2020-11-01 National Geographic Interactive

Half-swallowed by a machine on which her life depends, a cancer patient receives radiation therapy in
La Louvière. In Belgium as in many countries, some hospitals closed during the first pandemic surge to

all except urgent patients—increasing risk and complications for other illnesses. This woman 47
learned, after her cancer diagnosis, that her body was also fighting COVID-19.



L E F T: Hours of work B E L OW : An emergency B OT TO M : A nurse
in a protective mask room doctor on a house disinfects her gear
mark a transient scar call in La Louvière, between patients.
down the face of deciding his patient Like other countries,
Yves Bouckaert, the may have COVID-19, Belgium struggled to
chief intensive care summons an ambu- provide medical work-
unit physician at Tivoli lance to get her to ers enough COVID-19
Hospital in La Louvière. the hospital. protective equipment.

After transporting the body of a COVID-19 fatality from the hospital to a hearse in La Louvière, an
exhausted undertaker gets a disinfectant spray-down from his partner before they proceed to the

next job. Protecting their older colleagues, who are generally more vulnerable to the 51
disease, these younger undertakers were working 24-hour pandemic shifts.

As the pandemic swelled and the medical staff at Tivoli Hospital in La Louvière struggled to keep
up, a special pediatric emergency room—its walls cheerful with characters from children’s animated

movies—was commandeered for COVID-19 work. These undertakers are completing 53
preparations to carry away the body of a patient who didn’t survive the virus.

In Mons, Belgium, nursing colleagues take brief refuge in a shift break and each other’s company.
Like medical facilities around the world, Belgian hospitals were initially overwhelmed by the rush of

patients with a virulent new disease. These nurses, pulled from their standard duties, were 55
thrown into full-time COVID-19 work—reinforcement troops for a long, exhausting battle.

RETHINKING In Science We Must Trust
O U R H E A LT H

56

Social distancing
at Jubilee Gardens
near the London
Eye Ferris wheel

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GILES PRICE

Researchers are struggling ESSAY BY I F A T H E M E RU N S through the
in fits and starts to under- books and articles I’ve written over
stand the coronavirus. That’s ROBIN MARANTZ the past 40 years, it’s a fascination
just how science always HENIG with what scientists have learned
works. Unsettling as it may about the human body. A long
be to watch, it’s the only way career spent explaining biomed-
to defeat this pandemic. ical research has led me to a deep
respect for the scientific process.
Despite its occasional missteps
and self-corrections, I believe it ulti-
mately moves us toward a clearer
understanding of the world and
how to thrive in it.

So as scientists first scrambled
to figure out the never-before-seen
coronavirus, I was primed to follow
their advice about how to keep safe,
based on the hypothesis that the
virus was transmitted mostly by
droplets from coughs and sneezes
lingering on surfaces. I dutifully
wiped down countertops, refrained
from touching my face, and washed
my hands so emphatically that the
little diamond in my wedding ring
shone like never before.

And then, about two and a half
weeks after my city, New York, shut
down restaurants, Broadway plays,
and the largest public school system
in the country, scientists switched
to a different message—that every-
one should wear a mask. This was
a startling about-face. The initial
advice, confidently delivered, had
been not to wear a mask, unless you
were a frontline health-care worker.
The revision was largely based on a
new hypothesis, that the coronavi-
rus spread mostly through the air.

Which was it, then? Surface trans-
mission or aerosols? Should we be
more afraid of contaminated eleva-
tor buttons or people breathing near
us? Did scientists even know?

How these images were made:
The photographer chose to capture
our new routines with a thermal
imaging camera to reflect how body
temperature became an indicator
of whether we might have the coro­
navirus. Temperatures are converted
into a gradient of colors, ranging
from cool blues to warm oranges.

The shift in advice about masks 1. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
spooked me, I must admit. Not The polio Diseases, has called his “worst nightmare.” For
because of the new advice itself—I virus could one thing, when it appeared, no one on Earth had
was more than happy to wear a paralyze immunity. Second, it’s airborne and infects the
mask if the experts said I should— children upper respiratory tract, which means it’s readily
but because of the ominous meta and caused spewed back into the air where it can drift from
message I sensed beneath it: Sci- panic every person to person. Third, and arguably worst, the
entists were figuring this thing summer, virus is most contagious before it causes symp-
out on the fly. The most earnest leading to toms, meaning that carriers feel well enough to
the closing
of camps
and pools.

pronouncements from the world’s 2 . be up and about precisely when they’re most

smartest experts suddenly sounded The over­ likely to infect us.
reactive
like little more than well-meant immune The tricks this virus uses to foil the body’s

educated guesses. response, counterattack are diabolically effective. Once
called a
As this devastating year draws to cytokine it gets inside via the nose or mouth, the corona-

its raggedy close, it’s worth taking a storm, is virus eludes the first line of immune defense,
also seen
moment to wonder what the long- with her­ slides easily into cells, churns out copies of itself

term effect will be of watching sci- pes, Ebola, by hijacking the cell’s machinery, and makes
and other
entists bob and weave on their way viruses, sure those copies work by using a proofreading

to a better understanding of the as well as mechanism that many other viruses don’t even
cancer
coronavirus and how to thwart the and auto­ have. Its effect is relentless: It can turn a person’s

58 disease it causes, COVID-19—all out immune lung cells into useless material that looks like
diseases.
in public and all at breakneck speed. ground glass; blow open blood vessels or destroy

Even for a science geek like me, it them with microscopic clots; and gunk up the

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC has been unsettling to watch them workings of a kidney, heart, or liver, rendering

debate, disagree, pivot, and reassess. them too stiff to repair. It can defang the cells

I’ve been wishing instead that some that attack invading viruses and then provoke

lab-coated hero would just swoop in a secondary immune reaction that goes badly

and make it go away. I was a baby haywire, paradoxically causing its own catastro-

in 1955 when Jonas Salk introduced phe. ( 2) And anyone who comes in close contact

his polio vaccine and vanquished a with a person already infected is likely—though

dread disease; ever after, my mother no one is sure how likely—to get infected too.

spoke his name with reverence. ( 1 ) Fauci’s worst nightmare? I could barely get

As scientists hustle to deliver us to sleep.

from a terrifying, seemingly intrac- As this pandemic threatens the entire world,

table plague, there could be another the fight against it has been a very public one. The

happy ending—one that involves average citizen is getting insight into scientific

not just survival but also wisdom.

If we learn any big takeaway from

this doleful experience, I hope it’s

not that our fellow human beings 40% Before coronavirus
are myopic fools but that the scien- outbreak
tific process can be trusted to get us (January 2019)

through an existential crisis. After outbreak Military* Science Medicine
(April 2020)
30

M A K E N O MI STA K E: The chal-

lenge is huge and unprece-

dented. If a typical virus is a 20 Religion
riddle wrapped in a mystery inside

an enigma, the coronavirus known Americans who say
they have a great
as SARS-CoV-2 is all that and more. 10 Business*
Government* deal of confidence in
It combines contagiousness and leaders in these fields,

lethality in a ferocious mixture that before and after the
Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. 0 coronavirus outbreak

*STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT CHANGE
DIANA MARQUES, NGM STAFF. SOURCE: CARY FUNK, PEW RESEARCH CENTER

theorizing that is normally confined to academic As for the quest for the holy grail, a
vaccine, an international phalanx
conferences and slow-moving journals. Much of researchers from the U.S., China,
Great Britain, India, Germany,
of the debate over these ideas is taking place on Spain, Canada, Thailand, and else-
where had identified more than
television, as well as on Twitter, on Facebook, 165 candidates by early August.
Progress was so rapid that even a
and in the backyard gatherings of lawn chair epi- hyper-realist like Fauci—who tends
to emphasize how important it is to
demiologists. I find myself wondering if anyone conduct large-scale clinical trials
before introducing new drugs—has
engaged in this chatter understands how science said he is “cautiously optimistic”
that a vaccine could be available
actually works. early next year. If he’s right—oh
please, oh please, let him be right—
One way it doesn’t work is through the lone
Broadband access has never been
Jonas Salk–like hero that captivated me as a equal. The pandemic exposed
that divide. Yet advances in high­
child. Science is a collaboration, with many speed 5G telecom networks
will fuel a growth spurt in fields
heroes. We’re seeing that now, as thousands of from telemedicine to banking,
education, and transportation,
researchers have reoriented their labs, no mat- offering faster connectivity and
greater access. “This will be a tidal
ter how far afield from virology or infectious wave of change,” says David Grain,
former president of a communica­
disease, to attack this hydra-headed problem tions tower company then called
Global Signal. More efficient net­
collectively. There has never been anything like works will reduce costs and help
small businesses leveled by the
it, with scientists collaborating pandemic reach new customers
and grow. — D A N I E L S T O N E
across borders at full throttle—
that would be three years faster
even as some of their political than the fastest vaccine develop-
ment in history. ( 3 )
leaders snipe at one another. RETHINKING
Watching this ramped-up Sometimes science simply can-
O U R H E A LT H not be rushed, though. “There is
scientific effort has felt double- some sort of serendipity to the sci-
edged: encouraging to see but so TECH LEADS entific enterprise,” Gonsalves told
hard to follow that it also added THE WAY me. “The speed and scale of what is
happening now could be just a pre-
to my free-floating anxiety. So lude to the chance discoveries we’re
going to have to make over a longer
I did what I’ve done my whole period.” Bottom line: “You can’t
scream a cure out of a test tube.”
adult life—called up some sci-
N E XT I C A L L E D Howard
entists to see what they think. Markel, director of the Cen-
ter for the History of Medi-
This is a wonderful benefit to cine at the University of Michigan,

being a journalist, being allowed

to ask dumb questions of smart

people. Usually it helps me

clarify my own thinking. This

time … not so much.

Science on the frontier always

exposes how little is known, even by the putative

experts, so these phone calls made it clear to me

how far we have to go. Still, it was nice to hear

that a lot of scientists were looking for answers.

“It’s been amazing to see how people are using

their talents and gifts to address this,” Gregg

Gonsalves, co-director of the Global Health

Justice Partnership at Yale University, told me.

“People all want to do something,” even if their 3.
training is in law, geography, anthropology, fine The record
arts, or similarly far-flung fields. was set in
1967 with
All that research focus has led to a remark- the mumps
able amount of information in a remarkably vaccine.
short time. Within weeks of the first known Scientist
animal-to-human transmission, scientists had Maurice
sequenced the virus’s full genome. By summer- Hilleman
time, more than 270 potential COVID-19 drugs used virus
were in active clinical trials in the United States. he had
isolated
from his
daughter.

ILLUSTRATION: RACHEL LEVIT RUIZ I N S C I E N C E W E M U S T T R U S T 59

to talk about another source of my 4.
anxiety: that the coronavirus In 1989
seemed to shape-shift in a uniquely Stephen
terrifying way. It felt like every day I Morse
opened the newspaper to read that spear­
a new organ system was subject to headed
its ravages or a new age group was the nation's
vulnerable. But Markel, who has first con­
made a career studying the history ference on
of epidemics, told me that was to be emerging
expected: The apparent explosion viruses,
of new and varied symptoms hap- hoping
pens with any highly contagious to give
scientists
the tools
to antici­
pate the
next viral
plague.

virus when it bursts on the scene.

“The more clinical material you

have, the more patients, the more

chances you have to see this pro-

tean nature,” he said. It’s what

happened in the early days of the

AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, when

60 Markel was just starting his career.

At the dawn of any new disease,

strange manifestations keep show-

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ing up and surprising doctors. Even

if the odds of a rare symptom are,

say, just one in a thousand, doctors

are going to see a lot of it, Markel

said, because a thousand patients

can accumulate practically over-

night with a crazily contagious new

illness like this one.

So the U-turns and revised pro-

nouncements about COVID-19

aren’t signs that scientists are flum-

moxed; they’re signs that scientists

are generating a torrent of new

information and are trying to make

sense of it as they go.

Last I called an old friend, Stephen

Morse, a professor of epidemiology

at the Columbia University Mailman

School of Public Health. Morse was

the subject of a book I wrote nearly

30 years ago about emerging viruses,

in which he basically predicted our

current catastrophe. (4 ) Today he

feels a bit put off by the frenzy.

“This is not the way I would like THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT,
to see science being done—it’s WITH SCIENTISTS COLLABORATING ACROSS
happening so quickly,” Morse told
me. He strained to look for a bright BORDERS AT FULL THROTTLE—EVEN AS
side. “A lot of knowledge is becom- POLITICAL LEADERS SNIPE AT ONE ANOTHER.
ing available,” he ventured. And if

A temperature check
at L’Ecole de Battersea

in South London

some of that supposed knowledge ends up being Still troubling me were a couple
wrong, he said, seeming to strain even harder, of things. First, the politicization of
couldn’t that be construed as a good thing? “Sci- the process could upend everything.
ence is a self-corrective process. Maybe even the Even if science closes in on a more
effort to correct the errors will lead to improved accurate view of COVID-19 and how
knowledge.” Maybe. But I didn’t feel better when to treat and eventually prevent it,
we hung up. that might not be how the story is

I N S C I E N C E W E M U S T T R U S T 61

spun. Enough conflicting interests 5. readers ravenous for any updates, wrote articles
and alliances exist for the truth to be The bizarre about studies on these preprint servers no matter
turned on its head without too much campaign how small, no matter how tentative. (6 )
effort, making it seem as if scientists to under­
who amended their views based on mine As new findings, even weak or conditional
new evidence were pretty much Anthony ones, are publicized that contradict earlier find-
wrong from the start. ( 5 ) Fauci ings, those of us trying to follow along can end
claimed his up frustrated and confused. But while frustration
Second, the science itself might early advice and confusion among the science-minded might
suffer. If researchers take shortcuts was overly be unfortunate, it’s not deadly. What really wor-
for the sake of expediency or jump optimistic, ries me is that those skeptical of science might
too far ahead of their data to offer leaving out see the apparent flip-flops as reason to turn
his constant
qualifier:
“This could
change.”

advice, they might unwittingly tar- against evidence-based advice altogether.

nish the very process they depend 6.
Peer review

on. Indeed, not long after I spoke helps, but T H E A N T I - S C I E N C E sentiment is out there,
it’s not a in the U.S. and elsewhere, and it’s perni-
to Morse, I read a report from a guarantee;

team of epidemiologists and bio- of the first cious, having led to doubt about expert
25 retrac­ consensus on climate change, gun control, vac-
statisticians from the Johns Hop- tions of

kins Bloomberg School of Public coronavirus cine safety, and other hot-button issues. We’re
Health that suggested a lot of the papers, also seeing the emergence of COVID truthers,
14 were

early research was too perfunctory in peer­ who insist the pandemic is either a conspiracy or
reviewed
62 to be of much use. journals. a hoax. (Or maybe both? It’s hard to keep track.)

The scholars analyzed the first They venomously slam public health officials,

201 COVID-19 clinical trials, which some of whom have quit after one too many death

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC had been conducted in China, the threats. It has been astonishing to watch videos

U.S., and other countries. It seemed of people screaming at store owners or city coun-

there had been a lot of corner cut- cil members for requiring them to wear masks.

ting. One-third of the trials had no This is not just an American phenomenon.

clear definition of treatment suc- With coronavirus misinformation, disinforma-

cess; nearly one-half were so small tion, and conspiracy theories circulating around

(100 or fewer patients) they weren’t the globe, the World Health Organization has

really informative; and two-thirds declared that we are facing two public health out-

lacked the gold standard safeguard breaks at once: the pandemic itself and an “info-

known as “blinding,” which keeps demic” of dangerously misguided ideas about it.

investigators from knowing which But you don’t need to be an unhinged COVID

subjects are getting the treatment truther to be resistant to learning whatever les-

under study. sons this pandemic can teach us; you just need

These less-than-ideal clinical to be an ordinary, shortsighted, fallible human.

trials were reported anyway, partly “Every epidemic I’ve ever studied always

because leading scientific journals, ends with global amnesia,” Markel said. “We go

such as the New England Journal of back to our merry lives.” The “glaring problems”

Medicine and those published by that contributed to the outbreak—urbanization,

PLOS, had pledged to accelerate the habitat destruction, international travel, climate

peer review process, rushing coro- change, war refugees—simply persist, he said,

navirus articles into print in half the

usual time. Another avenue of pub-

lication involves preprint servers,

which post articles online before

they’re peer-reviewed. These serv- MAYBE THE PANDEMIC WILL
ers, created to promote transpar- PERSUADE EVEN THE SKEPTICS HOW
ency in scientific research, predate CRUCIAL SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY IS
the pandemic, but they exploded in
popularity as coronavirus studies TO HUMAN FLOURISHING.
were churned out. Journalists, their

as people lose interest in demanding that more 7. off the contaminated water supply
time, money, and brainpower be devoted to Until 19th­ and stopping the outbreak. ( 7 )
science. “Politicians move on to the next show, century
while policymakers cry out in the wilderness, scientists Snow’s realization came years
‘We still need this!’ ” proved that before the confirmation of germ
microbes theory, which explains the existence
Already the 21st century has been what Markel transmit of pathogens. He didn’t understand
calls the century of epidemics: SARS in 2003, disease, how cholera was transmitted in
H1N1 influenza (swine flu) in 2009, MERS in 2012, epidemics the water, simply that patterns of
Ebola in 2014 to 2016, and now COVID-19 in 2019, were disease indicated it was. Learning
2020, and who knows how many years beyond. blamed on about the step-by-step progres-
Five epidemics in 20 years, each one a little worse such causes sion of historical discoveries will,
as viscous
blood and
“putrid
effluvium.”

than the one before—and this one many times Andrews hopes, put in context the

worse than the other four put together. fits and starts of contemporary

scientists’ attempts to understand

M AY B E , I N A W E I R D WAY, watching COVID-19.

scientists try to build a plane while Maybe our unfiltered view will

they’re flying it—as

some have described corona-

virus research—will be good

for our overall understanding of RETHINKING The internet has made it possible
the scientific process. Maybe
the pandemic will persuade O U R H E A LT H for millions of people to work
even the skeptics how crucial REMOTE remotely, but it’s put us at
scientific discovery is to human risk from cyberattacks. Jesper
flourishing. POSSIBILITIES Andersen, CEO of cybersecurity
firm Infoblox, says that “it’s a lot
That’s the hope of Lin more complex to secure an all­
Andrews, director of teacher remote business,” let alone a
support at the National Center telehealth office or a network
for Science Education. “People for self­driving cars. Today’s
innately trust scientists overall, VPNs (virtual private networks)
but when it’s a polarized topic, won’t function efficiently with
things can go wonky,” said millions working from home
long term. Decentralized servers
will increase speeds, and more
elaborate ways to log in will
strengthen online security. — D S

Andrews, a former high school

biology teacher. She and 10 col-

leagues, seeing the pandemic as

a teachable moment, have devised a five-part turn out to be a good thing. After

lesson plan, good for classroom or home use all, the best way to build trust in

depending on whether particular school districts science is by showing all of its

are open. It focuses on epidemiology as a way to hypothesis testing and hypothesis

educate high school students—and, by exten- tweaking—maddening to watch

sion, their parents—about what the scientific while we’re anxiously awaiting

process entails. answers to a global plague, but in

The course shows how scientists construct the end the only way toward results

their theories, Andrews said, by emphasizing that will allow us to move on with

“all these stumbles that were made along the our lives.

way.” It includes milestones in epidemiol- Surveys show the general public

ogy, such as when British scientist John Snow is less dismayed by watching sci-

traced the London cholera outbreak of 1854 to entists in action than I had feared.

contaminated drinking water. No one believed Since 2015, the Pew Research Cen-

Snow—the prevailing theory was that cholera ter has tracked what Americans

was spread through the air in a contagious think about science, and it has

“miasma”—until he had the handle removed steadily become more positive,

from the water pump on Broad Street, shutting including in a poll conducted in

ILLUSTRATION: RACHEL LEVIT RUIZ I N S C I E N C E W E M U S T T R U S T 63

April and May 2020 as the coronavi- 8. They are about half as likely as Democrats to
rus was cresting and many of those Shortly express a “great deal” of trust in scientists—a
surveyed were under lockdown. after July’s proportion that has stayed stubbornly low at
coronavirus 27 percent. ( 8 )
In January 2019, the last survey surge in the
before the pandemic, respondents U.S., Pew Pew’s surveys also reflect a deep racial divide
were already inclined to trust sci- found that in attitudes toward science. Black adults,
entists, with 86 percent saying just 46% of according to the poll conducted earlier this year,
they had a “great deal” or a “fair Republicans are less likely than the general population to
amount” of confidence that sci- thought trust medical scientists. They are also less likely
entists had the public interest at COVID­19 to have confidence in new COVID-19 treatments
heart. That level of trust inched up was a or vaccines; just 54 percent of Black respondents
to 87 percent amid the pandemic. “major” would “definitely” or “probably” get a COVID-
public 19 vaccine, compared with 74 percent of whites
But when I called Cary Funk, health
threat,
compared
with 85% of
Democrats.

the director of science and soci- and Hispanics. This distrust, exacerbated by

ety research at Pew, to talk about the substandard care many Black patients get

these encouraging results, she told in doctor’s offices and emergency rooms, is

me not to get ahead of myself, that especially troubling in the context of COVID-

the story is a bit more complicated. 19, which kills Blacks at more than twice the rate

According to Funk, the surveys at which it kills whites.

show a deep partisan divide in how The racial and political divides in how science

64 much scientists are trusted. Repub- is viewed are especially insidious now, when

licans and Republican-leaning skeptics could undermine whatever progress

independents still seem reluctant scientists make in the coronavirus fight. In the

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC to embrace science wholeheartedly. worst-case scenario, if enough doubters ignore

Injecting a refrigerated
COVID­19 trial vaccine
developed at the
University of Oxford





control measures and vaccines, that could strip when the next plague arrives, as it
science of its ability to protect us altogether. almost surely will. This is what I
yearn for, not just for the sake of
I ’ D L I K E TO B E L I E V E Andrews is right my own bruised confidence but
about this being a teachable moment— also for the sake of my two beloved
maybe not so much for those of us granddaughters, who would
already fixed in our views, but for those whose have to live the reality I’m most
childhood is being shaped by the coronavirus. fretting about.
These children—whom some are calling Gen-
eration C—might grow up with less patience for Much depends on what happens
the polarization fogging our responses today. in the coming months.
Let’s say they spend their formative years
watching the scientific process up close. And Imagine, for the sake of argu-
let’s say that in the end, scientists actually do ment, that the epidemiological
save the day. curves I’ve obsessed over all year
Now it’s the year 2040, and Gen C is all grown ultimately play out in our favor, and
up. Suddenly a new pandemic emerges. Based we can return to some semblance
on what they learned by living through COVID- of normal. Imagine that effective
19 at an impressionable age, these young adults treatments are found that make
recognize the urgency of the new outbreak, COVID-19 short-term and curable
quickly dismissing any claims that it’s a hoax. for just about anyone. Imagine that
They put on masks, maintain social distance, a vaccine is developed soon and
get vaccinated as soon as a vaccine is developed that a significant portion of the
(and it’s developed quickly, because scientists world population gets it. If all that
have also learned a thing or two in the interim, happens, why wouldn’t we emerge
as have politicians). They follow experts’ rec- from this with a greater apprecia-
ommendations because they know it’s the best tion of the scientific enterprise in
way to protect not only themselves but also their all its messy brilliance?
neighbors from a plague similar to the one they
grew up with that killed hundreds of thousands I try to hold on to that hope,
of people around the world. despite the catcalls of politicians
Gen C gets through the new pandemic with and “personal choice” zealots who
relatively few deaths or economic disruptions second-guess everything the sci-
because they learned some crucial lessons when entists do. I try to tell myself that
they were children: that public health advice is sometimes our better angels pre-
based on the best available data, that such advice vail. And that there’s an army’s
can change as new evidence accumulates, that worth of better angels—scientists,
science is an iterative process that cannot be educators, doctors, nurses, public
fast-tracked. health advocates—who, since that
Maybe by then there also will be more workers eerie image of the spiky coronavi-
in the professions that got us through the corona- rus started haunting our collective
virus catastrophe: more doctors, nurses, para- dreams, have been working tire-
medics; more specialists in infectious disease, lessly toward a happy ending.
epidemiology, virology, and microbiology, each
of them having chosen a career that as kids they That’s the ending I’m trying to
had watched in its finest hour. It has happened believe in, where we emerge from
before. Some of the scientists now engaged in the this with a renewed appreciation of
struggle against the coronavirus, such as Gon- science as humanity’s best chance
salves and Markel, ended up where they did after of salvation from suffering and
working to help untangle AIDS, an earlier viral untimely death. j
mystery that killed us in ways never seen before.
So the question is whether Gen C will respond Robin Marantz Henig is a frequent
with something other than “global amnesia” contributor. In the July issue, she
wrote that the experts warned a
pandemic was coming. Giles Price,
based in London, explores the social
landscape in his photography, often
with different imaging technology.

I N S C I E N C E W E M U S T T R U S T 65

In this East Jakarta
public cemetery, land
was cleared solely
for COVID-19 victims.
Crosses mark the
Christian plots; Muslim
graves are grouped
together beneath
pillar-like markers.
Indonesia is home
to 13 percent of the
world’s Muslims.

D I S PATC H

The pandemic that was filling up some
graveyards also emptied streets—to a point.

People still ventured out for essentials:
religious holidays and food giveaways.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY 67

MUHAMMAD FADLI

A WORLD GONE VIRAL 11.20



Distancing protocols
vanish as word goes
out one day: free
food and mask distri-
bution at a Jakarta
military installation.
At 273.5 million, Indo-
nesia’s population is
the fourth largest in
the world. Its economy,
which was growing fast
before the pandemic,
depends heavily on
the informal sector—
self-employed peo-
ple with few fallback
resources to pay for
food and shelter.

Dispatch:
indonesia

BY CYNTHIA GORNEY

T H E PA N D E M I C C R I P P L E D the mudik, which

is what Indonesians call the great holiday

migration of city people traveling to see their

families in villages and the countryside.

Indonesia’s Muslim population is the world’s

largest, and the Ramadan mudik is massive.

In an ordinary year, as the month of daily

fasting comes to a celebratory close, photog-

rapher Muhammad Fadli would buckle his

wife and daughter into the family’s Nissan

van and brave the traffic out of the capital,

Jakarta. The trip to Fadli’s hometown takes

70 36 hours by winding roads and ferry, but his

parents are there. Fadli is their only child.

Late this past April, with infection numbers ASIA
soaring and Ramadan about to begin, the Indonesian gov-
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
ernment restricted region-to-region travel for six weeks: a

“mudik ban,” the Jakarta Post called it. Stuck in the city, INDONESIA
Fadli kept working. A photographic assistant drove him

through streets that were empty and still, until the morn-

ing they rounded a corner and saw a throng—stopped cars,

motorbikes, women and men on foot packed shoulder to

shoulder, all shoving urgently toward something. OUTBREAK RESPONSE

“Pull over,” Fadli said. He pushed up his face mask and

hurried out. What is happening? he asked, and without Indonesia’s COVID-19 out-
glancing at him, people said, “Bantuan sosial.” Social aid. break dates from March 2,
Rice, masks, and fermented soy cakes, all being handed when its first two confirmed
out by uniformed men on the other side of a closed gate. cases were reported. On day
54 of the outbreak, a new
The military men kept shouting, “Tolong sosial dis- policy temporarily banned
tancingnya,” please stay apart; we won’t give anything domestic road, sea, and air
until you stay apart! Useless. Need and anxiety are pro- travel. The toll by day 100:
1,883 deaths.

pulsive forces, especially in a crowd. As the men gave Day Government response
up and swung open the gate, Fadli felt the weight and 1
blessing of his own family’s modest comforts. They had None Strict

enough to eat. He had work. Indonesians were defying

the travel ban already, spreading virus the length and

breadth of the archipelago, but he knew the home of

his parents was empty of guests: somber, quiet, safe.

Fadli’s Ramadan visit would take place by cell phone

video chat, and he could picture it even now: his moth-

er’s festive clothing stored away, her hair uncovered with

no need for hijab among close family, his father beside

her on the couch. They’d greet each other in the Indone- Day 10 20 30
sian Ramadan way: “I sincerely request that you forgive 100 deaths*
my past wrongdoings.” Then they’d settle in to talk. j

*SEVEN-DAY AVERAGE

TAYLOR MAGGIACOMO AND IRENE BERMAN-VAPORIS, NGM STAFF
SOURCES: OXFORD COVID-19 GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TRACKER; EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR DISEASE PREVENTION AND CONTROL

B E LOW: A sign points offered sparse, quarantine precautions.
cars and motorbikes to sometimes bungled A Purwodadi villager
an improvised drive- testing during early felled bamboo poles to
through: two nurses, pandemic weeks. make this barrier. His
waiting to draw blood B O T T O M : In rural areas multilingual sign states
on the spot for COVID- poorly served by the an exception: Farmers
19 antibody tests. Like government, some res- heading to rice fields
the U.S., Indonesia idents set up their own may pass.

Portrait artist Sigit
Parwanto, carrying
samples, counted on
orders from tourists
at Java’s popular
Parangtritis Beach—
until last spring, when
the visitors vanished.

B E LOW, L E F T: These a Javan pilgrimage site, COVID-19 closed their
Batik Air pilots’ flight though it’s deserted. workplaces; now a ferry
assignments declined B O T T O M , R I G H T: Friends carries them home.
once the pandemic since their childhood on B OT TO M , L E F T: Jakarta
reached Indonesia. the island of Sumatra, nurses staff an antibody
B E L OW, R I G H T: Surakso these young Indone- test site where drivers
Widarso still performs sians were forging big- get blood drawn while
his caretaking duties at city lives in Jakarta until remaining in their cars.

73

One day into a temporary halt on commercial flights and sea travel, nothing stirs at
Indonesia’s Yogyakarta International Airport—a new facility in Central Java built to handle

an eventual 20 million travelers a year. The government’s stringent travel restrictions were 75
announced in April, less than a month after the airport formally opened.

RETHINKING Let’s Not Waste This Moment
OUR WORLD

76

Nature, enduring:
Bristlecone
pines in eastern
California can
live 4,000 years
or more.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN CHIARA

The pandemic has reminded ESSAY BY I N T H E S P R I N G O F 1 8 5 8 , three years
us of the urgent need to before the Civil War, a young engi-
stop abusing the planet. ROBERT KUNZIG neer named John T. Milner rode
It could inspire us to into Jones Valley, at the tail end of
prevent the looming climate the Appalachians in north-central
disaster—if we can resist a Alabama. He’d been dispatched by
return to business as usual. the governor to plan a new railroad.
There were riches in those hills: The
state geologist had reported coal-
fields to the north of Jones Valley
and, just to the south, cropping out
at the crest of Red Mountain, a thick
seam of iron ore.

Milner rode up through ancient
woods to see it. “I rode along the top
of Red Mountain and looked over
that beautiful valley,” he recalled
much later, after he’d helped fill the
valley with Birmingham, a city of
belching smokestacks, intersecting
railroads, and dark, deadly mines:

“It was one vast garden as far as
the eye could reach … nowhere
had I seen an agricultural people
so perfectly provided for, and so
completely happy. They raised
everything they required to eat,
and sold thousands of bushels of
wheat. Their settlements were
around these beautiful, clear
running streams … It was, on
the whole, a quiet, easy-going,
well-farmed, well-framed, and
well-regulated civilization.”

About a quarter of that well-
regulated civilization were enslaved
African Americans.

The city Milner and others envi-
sioned was to be a kind of industrial
plantation, built on enslaved labor.
The Civil War intervened, but when
Birmingham was finally established
in the 1870s, its founders approxi-
mated that vision as closely as pos-
sible. With coal-and-iron riches to
rival those of Britain, birthplace of

How these images were made:
John Chiara built a large camera
obscura, mounted it on a trailer,
and drove it to various locations. It
makes negative images directly on
color negative paper.

the industrial revolution, but with to the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, was on its

the bonus of cheap Black labor— way to subscribers. What will Earth look like, it

including legions of fraudulently asked, on the 100th anniversary in 2070? Back in

arrested convicts—the Alabamians Washington for a few days, utterly disoriented by

built a new economy and a “Magic 2020, I picked up The Plague, the 1947 novel by

City.” It was a city that generated Albert Camus. It was flying out of bookstores, the

great wealth for a few and a decent Guardian reported. The parallels were indeed a

living for many more—poor white little eerie. “They went on doing business, they

sharecroppers from the country- planned trips, they had opinions,” Camus wrote

side and some Black ones and about the early days of denial in Oran, Algeria.

immigrants too. It was a city that “How would they have given a thought to any-

churned out rails and girders to thing like plague, which rules out any future…?”

build a booming nation. But it was But our future hasn’t been ruled out. It has

destined to become the most seg- just gotten more bewildering—and wide open.

regated city in the United States, as What long-term effect, if any, will the COVID-

Martin Luther King, Jr., declared in 19 pandemic have on the environment? What

1963, and one of the most polluted. will it mean for the air in our cities and the plas-

Nowhere is the riven soul of tic in our oceans, for the rainforest that dwin-

industrial capitalism on starker dis- dled further and the climate that kept heating

play than in Birmingham, Alabama. this year—so hot already that large stretches of

78 Nowhere is it clearer how much Siberian tundra burned? ( 1 ) Will the experience

visions of the future can matter. of COVID-19 change in some lasting way how we

Since March, when National treat this planet, as nearly eight billion humans

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Geographic shut down its offices in scramble to make a living on it?

Washington D.C., I’ve been riding “The first terrible revelation of this unprece-

out the pandemic with my wife, a 1. dented crisis is that all the things that seemed
native Alabamian, in a house just a Siberia’s separate are inseparable,” writes French sociol-
mile south of Red Mountain. From heat wave ogist Edgar Morin in a new book on the lessons
our front stoop we can see, on the “would of the pandemic. Shut in as never before, Morin
crest of the ridge, the backside of have effec- believes, we’ve become more open than ever to
Vulcan, the city’s giant but oddly tively been reconsidering the path we’re on as a species. He
dwarfish cast-iron mascot, thrusting impossible brings exceptional experience to the matter: He’s
his spear into the heavens. Every without 99, born in the shadow of the 1918 flu pandemic.
evening we get a gut punch from human-
the national news—from images of induced As I was reading his book in mid-June, the U.S.
food and unemployment lines and climate was in its fourth week of demonstrations after the
change,” killing of George Floyd. Confederate monuments
scientists
concluded
in July.

overflowing ICUs; from the stories 2. had begun to fall across the South, including in
of people who, unlike us so far, are In removing Birmingham. ( 2 ) Calls for “systemic change”
suffering harshly. Every morning, one obelisk, were everywhere. And suddenly, the idea that
like other fortunate people in this Birmingham the system that needs changing stretches from
plague season, I go for a long walk mayor the way we treat people of color to the way we
in the neighborhood, listen to the Randall treat the Earth, and from the federal government
emboldened birds, check on the Woodfin into each individual heart, seemed to make
defied a
2017 Ala-
bama law.

vegetable garden. I’m not from this

place, but I’ve grown attached to

it. Somehow, I hope, paying better

attention to it will help me make

sense of the world. CLIMATE EXTREMES, THE PANDEMIC,
My job at National Geographic AND POLICE VIOLENCE ALL LEAD US
TO BECOME AWARE OF THE SAME FEELING:
magazine is to think about the
global environment. When the VULNERABILITY.
pandemic hit, I was on a ship in
Antarctica. Our April issue, devoted

emotional sense. Climate extremes, the pan- noticed them too as the traffic noise
demic, and police violence all lead us to become I’d been oblivious to briefly ebbed
aware of the same feeling: vulnerability. In 2020 from our backyard, and I was eager
it became a nearly universal experience. to talk again with the ornithologist
who’d inspired me to learn a few of
That shared sense of vulnerability could open their songs. Mario Cohn-Haft works
our hearts to the need to transform our world for at the National Institute of Amazo-
the common good. It also could lead us to see nian Research in Manaus, Brazil, a
other people merely as threats, and make us long city that has been hurt badly by the
to return to the pre-pandemic normal as soon as pandemic. He knows the Amazon
possible—with more walls and less air travel, per- well and the songs of more than a
haps, but much the same level of environmental thousand birds by heart. He dis-
destruction. However the future unfolds, it’s not missed the talk of resurgent wildlife.
something to be predicted, like the passage of a
comet. It’s something we build. As I walked along “What I’ve seen is a steady, grad-
Red Mountain this year and looked down into ual decline in abundance and spe-
the valley, it was not hard to keep sight of that cies diversity in the 30 years I’ve
commonplace yet crucial truth.

E A R LY O N , A � I D the pain

and suffering, there were RETHINKING U.S. national parks saw dramatic
glimmers of a greener drops in visitors last spring—
world. Economic shutdowns OUR WORLD but then numbers rebounded,
produced a real respite from air as did sales for RVs and bikes.
pollution, for example. The GET OUT AND The Leave No Trace Center
STAY OUT for Outdoor Ethics says that
recreationists reported going
cleaner air was more than an outdoors more often this year
and also shifting from adventure
aesthetic delight: In China, from sports requiring travel—skiing,
climbing, backpacking—to
mid-February to mid-March, it closer-to-home activities such
as bird-watching, gardening,
averted some 9,000 deaths or and bike riding. Many cities
closed streets to make room for
more, Yale University research- outdoor dining, public events,
and parks. — DA N I E L S TO N E
ers calculated—roughly double
been here,” he said, recalling how
the number caused in China by Manaus expanded from a sleepy
river town to an industrial metrop-
the coronavirus. But the reduc- olis of two million people. ( 3 ) The
pandemic wouldn’t change that.
tion was only temporary. By On the contrary, he worried about
a backlash against wild animals,
July, China’s economy had starting with bats—the carriers of
the novel coronavirus. “Humani-
reopened, and air pollution was ty’s relationship to nature is pretty
ambivalent to begin with,” Cohn-
worse than the year before. Haft said. “This kind of event just
fosters people’s fear.” In the Ama-
Worldwide, carbon emissions also declined zon this year, deforestation has
been far worse even than in 2019,
sharply—by as much as 17 percent in early spring. when it surged dramatically.

But they too inevitably rebounded, and research- The environmental problems we
face have been building for decades.
ers estimated that the decline for all of 2020

would be no more than 8 percent, depending on

the course of the pandemic. On one hand, that’s a

large drop: It shows that with a gun to our heads,

we can stop driving and flying. On the other hand, 3.
the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere con- In North
tinued to rise this year, just a little more slowly. America the
To keep global warming since the 19th century total bird
below the internationally agreed upon target of popula-
two degrees Celsius, we’d have to cut emissions to tion has
near zero no later than 2070. That would require declined by
declines like 2020’s every year for decades. 29 percent
since 1970,
And what about the birds, widely reported a 2019 study
this year to be exceptionally loud and happy? I found—a
loss of
nearly three
billion birds.

L E T ’ S N O T WA S T E T H I S M O M E N T 79

If COVID-19 makes a lasting differ- distinct “planetary boundaries.” The biodiversity
ence, it won’t be because it briefly we’re losing as we cut down forests and extin-
stopped traffic. It will be because guish species is one boundary; the nitrogen we’re
the whole experience—including funneling into waterways from overfertilized
noticing birds and breathing cleaner fields is another. Scientists debate the extent to
air—changed our culture. which these boundaries can be quantified and
whether beyond them lie “tipping points” of cat-
“Science clearly shows that this astrophic change. But the basic idea that we’re
decade is the decisive decade for doing dangerous harm to the planet is hard to
humanity’s future on Earth,” said dispute. Climate change is the prime example.
Johan Rockström, director of the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Why do we find it so hard to come to grips
Impact Research, outside Berlin. with this well-documented threat? Princeton
His office is in the tower of a for- University psychologist Elke Weber has spent
mer astronomical observatory, decades researching that question. “The most
and when we spoke on a Thursday fundamental problem is that we’re too myopic
in May, he was all but alone in the as a species,” she told me. “We’re focused on us.
sprawling 19th-century building. We’re focused on the here and now.”
Since 2009 Rockström and other
researchers have argued that In the Stone Age that was a good survival strat-
humanity is bumping up against, egy, but now that we’ve spread across Earth, we
or in a few cases hurtling past, nine face threats that aren’t here and now, like lions
were then. Climate change is global, and to stop

COVID-19 The In 2015 warming January 1 100
will likely beginning of the reached 1°C/1.8°F.* June 11
bring about end for carbon? 80
a record Financial -8%
single-year crisis 60
reduction 2020
in carbon annual 40
dioxide change,
emissions. projected 20

2020 daily
change

Global emissions were projected to peak around 2024,
but this year’s decline due to COVID-19 lockdowns
might herald an earlier turning point in the fight
against climate change.

Second
oil shock
First
oil shock

GLO BAL DAI LY
ENE RGY- R EL ATED
EMISSIONS
Million metric tons of CO

World War II
10 1918 flu Great

(Spanish Depression
flu)

1900 1950 2000 2020 0
J F MA MJ
HISTORICAL TRENDS
Recoveries from past crises caused swift rebounds in emissions, TO DAY
including the highest year-over-year increase on record after the Reflecting no structural
2008 financial crisis. Decarbonization of energy supplies would changes, lockdown-
help break the link between economic growth and emissions. driven declines are
unstable and temporary.
*ABOVE PREINDUSTRIAL LEVELS
NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER; SCOTT ELDER. SOURCES: INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY; PANDEMIC EMISSIONS: LE QUÉRÉ
AND OTHERS, NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE 2020; CURRENT AND INTENDED TRAJECTORIES WARMING AND ESTIMATED EMISSIONS
2040-2100: ZEKE HAUSFATHER, THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE; CONCENTRATION: MET OFFICE HADLEY CENTRE

it we have to take actions whose benefits will 4. transfixed. One of my own future
only be felt far in the future. Yet with our lim- The simula- worlds pushed energy efficiency
ited attention, Weber said, we generally default tor is free at to the max in cars and buildings,
toward choices that preserve the status quo. climatein- cut greenhouse gas leakage from
teractive pipelines and farms, taxed car-
The scale and complexity of the climate prob- .org/tools/ bon moderately, and stopped new
lem also discourage thinking about it. But there en-roads. investment in coal and oil by 2025
are ways of making it seem more manageable. Surprisingly, and 2035, respectively. A couple
One morning on Zoom, the director of the MIT population more measures got me almost
System Dynamics Group, John Sterman, walked control down to two degrees; sucking some
me through a choose-your-own-future simulator doesn’t CO2 out of the atmosphere pushed
he’d created with an outfit called Climate Inter- help much. me to the finish line. Because the
active. At the bottom of the screen, 18 sliders technology to do that is unproven,
allow the user to set policies that affect climate. Sterman himself preferred to slap a 81
Moving a slider triggers instant feedback: A large higher price on carbon.
number in the top right corner indicates the
resulting global temperature rise by 2100. The Sterman has briefed Democrats
game is to keep the rise below two degrees Cel- and Republicans alike many times
sius. (4) Sterman assured me all this was based with the simulator. “What it allows
on the latest science. people to do is create the future
they want to see,” he said. He never
Anyone with a dash of nerdiness and number- tells them ahead of time what to
love might enjoy the simulator; I personally was

Current The world continues NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
trajectory along its present path,
(3.1°C/5.6°F without any additional
by 2100*) changes in policy.

100 Intended This scenario reflects the The amount of CO2 in the
trajectory impact of existing policy atmosphere, which drives warm-
(2.8°C/5°F) frameworks and today’s ing, reflects our emissions over
announced policy intentions. centuries. An 8 percent cut in
2020 will slow its rise only a bit.

80 ATM O S P H E R I C
C O N C E N T R AT I O N
Parts per million of CO2

Sustainable Rapid global mitigation 408.6 411.5 414.3

scenario holds the increase in the Pre-COVID
(1.7°C/3.0°F) global average temperature projection
60 to well below 2°C/3.6°F.

40 414.0

Revised
projection
with impacts
of COVID

20

GLOBAL DAILY

E N E R G Y- R E L AT E D

EMISSIONS

Million metric tons of CO , Net zero emissions by 2070
2100
projected
0

2020 2050 2018 2019 2020
The 2020 reductions can help stop
FUTURE SCENARIOS atmospheric CO2 and temperature
Keeping global warming to no more than 2°C/3.6°F from rising—but only if they’re the
above preindustrial levels is achievable but would start of a trend.
require prompt, drastic emissions cuts, sustained year
after year for decades, until net emissions are zero.

WARMING FROM THESE FUTURE SCENARIOS ARE ESTIMATIONS ONLY AND PRONE TO UNCERTAINTIES
IN CLIMATE SENSITIVITY AND CARBON CYCLE FEEDBACKS.

PROJECTIONS ADD EMISSIONS FROM INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES SUCH AS CEMENT CALCINATION.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 82

5. choose; discovering a path your-
Reminding self is far more convincing—and
people activating. “They come away with
of their the sense that solving the problem
country’s is important,” Sterman said. “But
long even more, that it’s possible.”
history also
encourages In her behavioral psychology
them to experiments, Weber has found sev-
think long eral other ways to encourage people
term about to focus more on the future. One is
the future particularly relevant now. In that
and the experiment, members of one group
environ- were questioned on their beliefs
ment, Elke about climate change and their will-
Weber has ingness to make pro-environmental
found. choices. Those in the second group
got the same questions—but first
they spent a few minutes writing a
short essay on how they’d like to be
remembered by future generations.

“We all hate the fact that we’re
going to die,” Weber explained.
“Every once in a while we get
reminded that we’re mortal.” In her
experiment, at least, the reminder
made people more concerned
about the environment and more
willing to help. ( 5 )

Nature and building, T H I N K I N G A H E A D to the
coexisting: on artificial Earth we’ll leave our chil-
dren, and to the story they’ll
Treasure Island in tell about us, can be bracing. So is
San Francisco Bay. looking back at the story we tell
ourselves, consciously or not, and
where that story comes from. The
narrative that underpins European
and American civilization has had
a big effect on the planet over the
past few centuries. The Bible is a
good starting point.
In Genesis 1, according to the King
James Version, humans are called
on to “have dominion over … every
living thing that moveth upon the
Earth.” Ellen Davis, a theologian
at Duke University who has writ-
ten a book on the agrarian roots of
the Bible, has reflected at length
on that passage. “When we hear
‘dominion,’ we think ‘domination’—
a heavy-handed, top-down impo-
sition of human power on the rest

L E T ’ S N O T WA S T E T H I S M O M E N T 83

Individual Solving the crisis A review of the impacts of
actions are sustainably COVID-19 on energy sources and
not enough sectors shows that to limit warming,
to curtail
warming. we must shift to alternative
sources, enhance energy efficiency,

and improve the systems that
transport and store energy.

DEMAND BY SOURCE CLOSING THE GAP

2020 Oil use plummeted when aviation and Existing and future
other transport—nearly 60 percent of global technologies and
demand—were slowed by COVID-19 restrictions. focused policies could
accelerate a global
2040 In a sustainable scenario, renewables—mostly energy transformation.
wind and solar—rise from 14 percent to 34 percent
of total energy demand, replacing fossil fuels. 2 0 5 0 E N E RGY- R E L AT E D
EMISSION SCENARIOS
ANNUAL GLOBAL ENERGY DEMAND Billion metric tons CO
Million metric tons of oil equivalent
Current trajectory (3.1°C/5.6°F*)
2019 2020 2040 45
projected Sustainable
scenario Intended trajectory
(2.8°C/5°F)
-9%
Reduction methods
4,000 Power to reach the
40 sustainable scenario
-8 36 RENEWABLES
-5 -7 Wind power

3,000 30 Solar PV power
Biofuels transport
2,000 +1 Renewables— Hydropower
1,000 cheap, with pref- Other
erential access to
power grids—have EFFICIENCY
been resilient in Industry
the pandemic.

-3

0 Coal Gas Nuclear Renewables
Oil

EMISSIONS BY SECTOR Transport 20 Buildings
10 10 Cars and trucks
2020 COVID-driven declines are Industry Aviation and shipping
unsustainable and inefficient, with -19 Other
relatively small impacts on the
largest-emitting sectors. OTHER
Fuel switching
2040 Emissions fall as electricity
replaces fossil fuels in industry and Carbon capture,
transport; renewables and nuclear utilization,
power help decarbonize the grid. and storage
Resource efficiency
DAILY FOS S IL CO EMI S SI O NS -36
Million metric tons of CO Behavioral change

2019 2020 daily 2040 Electric vehicles
Sustainable Nuclear
scenario
Sustainable
Residential scenario
+3 (1.7°C/3.0°F)

Jan. 1 June 11 Commercial
Aviation and public
activities

-21

-62% 00

*ABOVE PREINDUSTRIAL LEVELS BY 2100
NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER; SCOTT ELDER. SOURCES: INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY; LE QUÉRÉ

AND OTHERS, NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE 2020 (EMISSIONS FROM CEMENT CALCINATION OMITTED)

of the world,” she told me. But in context, Davis 6. generation, an American economist
thinks, the Hebrew word radah meant some- The Little named Simon Kuznets developed
thing very different. If so, Western civilization Ice Age has a way of measuring the output of
is based in part on a misunderstanding of one of been vari- an entire nation. Now there was a
its founding texts. ously linked single seductive number attached
to volcanic to economic growth. After World
There’s no question that Genesis gave special eruptions War II, growing that number, which
status to humans as the only creatures made in and solar came to be called gross domestic
God’s image, Davis explained. But God blessed activity— product (GDP), became an obses-
the other creatures even before us, and in the natural sion for governments worldwide.
same way, commanding them also to “be fruitful fluctuations “That fixation has been used to jus-
and multiply.” Whatever radah means, it can’t unrelated tify extreme inequalities of income
mean “annihilate the blessing,” Davis said. And to global and wealth coupled with unprec-
yet increasingly, that’s what we’ve done: erad- warming edented destruction of the living
icated other species as we’ve subjugated the today. world,” writes British economist
Earth. Now, by some accounts, we’re reaping Kate Raworth.
the whirlwind in the form of wild-animal-borne 7.
viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. If happiness To sum up: Economic growth,
is the goal, rooted in a misunderstanding of
Instead of “have dominion over,” Davis trans- rising GDP the Bible that was supercharged by
lates radah as “exert skilled mastery among the doesn’t buy the Enlightenment and the indus-
creatures.” God was enjoining us to be skilled it in rich trial revolution, has become our
craftspeople, she said, following God’s example countries: overarching story. Raworth believes
in creating us, and skilled stewards of creation. U.S. surveys that doesn’t serve us well.
Our misreading of that nuance has been conse- show that
quential—as if an ancient etiquette book had happiness What would it look like if the
commanded us, on first meeting someone, to has stag- economies of the world were stew-
touch his cheek lightly, and we had taken that nated for arded within limits set by nature?
as license to punch him in the face. decades. Even to ask the question, and to
raise the specter of any kind of
The next major plot twist in the Western nar- limits, amounts to fighting words 85
rative came in the 17th century, with the Age of in some circles. The fight has been
Enlightenment. It freed our minds from com- going on for half a century, and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
plete domination by ancient texts but amplified growth proponents have always
the idea that we should dominate the Earth. One had a powerful moral argument:
root of the Enlightenment, according to German Economic growth has lifted billions
historian Philipp Blom, lay in the Little Ice Age of people around the world out of
of the 16th century, a period so cold that an ice- poverty, and billions more still need
berg appeared off Rotterdam and harvests failed its benefits.
across Europe. (6) Religion was no help with crop
failures, and people increasingly began to ques- The point isn’t that all growth is
tion its authority. They began turning instead for bad, Raworth argues in her book
knowledge to systematic learning from observa- Doughnut Economics. Some coun-
tion and experience—that is, to science. tries clearly still need much more of
it, while others don’t. (7) The point is
With that, the idea of progress entered West- that growth shouldn’t be the point.
ern civilization. And from the start, Blom writes,
it was equated with economic growth. Growth The doughnut illustrates what
had been slow and intermittent before, and it Raworth thinks should be our pur-
remained so until the industrial revolution of pose. Its outer edge is the “ecological
the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, spurred by ceiling”—the planetary boundaries
science and technology—as well as cheap coal defined by Rockström and his col-
and resources extracted from far-flung colonies leagues. The inner edge is the “social
and places like Alabama—it took off. foundation”—the food, health, edu-
cation, and other basic conditions of
In the 20th century, economic growth became a dignified human life. The idea is
an end in itself. During the Great Depression, to allow everyone on Earth to lead
when economies collapsed and traumatized a

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC86

Urban planting: In this
block of Manhattan,
a few trees sneak in
around 12 stories up.

such a life without ruining Earth for us all. 8. we might easily be tipped by fear
How do we get there? The doughnut is more of In May, 38 toward retrenchment and restoring
global cities the status quo. Raworth is focusing
a vision than a blueprint. Raworth sees the varied belonging on cities, trying to persuade them
crises of the 21st century—“financial meltdown, to the C40 to “emerge from this emergency”
climate breakdown, COVID lockdown”—as all network with a new direction. ( 8 ) In early
related to the “expansionist human project,” she pledged April, in the midst of its own shut-
told me. Changing that project will require a pro- to shun down, Amsterdam became the first
found cultural transformation, a collective shift “business city to adopt her doughnut model,
in mindset—a shift that the pandemic, terrible as as usual” pledging to consider the full range
it is, might conceivably favor. “I think this pan- as they of impacts—ecological and social,
demic is pushing us faster toward the future that recover from local and global—of everything it
we knew we wanted,” Raworth said. a pandemic does. To start, it said it would cut its
with “roots use of raw materials in half by 2030.
in environ-
mental “People are drawn by stories that
destruction.” give them hope, give them hope of

You could see faint premonitions of it this Public concern in the United States
about global warming hit an all-
year, if you were so inclined. You could see it in time high last November, according
to researchers at Yale and George
the January decision by BlackRock, which man- Mason Universities. Large majorities
of Americans think human-caused
ages over seven trillion dollars in assets, to begin global warming is real, and they
feel worried and even personally
divesting from coal, if not yet oil responsible. Surprisingly, a survey
in April found that COVID-19 hadn’t
and gas. (“I believe we are on the displaced concern over the climate—
though it had reduced media
edge of a fundamental reshap- coverage of it. “The issue seems
to have matured, seems to have
ing of finance,” wrote CEO Larry RETHINKING solidified,” Anthony Leiserowitz
Fink.) You could see the shift too of Yale said. “I think that’s a really
in the European Union’s deci- OUR WORLD encouraging sign.” — R O B E RT K U N Z I G
sion in July to invest 550 billion
euros in climate action over the ONE PLANET, a secure future where they matter,”
TWO CRISES Raworth said. “And this is one in
which we reconnect with the living
next seven years, or in the pro- world, we reconnect with our com-
munity, and we ask big questions
liferation of bike lanes on city about what it means to thrive.”

streets in Europe and the U.S. IN 1963, WHEN Martin Luther
King, Jr., brought the civil
Ellen Davis saw it in May when rights campaign to Birming-
ham—a tipping point in the fight
she addressed the Festival of against segregation—it had been
exactly one century since Lincoln’s
Homiletics, attended by thou- Emancipation Proclamation. It also
was one century since John T. Mil-
sands of Christian preachers: ner had opened the first mine on
Red Mountain, to supply iron to the
This year they had signed up for Confederacy. In 1962 U.S. Steel

a week’s online instruction on

preaching about climate change.

Two-thirds of Americans are

worried about it, according to a recent survey—as

many as ever, in spite of the pandemic, in spite of

the current administration’s indifference.

There are social tipping points as well as cli-

mate ones, a team led by Ilona Otto of the Pots-

dam Institute concluded in a paper published in

early February in the Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences. Change can start in a board-

room, or in government, or on the streets. (“In

times of upheaval,” Blom writes, “new stories

grow through cracks in the concrete of official

truth, strengthened by uncertainty.”) Wherever

the change starts, it can sometimes, for reasons

scientists can’t readily predict, spread conta-

giously, as people are inspired by the example

of others. A small minority can tip the rest of us.

Of course, the tipping angels might not be

our better ones: In this terrible year especially,

L E T ’ S N O T W A S T E T H I S M O M E N T 87

Economic To really go green, Governments are making decisions
recovery go big that will shape infrastructure,
plans today industry, and the climate for
will deter-
mine our decades. Stimulus packages offer
climate’s a unique opportunity to boost
future.
economic growth while building a
more sustainable future.

PANDEMIC IMPACT ON ENERGY INVESTMENT

Energy investment had been projected to grow in 2020, but COVID-19 has put the
world on track for the largest decline on record: a reduction of one-fifth—nearly
$400 billion—compared with 2019. Fossil fuels accounted for almost all of the loss.

HISTORICAL drop in PROJECTED investment needs to
investments in fossil fuels meet the sustainable scenario are
World energy investment poorly aligned with current trends.
$1,500 billion
The slump in all energy 2030 2040
2019 dollars sectors, especially in fossil
fuels, was driven by lower $776 $921
1,000 demand, falling prices, and
market volatility. BILLION BILLION
Fossil
fuels* In 2014 a downturn in oil
500 prices slashed invest-
Electricity networks ment in oil and gas;
and battery competitive renewables
storage hurt coal investments.
0 Nuclear
2000 2019

$343

Renewables BILLION

Energy
efficiency†

2010 2020 2030 2040

*FUEL SUPPLY AND FOSSIL-FUEL-BASED POWER
†DATA PRIOR TO 2014 NOT AVAILABLE

WHAT’S TO GAIN BY GOING GREEN

The increasing affordability of renewables and the potential for millions of new
clean-energy jobs are two benefits for governments to consider when structuring
COVID-19 economic recovery plans.

CHEAPER $150 S U S TA I N A B L E 2030 2050 ’30 ’50
ENERGY 120 JOBS 100
In about two-thirds A swift, broad shift million
of the world, wind to clean energy jobs
and solar are the could create seven 80
least expensive new million more jobs
energy sources. than the trajectory
we’re on.
90 2017 ’17 60
60 Global energy-
Cost of 30 Projected sector jobs 40
electricity,
United States Offshore Renewables 20
Dollars per wind Energy efficiency
megawatt-hour, Gas Energy flexibility
2019 dollars Coal and grid
Onshore Nuclear
New capacity wind Fossil fuels
Existing capacity Solar

0 2050 Current 0
2014 ’20 trajectory Below 2°C/3.6°F
target scenario

NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER; SCOTT ELDER. SOURCES: INTERNATIONAL ENERGY
AGENCY; BLOOMBERGNEF; INTERNATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY AGENCY

closed the last one. For 99 years that stretch of 9. passage of the Civil Rights Act.
ridge on the southwest side of Birmingham had “The great- Haslem had just ditched a corpo-
been ravaged. est threat to
the environ- rate career to work as a motivational
“There was nothing on that mountain” back ment is the speaker on health when the director
then, said Wendy Jackson, the former director of disconnect at Red Mountain, T.C. McLemore,
the Freshwater Land Trust, a local environmen- between persuaded her to come help him
tal organization. “No trees. Nothing except the people and try to expand its reach. In its early
mining operation.” nature,” years, they both told me, the park
Wendy had aimed to be an adventure des-
By the time Jackson first walked around it Jackson tination for trail runners, mountain
in 2004, the land had been left alone, except said. bikers, and zip-liners.
for people dumping trash, for more than four “The only
decades. Forest had grown back. Kudzu had way you “This was a park for people from
washed up the sunlit slopes like a green tide and conserve Homewood,” Haslem said, referring
draped the forest’s edge. This was not pristine something to the predominantly white suburb
nature—but it was nature resurgent. And hidden is if you where my wife and I live. “But the
in the woods were the crumbling mine shafts love it.” park sits in Birmingham!”
where a century’s worth of miners, Black and
white, had descended into the mountain each The pandemic has hit Birming- 89
morning, following the sloping seam of iron ore ham hard. By this summer the city
ever deeper. Trees grew from the windows and was facing a $63 million hole in its NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
fallen roofs of the concrete bathhouses where budget because of tax shortfalls
the men had rinsed the red dirt off at night. You from closed businesses, and the
felt, Jackson said, “like you were as close as you virus was surging. Red Mountain
could be to touching the past of Birmingham.” also was facing a challenging future,
McLemore said; it’s a public-private
In 2005 she and the Freshwater Land Trust partnership with little public fund-
negotiated a deal with U.S. Steel to buy 1,100 ing. Yet the pandemic had also been
acres of the mountain and convert it into a park. good to the park: Attendance was
Red Mountain Park opened in 2012. In the early at all-time highs even though the
years my wife and I went only a few times; it zip line and climbing center were
wasn’t on our radar somehow. ( 9 ) Then the pan- closed. Black residents were com-
demic hit. Now we hike there just about every ing as never before, Haslem said,
Sunday morning. The park is within the city lim- some through a new entrance on
its but large enough—1,500 acres now—that we the north side, the Birmingham
can disappear into the woods and be alone with side. They were coming to get out
the birds and cicadas. When the heat sets in, we of their houses, to walk in nature,
rest in the cool draft from a mine entrance. And to “listen to the damn birds.”
with the steel industry much diminished, and
cars less polluting, the view from the top, out “It’s got to be a lot of different
over the valley, is clearer than in the old days. forces,” Haslem went on. We were
talking now about how this seed of
Early one morning this summer I went for a something new might thrive. “It’s
walk with Jerri Haslem, the park’s first Black got to be the government, the com-
senior staff member, recruited just last year. munity, the average joe, the rich
She was born in 1963 in Birmingham, she told joe. It’s got to be everybody. If you
me as we walked along the bed of the short- have only poor people come, it’s not
track railroad that once hauled iron ore to the going to make it. If you only have
mills. The daughter of a steel-industry worker, rich people, it’s not going to make
she was born in a Black maternity ward in a it. It’s got to be everybody. And it’s
hospital basement, into a city that had pre- organically happening, because
ferred to close its parks rather than desegre- of COVID.” j
gate them. She was born two days after white
segregationists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Environment editor Robert Kunzig’s
Church, killing four little girls—an infamous last feature was about the circular
crime that helped tip the country toward economy. Bay Area artist John Chiara
designs and builds his own cameras.

In Jordan, home to
one of the world’s
highest concentrations
of refugees, Sudanese
wait their turn to
redeem vouchers at
an Amman grocery.
The country’s pan-
demic curfews and
economic downturn
hit refugees especially
hard; most legal work
sectors are closed to
non-Jordanians.

A WORLD GONE VIRAL 11.20

D I S PATC H

Hardship follows hardship for the massive
number of refugees living in Jordan.

They largely eluded COVID-19—but not
the job loss and deprivation it caused.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY 91

MOISES SAMAN

Syrian refugee women form properly spaced desert queues in anticipation of UNICEF donations—
hygiene kits and other necessities. Their families live in a tent settlement on the outskirts of Al Mafraq;

hundreds of thousands of other refugees live in special camps or urban neighborhoods. 93
Social distancing in those more crowded areas is an unattainable luxury.