so authentically Gustavo,” says
musicians stands at 100%; 90% of them go Chad Smith—then with the New York Philhar-
on to attend college. By contrast, the Los Angeles Unified School District monic, and now the L.A. Phil’s CEO. “At a time
has a preliminary graduation rate of 85%, and about 61% of the district’s when any other conductor would be working
students attend college, according to the latest data available.) And two everyone—‘What have you got for me?’—he was
mentees of the L.A. Phil’s Dudamel Fellowship Program have gone on telling them, ‘I’m not interested. This is not what
to break crystal-chandeliered ceilings before they turned 29. In 2016, I want to do.’ It was a really eye-opening experi-
Lithuanian-born Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla became the first female music ence, that he had the wherewithal to do that and
director in the history of the City of Birmingham Orchestra, while next just didn’t play the game.”
fall, Jonathon Heyward will become the first Black music director to
lead the Baltimore Symphony. DuDamel wasn’t born to play that game,
Business-wise, it’s all working. During the pandemic, the Phil ex- nor was he nurtured, educated, or socially situ-
panded free online access to Dudamel’s concerts; the 2021–22 season ated to play it. Classical music as he first experi-
opening gala, virtually streamed from Disney Hall, garnered 2.2 million enced it was an art without hierarchy—where no
views. For fiscal year 2018–19, the last before the pandemic struck, the one was to be excluded from the orchestra or the
New York Philharmonic took in $24.8 million in concert sales, whereas audience on the basis of race, ethnicity, or class.
the L.A. Phil realized $93.9 million. Dudamel was raised in a working-class family in
Three months after the Times article appeared, Dudamel made his Barquisimeto, Venezuela. His mother was a voice
U.S. debut at the Hollywood Bowl. The previous year, in Bamberg, Ger- teacher, and his father played trombone in a salsa
many, Dudamel had taken first prize in the first ever Mahler Conducting band. But perhaps more important to his musical
Competition for young maestros. With that win, at age 23, he’d become development was El Sistema, Venezuela’s nation-
a piping-hot commodity in an ailing industry. The moment he walked wide classical-music education and performance
into his first L.A. Phil postconcert artist’s dinner, he realized that he’d program for disadvantaged youth.
been put on the menu as the evening’s main entrée. Gathered around El Sistema welcomed a 5-year-old Dudamel
the table were the executives of eight major American orchestras, who into its fold and first put a violin in his hands
had flown to L.A. to catch the concert and acquaint Dudamel with what three years later. Founded in 1975 by the late con-
their organizations had to offer. ductor and philanthropist José Antonio Abreu,
Dudamel politely greeted the executives one by one. Then he told El Sistema continues to provide free instruments,
68 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
 The TIME100 Leadership Series, presented in partnership with Rolex,
profiles members of the TIME100 community—the world’s most influential
people. For video conversations and more, visit time.com/leaders

one-on-one lessons, and social support to led by Dudamel performed with Coldplay at the
its students, as well as a sense of agency and Super Bowl L halftime show in 2016. Last fall, the
self-worth that for many of them had been conductor’s collaboration with Eilish was released
in short supply. After Dudamel traded in his as a concert film on Disney+. Thousands packed
bow for a conductor’s baton, Abreu would the Hollywood Bowl for an evening of Dudamel
become his teacher, mentor, and greatest and Gwen Stefani this past June. “I’m so blessed
artistic influence. Dudamel still calls him to have the chance to work with all of these great
“my maestro.” artists,” Dudamel says. “And to break these barri-
L.A. Phil launched its YOLA program in ers of what is classical and what is pop.”
2007 after Dudamel took Smith, then the As the L.A. Phil’s chief executive, Chad Smith
orchestra’s director of artistic planning, and sees opportunity where Dudamel sees art. “I try to
Deborah Borda, then its CEO, on a guided spend as much time with Gustavo as I can, because
tour of El Sistema’s good works in Vene- I never know when that moment, that spark of an
zuela. To many of the musicians of YOLA, idea, will make itself known,” Smith says. “And
Dudamel has become what Abreu was to then my job is, ‘How do we make this happen?’”
him—a teacher, a cheerleader, and a re- In the Dudamel era, the L.A. Phil has the
sounding reminder of what’s achievable. will and the means. In fiscal year 2009–10,
Dudamel had only been playing violin a which coincided with the conductor’s first sea-
few months when he was assigned to the back son leading the orchestra, the organization re-
of the second-violin section of an El Sistema ported $33 million in charitable donations. Nine
600-piece orchestra, scheduled to perform years later, the total had risen to double that—
at the anniversary celebration of his city’s $66 million. This season’s opening gala alone
founding. He could coax only three notes yielded $3.5 million in giving.
out of his instrument, and quickly decided
to quit. “I said to my teacher, ‘I cannot play although there’s been no shortage of out-
this,’ ” Dudamel recalls. “And he says, ‘Just side interest, Dudamel has just extended his con-
enjoy, live the moment—and you will see.’” tract with the L.A. Phil through the 2025–26 sea-
He did. “We played that first note,” Dudamel says, “and this feel- son. The roots he put down in Los Angeles have
ing went across my body and my ears. The music transformed me. We spread far beyond Disney Hall. In October 2021
were all transformed that day.” the Beckmen YOLA Center opened its doors in
As Dudamel remembers it, even after he became a teenage conducting the historically Black (and often neglected) city
sensation, he wasn’t so much intent on leading a great orchestra someday of Inglewood after months of COVID-related de-
as on making a living playing music with his El Sistema friends. “That lays. On his first tour, Dudamel took in the prac-
was the most wonderful thing,” Dudamel says. “We were all creating our tice studio, the ensemble room, the choir rooms,
own path as a group. That’s why, the parents’ lounge, the two
as a conductor, I feel like another light-drenched performance
musician in the orchestra.” ‘MY MAESTRO ALWAYS SAID spaces with 45-ft. ceilings, engi-
neered by the same acoustician
When the virtuoso pianist THAT THE CULTURE FOR who fine-tuned Disney Hall.
Yuja Wang teams up with THE POOR PEOPLE CANNOT And the conductor wept. “In the
Dudamel, they usually tackle end, the worst thing about being
BE A POOR CULTURE.’
P R E V I O U S PA G E : T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S/ R E D U X ; T H I S PA G E : D A M I A N D O VA R G A N E S — A P

some of the most technically poor is to be no one,” Dudamel

difficult compositions ever writ- —GUSTAVO DUDAMEL
ten. In 2017 they performed
the full cycle of Béla Bartók’s
nearly impossible-to-play piano concertos. In February 2023 they’ll
be doing the same with Rachmaninoff. However bruising the material,
Wang expects the rehearsals and performance to be stress-free.
“The vibe with Gustavo is ‘We’re just having fun with the music,’ ”
Wang says. Dudamel’s musicians hear little from him about technical
adjustments and a lot about a composition’s spiritual dimension. As the
L.A. Phil’s longtime jazz chair, pianist and composer Herbie Hancock has
been a close observer of Dudamel’s improvisational approach to the clas-
sical canon. “With all the experience that Gustavo’s had,” Hancock says,
“I think he feels comfortable enough to try something new—to not always
do this like that—and still remain true to the composer of the piece. He’s
living in the moment when he conducts, and that’s jazz: in the moment.”
Crossing genre barriers is Dudamel’s specialty. A YOLA orchestra
says. “It’s not just a material
thing. It’s knowing you are sep-
arate from the rest.”
The conductor recalls something his mentor
Abreu once told him—how the destitute young
musicians of El Sistema shouldn’t have to make
do with what’s merely adequate; how they must
be provided with the best instruments, the best
teachers, and the most inspired spaces in which
to grow and thrive.
“My maestro always said that the culture
for the poor people cannot be a poor culture,”
Dudamel says. “That’s beautiful! Give these chil-
dren the resources, and they will create their own
future—their own dimension.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi couldn’t have put it better. □
69
 HEAVY
IS THE
CROWN
BY ELIANA DOCKTERMAN

At a particularly
precarious moment
for the monarchy,
The Crown dredges
up the new King’s
darkest chapter
S

ANTHONY HOPKINS BRINGS WARMTH TO CORMAC MCCARTHY RETURNS FROM 8 NEW RELEASES TO WATCH, READ,
AN ’80S COMING-OF-AGE DRAMA A LONG HIATUS WITH TWO NOVELS AND LISTEN TO THIS MONTH

PHOTO-ILLUSTR ATION BY AMY FRIEND FOR TIME 71

TIME OFF OPENER

T
he British royal family would
like to remind you that The Crown
does not reflect real life inside Wind-
sor Castle. Ever since the show’s 2016
debut, royalists and historians have worried that
the drama would tarnish the legacy of Queen
Elizabeth II and that of her family. In 2020, then
U.K. culture secretary Oliver Dowden pleaded
with Netflix to include a disclaimer on its Emmy-
winning show. The streamer staunchly refused—
until this year.
The new season of The Crown, which debuts
on Nov. 9, promises to be its most controversial
to date. It will dramatize a particularly dark mo-
ment in the newly named King Charles III’s his-
tory and the monarchy at large: his divorce from
Diana Spencer, and the events leading up to her
death. British papers have reported that the royal
family has been wringing its hands over how the
show might hinder the new King’s efforts to win
over his subjects. Before the series has even de-
buted, Dame Judi Dench has sprung to Charles’
defense, writing in a letter to the Times that she
fears “a significant number of viewers, particu-
larly overseas, may take its version of history as
being wholly true.” John Major, the British Prime
Minister played by Jonny Lee Miller this season, Commonwealth nations’ desire to disavow the
called it a “barrel-load of nonsense.” So Netflix
Debicki’s British monarchy. Even within England, grum-
finally relented. The streamer added a line to the empathetic bling over the cost of the family grows louder;
trailer’s description, calling it a “fictional drama- portrayal taxpayers spent £86.3 million on them last year.
tisation” inspired by true events. These threats to the monarchy carry signifi-
The royal family’s concerns are not completely sets cant financial, geopolitical, and even existen-
misplaced. In the week after the Queen’s death, Charles tial consequences. And talk of abolition aside,
viewership of the first season of the six-year-old up as a bad Charles would no doubt prefer to be liked by his
series surged to the third spot on Netflix’s Top 10 subjects. Elizabeth was beloved for her stead-
Most Watched, with 40.8 million hours streamed. guy—even fastness. That’s not an adjective many would use
Unlike the subjects of other recent ripped-from- if that’s not to describe Charles. It’s up to the new King to se-
the-headlines shows about Jeffrey Dahmer or Pa- cure his subjects’ faith and loyalty: the very fate
mela Anderson, the public has very little access to the intent of the monarchy may lie in his hands. And now
the royals, who share nary a detail about their per- he has to earn that trust right as The Crown re-
sonal lives. The Crown purports to offer insight minds the public of his gravest mistakes.
into an otherwise inscrutable family. The fictional
narrative has thus become the dominant one. series creator Peter Morgan is an avowed
Perception matters, especially in this precari- royalist, but he understands Diana is the inevita-
ous time for the monarchy. Few royals have mis- ble star of this drama. The season begins in 1992,
managed their public image quite like Charles. the year of Diana and Charles’ separation. Morgan
His affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, his con- handles headlinemaking moments, like the much-
tentious divorce, and, more recently, his reported anticipated reveal of Diana’s “revenge dress,” with
falling-out with Prince Harry have defined his a light but satisfying touch and deploys the Queen,
patchy reputation. Now Prince Andrew’s trans- played by Imelda Staunton, sparingly.
gressions and Harry and Meghan’s departure But it’s Elizabeth Debicki’s empathetic por-
from royal life have shaken faith in the institu- trayal of Diana that sets Charles up as a bad
tion. Prince William and Princess Kate’s disas- guy—even if that’s not Morgan’s intent. Captur-
trous tour of the Caribbean, during which they ing the iconic Princess is no easy feat. In recent
were greeted with protests for slavery repara- years, many talented actors have tried, includ-
tions, reminded the world that even the younger ing Kristen Stewart in Spencer, Jeanna de Waal in
royals might not be suited for the modern world. Diana: The Musical, and Emma Corrin in an ear-
The Queen’s death brought new attention to lier season of The Crown. They have exaggerated
Time Off is reported by Solcyre Burga and Leslie Dickstein

her shyness and vulnerability through fragile
affectations. But Debicki (whom you may rec-
ognize from compelling turns in Widows and
Tenet) offers the most realistic take on Diana yet.
Debicki matches not only her physical stature—
playing the 5-ft. 10-in. Diana, the 6-ft. 3-in. actor
slouches slightly as if to disguise her imposing
beauty from the paparazzi cameras—but also her
complexity. An entire episode is dedicated to dis-
secting Diana’s decision to speak to a biographer
against the royal family’s wishes. Andrew Morton’s
real-life book unveiled details about Charles’ af-
fair and Diana’s struggles with disordered eating
and thoughts of self-harm. Debicki doesn’t shy
away from the bitterness and rebelliousness of this
supposedly saintly figure. Her Diana turns to the
biographer because she feels trapped and manipu-
lated, yes, but also resentful of her treatment by
the family. Other accounts of Diana tend to flatten
P R E V I O U S S P R E A D S O U R C E P H O T O : T I M G R A H A M — P H O T O L I B R A R Y/
her into a wronged wife and exceptional mother.
Debicki’s version can be vapid and vengeful, in
G E T T Y I M A G E S; T H E S E PA G E S : T H E C R O W N : N E T F L I X (3)
addition to nurturing and charitable. She proves
truer to the real Diana, as suggested by the histori-
cal record—and more entertaining to watch.
CHARLES DOESN’T STAND a chance. Compared
with Diana, who arrived last season played by
Corrin, we’ve spent ample time with him on
The Crown. The audience has come to un-
derstand him: we’ve followed Charles, por-
trayed by three different actors, through years
of bullying at boarding school and watched as
◁
West and Debicki lead
The Crown’s most
contentious season
his parents failed to offer the affection he so clearly
needed. In Season 5, Dominic West takes over the
role from Josh O’Connor, who won an Emmy for
his portrayal, and does find some sympathetic mo-
ments: West somehow imbues the embarrassing
and awkward phone-sex conversation with his
now wife, Camilla, which will eventually domi-
nate the tabloids, with sweetness, casting their
relationship in a rather sympathetic light. The au-
dience will be outraged by the British press’s inva-
sion of his privacy when they publish their pillow
talk. And Morgan plays up Charles’ modern vision
for the future of the monarchy, a preview of what
may come to pass under his rule.
Yet faced with the charm offensive that is
Diana, it’s difficult to side with the onscreen
Prince. Early in the season, he chides Diana for
her lack of interest in history on a family trip to
Italy. (Harry, still a boy, gets little screen time
compared with William. But small acts like his
attempt to stand up for his mother in that scene
telegraph eventual fissures in the family.)
West excels at embodying morally corrupt
characters who are utterly convinced of their
heroism: in The Wire and The Affair, he evolves
from charming cad to outright monster. His take
on Charles is less exaggerated than The Wire’s
compromised cop McNulty, but equally deluded.
He begins one episode with a woe-is-me mono-
logue about his untapped potential; it plays as
the backdrop to images of the Prince enjoying
the privileges of royal splendor.
Staunton plays Ultimately, The Crown’s portrayal of Charles
the Queen in is not as harsh as the real-life royals may fear.
a Diana-and- Morgan emphasizes that the King was an early
Charles-centric environmentalist, a relative populist compared
season with his stodgier siblings, and a man loyal to one
▽ woman throughout his life. (Unfortunately, that
woman was not his first wife.) He even writes a
post-divorce dialogue for Charles and Diana that
offers Charles more grace than he’s usually af-
forded in the demise of their relationship.
Charles has done decades of image rehabili-
tation since Diana’s tragic death. Now, ahead of
The Crown’s premiere, the King has set out on
a trip across the U.K. to win hearts and minds,
breaching protocol by accepting cheek kisses
from fans and seeking out a corgi, his mother’s
favorite breed, to pet on one rope line. He will
never match the stateliness of his mother, the
magnetism of his ex-wife, or the presence of
the stars who play him on TV. But duty calls,
and Charles has no choice but to try. 
73
TIME OFF MOVIES

◁
Repeta and
Hopkins: a bond
that can’t be broken

automatic outsider. He’s just as bright

as Paul and gets into trouble just as
often. Both love space exploration and
dream of working for NASA, even if
they have no idea how to get there.

But Johnny has Been set up to fail,

REVIEW
A filmmaker comes of age,
uneasily, in 1980s Queens
BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK
iT’s noble To Think ThaT decisiveness makes us who
we are. Yet the times we have failed to act are often what we
remember most vividly. There’s the merest synapse between
wanting to do the right thing and actually doing it, and a civi-
lization can rise or fall in that infinitesimal space.
James Gray’s quietly extraordinary Armageddon Time
is all about that gap. It’s also about growing up in Queens
circa 1980, about parents who want the best for their chil-
dren—sometimes inadvertently at the expense of other
people’s children—about the way an adult’s careless remark
can crush a kid. It’s about a time and a place where people
find themselves at a moral turning point even as they’re
making dinner or sitting at a school desk or spending time
with a beloved grandparent. The idea, maybe, is that our
moral turning points are small moments, not big ones.
That’s a lot of weight for a movie to hold. Yet Gray
(The Immigrant, The Lost City of Z) has shaped this semi-
autobiographical work with such a light touch that even
when it’s finished, it’s not quite finished—as if the movie it-
self were a traveler in a folktale, still on its way to a future just
out of reach. The picture’s unformed protagonist is PS 173
sixth-grader Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a bright but smart-
alecky kid who fails to apply himself in school and gets into
trouble at every turn. He falls in with another student who’s
always singled out, for different reasons. Johnny (Jaylin
Webb) is one of very few Black students in the class, an
74 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
and he knows it. Paul’s home life, un-
like Johnny’s, is a world of middle-
class privilege, orchestrated by his
harried but conscientious mom (Anne
Hathaway) and his hardworking re-
pairman dad (Jeremy Strong), both of
whom Paul takes for granted. He will
listen to no one except his grandfather
Aaron (played with luminous, lived-
in warmth by Anthony Hopkins), an
English transplant whose mother es-
caped antisemitic persecution decades
earlier in Ukraine. Aaron sees all that’s
special about Paul, things Paul can’t
yet see in himself. At one point the
two launch a model rocket together in
the park; zinging into the sky, it seems
to ignite Paul’s delight in the possibili-
ties of life.
As much of a screwup as Paul is,
those possibilities are open to him;
Johnny can barely afford to dream.
Repeta is wonderful here, capturing
the ways in which Paul is both porous
and stubborn. But it’s Webb’s perfor-
mance that’s likely to break you. When
Johnny is with Paul, his face radiates
openness—as if, subconsciously, he
believes that if he sticks close enough
to his friend, the good things that hap-
pen to white people, as opposed to the
bad things that happen to a Black kid
like him, will be his destiny too.
Yet everyone, including Paul, lets
Johnny down. To see the blank self-
protectiveness that clouds his eyes, as
one door after another closes on him,
Our moral is to see the absolute coldness of our
turning own country at work. There’s some
joyousness in Armageddon Time. But
points this isn’t a movie that allows you to
are small make peace with yourself, or with our
moments, highly imperfect world. Instead, it
crackles with urgency. The next failure
not big to act could be just around the corner.
ones Better be ready for it. 
 REVIEW
True crime polished to
a classy, sterile sheen
Few places inspire more anxiety
and vulnerability than hospitals,
which makes the idea of a serial killer
prowling the corridors especially
REVIEW unnerving—especially if the killer is a
nurse. That’s the dramatic gamble of
The Good Nurse, based on the story of
Charles Cullen, currently serving mul-
tiple life sentences for murdering at
least 29 patients across New Jersey and
Pennsylvania between 1988 and 2003.
Eddie Redmayne plays Cullen: in the
first scene, he stands back and watches
blankly as doctors tend to a patient
who’s flatlined. Bad eggs don’t come
much worse than this.
Later, having jumped to another
hospital, he befriends fellow nurse
Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), a
single mom with two small kids and a
heart condition that will require sur-
gery, if it doesn’t kill her first. And hav-
ing started her job only recently, she’s
still a few months away from getting
health insurance. She finds an ally in
Charles, who radiates false kindness as
only a truly insidious serial killer can.
Directed by Tobias Lindholm
(whose credits include the 2012 pirate
A R M A G E D D O N T I M E : F O C U S F E AT U R E S; C A L L J A N E : A L A M Y; T H E G O O D N U R S E : N E T F L I X
Redmayne plays a nurse gone dreadfully rogue, while Chastain is good all around
drama A Highjacking) and adapted by
Krysty Wilson-Cairns from Charles
Graeber’s book, The Good Nurse is
tense, all right, sometimes to the
reaches of unpleasantness, but mostly
just to the point of boredom. Though
it works hard to make us believe it’s re-
ally a social statement about hospitals’
lack of scruples—pay close attention
to that hospital risk manager, played
by Kim Dickens, who takes great pains
to cover up deaths that happen on her
watch—its garden-variety true-crime
roots are painfully visible.
Redmayne is fine as bad nurse
Charles, until he starts twitching and
overemoting in the finale. Chastain is
the saving grace: she’s not playing a
pushover but a woman who desper-
ately needs kindness and accepts it
when it’s offered, even if it’s fraudu-
lent. She sees Charles as a human
being, which means she feels a sharp
sense of loss when she discovers the
truth about him. Chastain renders
every emotional shift in muted tones.
She’s the movie’s pulse, a vibration that
registers even amid the bedpan clatter
of its dressed-up tawdriness. —s.z.
75
TIME OFF BOOKS
REVIEW
Cormac McCarthy
pushes the boundaries
BY NICHOLAS MANCUSI
CormaC mCCarThy, The now 89-year-old
winner of both a National Book Award and a
Pulitzer Prize, whose work is compared, not in-
frequently, to Moby Dick and the Bible, has spent
more than two decades as a senior fellow at the
Santa Fe Institute think tank. The list of operat-
ing principles for the institute (which he wrote)
reads in part: “If you know more than anybody
else about a subject, we want to talk to you.”
With his two staggering new novels, the
companions The Passenger and Stella Maris, it’s
clear that McCarthy—best known for delivering
stark, gory tales of morality and depravity—has
been inspired by his time at the think tank talk-
ing to the world’s greatest mathematicians and
physicists. His first works of fiction to be pub-
lished in 16 years begin in familiar territory but
push his ambitions to the very boundaries of
human understanding, where math and science
are still just theory.
In The Passenger, the first of the two books,
Bobby Western is a 37-year-old deep-sea salvage
diver operating mostly in the Gulf of Mexico—
dangerous but lucrative work that’s not unlike
exploring a foreign planet. One night Bobby and
his dive partner receive a strange assignment:
a small passenger jet has crashed in the water
off the coast of Pass Christian, Miss., and they
must dive 40 ft. under the surface to assess the
situation. When the pair finds the wreck, they
encounter nine bodies sitting buckled in their
seats, “their hair floating. Their mouths open,
their eyes devoid of speculation.” In addition
to the oddly intact fuselage, other things are
out of place. The pilot’s flight bag is gone. The
plane’s black box has been neatly removed
from the instrumentation panel. And a 10th
passenger, listed on the manifest, is missing
completely. Bobby’s partner is spooked. “You
think there’s already been someone down there,
don’t you?” he asks.
Soon Bobby is beset by suited men—agents
of an unnamed government entity—flipping
their badges at him and asking him questions.
Then his friend goes down on a dive and doesn’t
come back up.
In many ways, Bobby resembles Llewelyn
Moss, the protagonist of McCarthy’s 2005
novel No Country for Old Men: laconic, capable
if a bit hapless, and the subject of dangerous
intrigues outside his scope. The difference is
76 Time November 7/November 14, 2022
that Bobby has book smarts as well. His father
was a scientist on the Manhattan Project who
rubbed shoulders with Oppenheimer et al. while
they perfected, as Bobby’s university friend
Long John puts it, “the design and fabrication of
enormous bombs for the purpose of incinerating
whole citiesful of innocent people as they slept
in their beds.”
Bobby gave up physics to travel around Eu-
rope as a midtier race-car driver before starting
his career in diving. Both pursuits appeal be-
cause they offer him momentary relief from not
only his own intelligence but also his grief. Long
John diagnoses the final integral component of
Bobby’s character: “He is in love with his sister.
But of course it gets worse. He’s in love with his
sister and she’s dead.”
McCarthy alternates chapters of The Passen-
ger between the mystery at Bobby’s hands and
conversations that his younger sister Alicia—
the most brilliant in a family of prodigies, who
died by suicide nearly 10 years prior—has with
figures of her schizophrenic hallucinations.
Their ringleader, whom she has come to call
“the Thalidomide Kid,” is a bald, scarred imp
about 3 ft. tall, with “flippers” instead of arms.
(“He looked like he’d been brought into the
world with icetongs.”) The Kid taunts Alicia in
strange idioms in between discursions on time,
language, and perception. From one of his lin-
guistically withering rants: “Well mysteries just
abound don’t they? Before we mire up too deep
in the accusatory voice it might be well to re-
mind ourselves that you can’t misrepresent what
△ has yet to occur.” Fans of McCarthy’s work will
McCarthy’s two agree that this novel’s villain is a far sight more
new novels are loquacious than No Country for Old Men’s Anton
his first to be Chigurh. (“Call it.”)
published in Narratively speaking, the book is more inter-
16 years ested in expanding the scope of its own mystery
than in solving it. The Bobby sections depict
him avoiding the plot entirely—he mostly has
lunch with friends and converses with them
about his past, physics, or philosophy. Don’t
come here for a thriller about a plane crash, but
the pages do turn with remarkable ease. From
the initial mystery of a missing person, the
novel explodes outward like an atomic chain
reaction to the very face of God, at the intersec-
tion of mathematics and faith.
Is thIs soundIng like a lot? It is. The Passen-
ger also happens to be something of a master-
BEOWULF SHEEHA N
piece, an unsolvable equation left up on the
blackboard for the bold to puzzle over. Readers
have been waiting years for this novel, which
McCarthy has teased from time to time, dating

back to before The Road, which he published in
2006. It is his most ambitious work, or perhaps
a better word would be weirdest. But it’s held
together with wit and chuckle-out-loud humor,
which can be sparse in his other novels (see the
apocalyptic violence of Blood Meridian). And
it’s genuinely fun to read throughout—although
readers who come to this book because they en-
joyed an airport paperback edition of The Road
while on a short flight might be left wide-eyed
and blinking.
Stella Maris, the slimmer companion, to be
published in December, is just over 200 pages’
worth of Passenger’s late sister Alicia’s dialogues
◁
McCarthy has won both
a Pulitzer Prize and a
National Book Award
with her psychiatrist after she has in-
stitutionalized herself toward the end
of her life, suffering under the power
of her own intellect. It offers a few
more clues, but mostly deepens the
various mysteries on offer in the first
novel. “Mathematics,” she tells her
doctor, who struggles to keep up, “is
ultimately a faith-based initiative.”
In all of hIs books, McCarthy
is a gearhead, a man obsessed with
hardware and the nuts and bolts of
things. There are no planes and cars
in The Passenger, only “JetStars” and
“1968 Dodge Chargers with 426 Hemi
engines.” A person doesn’t glance at
their watch; they glance at their white
gold Patek Philippe Calatrava. There
are whole sections that could read al-
most as instructional home repair or
auto maintenance: “The teeth had
begun to strip off of the cluster gear
until the box seized up and then the
rear U-joint came uncoupled and the
drive shaft went clanking off across
the concourse ... ” It’s been said that
when McCarthy visited the set of the
movie adaptation of All the Pretty
Horses, he spent most of his time with
the props master talking about guns.
So it makes sense that at this stage
in his career, the author would push in
his chips and attempt to understand
the mechanical clockwork of reality
itself. Like Bach’s concertos, these tri-
umphant novels depart the realm of
art and encroach upon science, aimed
These at some Platonic point beyond our
reckoning where all spheres converge.
triumphant It’s a rare thing to see a writer
novels depart employ the tools of fiction in order
to make a genuine contribution to
the realm what we know, and what we can
of art and know, about material existence.
encroach Put differently, the ideal audience
for these books are Fields Medal
upon science recipients, but they’re still a privilege
and a hoot for the rest of us to read.
And if we can’t understand everything
McCarthy is writing about, one
suspects that he just might. 
77
 D E C I S I O N T O L E AV E : M U B I ; M O O D : N ATA L I E S E E R Y— B B C S T U D I O S/ B O N A F I D E F I L M S
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Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee The physician and
Pulitzer Prize–winning author talks about cancer,
COVID, and why we’re not all bacteria
Your childhood was not without its
challenges. You have written can-
didly about a history of schizophre-
nia and bipolar disorder in your
family. Did that shape your deci-
sion to study medicine? From the
time I was a very young child, I was
aware of suffering, and I think that
influenced the way I thought about
sickness. I began to think that sick-
ness is not something that’s treated
just by a doctor or team of doctors,
but by a community that surrounds
a person. For me to want to relieve
your pain or your distress—whether
by making a medicine or developing
a science—is something both human
and quite beautiful.
Cancer, which you wrote about in
The Emperor of All Maladies, is one
disease that often defies our best
medicines. The book almost con-
veys a certain grudging wonder
at the malign genius of the cancer
cell. What is it about cancer that
makes it special? Cancer cells have
this mechanism by which they can
turn off immune-system recognition.
In the 2000s everyone was talking
about how if we sequenced the ge-
nome of cancer, you would find all
the keys, and all that we would need
to do would be to find the locks.
But we still don’t have a very good
pharmacopoeia of drugs to direct
against cancer mutations. So I can
tell a patient, “You have a mutation
in x, y, z gene.” And then the patient
says, “OK, what are you gonna do
about it?” And I say, “I don’t know.
I don’t have anything to do about it.”
Your new book, The Song of the
Cell, seems at points to anthropo-
morphize cells. You write about
the subtle intelligence of cells,
or about the T cell as a “discern-
ing” cell. Don’t you run the risk
of overestimating the complexity
of the cell? It does sound as if cells
80 TIME November 7/November 14, 2022
6 QUESTIONS
have agency. But it’s not the agency
you and I have. Cells behave autono-
As Walt mously. They receive signals; they
integrate signals. They have a desire
Whitman wrote, to survive. They have a desire to di-
we contain vide. So I’m not concerned about the
idea of ascribing agency to a cell, as
multitudes—of long as we don’t confuse that agency
cells. Do you with sentience.
see a poetry in Unicellular organisms were the
only form of life on earth until
cellular science? relatively recently in evolution-
ary history. If single cells were
so successful, why did they ever
bother assembling themselves into
multicellular life forms? Bacteria
still exist, and they are very good
at surviving. So I would indeed ask
the question, Well, if bacteria are so
successful, why aren’t we all bacte-
ria? We aren’t bacteria because at
some point in time, evolution came
to the nonconscious conclusion that
in fact, agglomerations of organisms
were very effective. In some selected
environments—like a New York City
apartment—it helps not to be a bac-
terium. Multicellular organisms can
gather food, they can gather infor-
mation, they can contemplate.
You write about the COVID-19 pan-
demic as something of a humbling
experience for scientists. Yet we’ve
fought back, we’ve developed vac-
cines, we’ve reopened the world,
so how have we been humbled? We
thought we knew everything about
the immune system and viruses—and
still there have been 6 million deaths.
I think from global health systems all
the way down to allergies and immu-
nology, there are some fundamental
features we still don’t understand,
MIKE WINDLE— GE T T Y IMAGES
and we haven’t been paying atten-
tion to them. It took a pandemic
to make us wake up and say, “You
know what? This is serious stuff.”
So yeah, I think there’s been some
humbling. —JEFFREY KLUGER