Suddenly, Washington is getting things done in bipartisan fashion. And that’s in spite of – or perhaps because of – the thoroughly partisan effort to impeach President Donald Trump.

Democrats and Republicans, in Congress and the White House, are under pressure to show accomplishments as a politically tumultuous year draws to a close and the 2020 election cycle ramps up.

Now, as the dust settles following a day of big news, there seems to be something for almost everybody: House Democrats have unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Trump, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over his dealings with Ukraine. And bipartisan agreement has been reached on two major pieces of legislation, a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement and the largest defense funding bill in American history.

If nothing else, the two major bipartisan agreements could help alleviate Americans’ growing sense that national institutions, including the federal government, are failing them.

The trade deal, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, hands President Trump bragging rights on one of his signature campaign issues – an issue that speaks directly to blue-collar workers, many of whom abandoned the Democratic Party in 2016 and voted for Mr. Trump. 

But to some political analysts, it’s a risk Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to take. And, they add, in the process she won concessions on matters dear to the labor movement.

“The danger for Democrats in giving Trump an accomplishment is real, but at the same time, it’s good to see that in the midst of impeachment, we can get something done,” says Jeremy Mayer, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

If the effort to replace NAFTA had failed, Mr. Trump would have showered blame on House Democrats. Instead, Speaker Pelosi and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, head of the nation’s largest labor federation, used their leverage to add key provisions to the agreement, known as USMCA.

Henry Romero/Reuters

Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister for North America Jesus Seade, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer sign documents during a meeting at the Presidential Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico December 10, 2019.

Democratic demands for change centered on enforcement, labor and environmental protections, and a drug pricing provision. Protections for so-called biologic drugs, which would have kept prices high, were removed. New rules were also added on intellectual property and data. The White House has yet to release the latest version of the agreement.

Some liberals and conservatives expressed displeasure with the deal – defections that are unsurprising at a time of intense political division. For dissonant liberals, the idea of handing Mr. Trump a major legislative victory makes no sense. For some conservatives, such as Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, the deal gave away too much to the left. But with the Pelosi-Trump seal of approval, it’s expected to pass both houses of Congress early next year.

“The conventional wisdom is, you don’t want to give the president a big win in an election year,” says Patrick Griffin, director of legislative affairs under President Bill Clinton. “But there are mitigating circumstances here that do not make this the end of the world.”

Those circumstances, Mr. Griffin adds, are impeachment and the fact that the 2020 election is still light years away, politically speaking. For Ms. Pelosi, the trade deal gives needed cover to moderate Democrats fighting to hold on to House seats in battleground districts that may not love the idea of impeaching Mr. Trump.

Ms. Pelosi herself seems to have no qualms about the negotiations that produced the USMCA deal. “We ate their lunch,” she told fellow House Democrats behind closed doors Tuesday, according to multiple news reports. 

Late Monday evening, the week’s first major moment of bipartisan compromise emerged, when congressional Democrats and Republicans announced agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020. Among its provisions, the bill fulfills Mr. Trump’s oft-discussed goal of establishing the Space Force as the sixth military branch. (The Space Force will be within the Air Force, as the Marines are within the Navy.) It also provides 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all federal workers, a long-sought Democratic goal, and a 3.1% raise for troops, the largest pay hike in a decade. 

Fiscal conservatives expressed dismay over the cost of the defense bill – $738 billion, as the annual federal deficit tops $1 trillion – but voices of restraint on spending are a distinct minority in the Trump era.

Top of mind at the moment are impeachment and political jockeying ahead of the 2020 elections. The USCMA trade deal could make a difference with voters in states that Mr. Trump won narrowly in 2016 – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – as well as states he narrowly lost but hopes to win in 2020, such as Minnesota.

In rural Minnesota, as elsewhere in rural America, many workers feel they’ve lost jobs unfairly due to foreign competition.

“The new trade deal helps Trump with those voters,” says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. “And those voters are essential for his victory in swing states.”

Fortifications at Naval Air Station Pensacola were more than 100 years old when the city became the site of a Civil War siege. In the modern era, it has graduated thousands of American jet fighter aces.

But the Naval Aviation Schools Command here is also a diplomatic mission of sorts, where thousands of foreign airmen are trained to fly fighter jets. The visitors don’t just stay on base. As hosts, local families regularly invite them to Thanksgiving and community events.

So when Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani of the Royal Saudi Air Force killed three sailors and wounded eight others on Friday at Building 633, it felt, says Vietnam veteran and longtime Pensacola resident Tim Daley, “like a stab in the back.”

As victims’ families drove down Navy Boulevard on Monday, a procession of saluting military officers stretched for a mile. Hundreds of civilians also gathered to pay respect. In the crowd, one man was loud and angry, admonishing the United States for trusting foreigners to train alongside U.S. sailors.

“He was fired up to the point where it was scary,” recalls local Chris Reed, a retired mechanic whose son is an Army officer. “As a city, we’re still coming to terms with it. These kinds of things just don’t happen here.”

As fall squalls gather over Escambia Bay, many of the 53,000 people who call Pensacola home are confronting a challenge: how to reconcile the city’s unique role in U.S. foreign policy and national security with a betrayal – a strike at American goodwill amid strains of violent anti-Americanism that simmer throughout the world.

“This attack is like a natural disaster: It blows into our lives and devastates the lives of victims and families and it shakes the bond of long-term trust and the relationship with the community,” says retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey Corn, a military law expert at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “The resilience of these programs has been the result of a perception that [saboteurs] are the exception and not the rule, and that it would be a double tragedy to abandon your support for the vast majority of these men who are trying to do the job they’re supposed to do.”

Legendary in the annals of American base towns, Pensacola started as the site of a Spanish fort in 1697, expanding to its current sprawling size at the mouth of the bay, where 16,000 military personnel and 7,400 civilians work. Today it is the home of the Blue Angels.

It is also home to the Navy International Training Center, which leans on the larger community to fulfill a cultural mission of welcoming foreigners, like the 800 Saudi students here.

“The ability to bring foreign students here to train with us, to understand American culture, is ... something that our potential adversaries, such as Russia and China, don’t have,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told “Fox News Sunday.”

Jeffrey Addicott, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel, has seen those benefits firsthand. He helped train Egyptian soldiers ahead of that country’s efforts to shoehorn the Muslim Brotherhood out of power. He was born in Pensacola and his father was a Navy pilot in World War II and the Korean War, where he survived being shot down twice.

“Pensacola has a very long history, it connects you with the community, it’s a place where we have long trained foreign officers, and it’s something we get great benefit from,” says Mr. Addicott, now the director of the Warrior Defense Project at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio.

To him, Pensacola is a peek into what America is and wants to be. “The influence on these people is often indirect,” he says. “They come to Pensacola and get to see the benefit of being in a free and open society, and they carry it back to their own country.”

Ten years after the attack on Fort Hood, the Pentagon has called the Pensacola attack an act of “presumed” terrorism, given the shooter’s apparent social media postings sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The Navy identified the victims as Airman Mohammed Haitham, 19, of St. Petersburg, Florida; Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, of Coffee, Alabama; and Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, of Richmond Hill, Georgia. The gunman was also killed. 

On Tuesday, Saudi defense ministers visited NAS Pensacola as part of the investigation. Security measures at U.S. military bases have been beefed up – there was another deadly shooting at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii two days before the Pensacola attack. Some 300 Saudi aviators have been grounded at three Florida bases since Monday, the Pentagon says.

Florida, meanwhile, has now seen half a dozen mass shootings in three years. (While there is no legal definition of a “mass shooting,” the Justice Department defines mass killings as three or more killings in a single incident.) Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a former Naval officer, demanded answers on vetting and a loophole that allowed a foreign national to purchase a gun legally. Foreign pilots, he said, should not be allowed to come “if they hate our country. This is something that should not have been allowed to happen.”

The shootings have renewed calls to arm at least officers and noncommissioned officers at military bases, where sidearms are banned. But more deeply, the shooting has raised questions about the international training program itself, which arose after World War II as the U.S. emerged a global defense stalwart. The Pentagon is undergoing a full review of its vetting processes. Foreign aviators are grounded, for the time being.

Currently, more than 5,100 students from 153 countries are taking part in such training in the U.S.

“If you brought a British or a Dutch or South Korean officer here, nobody ever questioned that they respected what we were doing for them,” says Mr. Corn. “But we’re in a different world where ... we are bringing people in from countries where there are deep strains of animosity toward the United States. We’re applying a model that worked so well for so long, but where we never, ever doubted for a second the alliance between the people themselves. That may now be breaking down.”

Dave Forsman, the commander of American Legion Post 240 just outside the station gate, has all the service branches’ flags at half-staff. On Friday, the post, which has some 1,400 members, became a hub as family members attempted to reach those on base.

Yes, there is a sense of betrayal, agrees Mr. Forsman. But he counts himself among those who believe the larger mission embodied by NAS Pensacola – which goes beyond the military, to the role of America as a lighthouse for freedom – is still paramount.

But he also knows that rebuilding trust after betrayal will require forbearance, patience, and faith in the foreigners who come to Pensacola to learn more than American warfare.

“Just because you have one bad apple doesn’t mean the whole orchard is tainted,” he says.

Bernd Thissen/picture-alliance/dpa/AP/File

The "Yuxinou" train arrives in Duisburg, Germany, on March 29, 2014. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the North Rhine-Westphalia city as part of an investment tour of Germany.

On paper, the German city of Duisburg, population 500,000, seems like a perfect stop on the roadmap of China’s global ambitions.

Situated at the confluence of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, Duisburg had become the poster child for industrial decline, a heady fall for a city long counted among the wealthiest in Germany. Duisburg fortunes were made via tobacco and textiles in the 19th century and coal, chemicals, and steel during the 20th. As a major industrial center, it was often targeted by Allied bombers during World War II. Though, as industry dwindled over the last few decades, high unemployment and low levels of education settled into the area’s DNA.

“Duisburg is a rather poor city,” says Susanne Löhr, managing director of the city’s Confucius Institute, a Chinese state educational organization tasked with overseeing cultural and educational exchanges. “But the city’s geography is very favorable as a logistical hub for Western Europe. That's a lucky coincidence.”

Indeed, as industry melted away, Duisburg’s key assets remained: the largest inland port in the world, with waterways, highways, and railways that connected to the rest of Europe.

So “favorable” is that geography that Chinese President Xi Jinping himself came to this gritty city for a look-see in 2014. Flanked by local leaders as a loaded freight train rolled in from Chongqing, Mr. Xi ceremoniously called for Germany and China to strengthen their economic ties. Duisburg is now an important terminus on China’s sprawling “Belt and Road” development program, and welcomes 35-40 trains from China each week. The city’s mayor has courted Chinese investors, and at least 60 Chinese companies have opened shop there.

Yet this raises questions whether Duisburg – dubbed by local media as “Germany’s Chinese city” – is opening itself up to ethical compromises or reputational risk by so openly welcoming Chinese investment. The pressure Beijing exerts on foreign entities is increasing, at a time surveys show the German public is increasingly negative on Chinese investment. What price is paid to engage with China?

“There is a red line”

That reputational risk is one the NBA knows all too well. This fall, the manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted support of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, which led to a massive public backlash by consumers in China.

A handful of German companies have faced similar situations. Two years ago, Audi used maps of China at a press conference that left off Taiwan and Tibet. Last year, Daimler was compelled to apologize to China after subsidiary Mercedes-Benz posted a Dalai Lama quotation on Instagram. Just this April, camera maker Leica distanced itself from the world-famous image of the Tiananmen “tank man,” after an affiliate used it in a tribute to photographers.

City governments aren’t immune to the wrath of Beijing or the Chinese public. Prague recently drew Beijing’s ire when its mayor moved to excise mention of Beijing’s “One China” principle from the two cities’ sister-city agreement. Beijing abruptly canceled that agreement, then retaliated further by canceling the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra’s long-planned 14-city tour of China.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Governments and businesses must walk a tightrope, for they face not only Chinese public backlash for the original offense, but also Western criticism should they apologize for that offense. Both can cost customers and reputation. Daimler’s apology to the Chinese public “angered Western media, and as a result further fanned the crisis,” according to the report “China’s Public Diplomacy.”

“There is a red line and you have to be aware of it,” says Kerstin Lohse-Friedrich, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. “It’s not only about Taiwan, Tibet, or the Dalai Lama anymore, but about the geostrategic goals set out by the Chinese government. All parties must follow it or risk falling from grace.”

For that reason, Ms. Lohse-Friedrich says, if you're invested in China, or dependent on Chinese customers, it will “always come with a price [in Western circles]. You’ll always be asked, ‘Are you paid by the Chinese to say what you say?’”

Christian Rusche of the German Economic Institute says that German companies operating in Xinjiang – China’s northwestern region, where an estimated million ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs have been placed in camps – “have not shared or expressed their political opinion for fear of repercussions. If you’re against the Chinese Communist Party, then you automatically have the party against you.”

The benefits for Germans

Another issue is whether Chinese investment engenders the kind of prosperity that benefits the locals. In other words, does the economic promise President Xi represents, when he stands at the Duisburg port, ever materialize for his German partners?

Not always. German analysts who track foreign investment point to the Chinese appliance maker Midea’s purchase of German robotics maker Kuka. It was a hostile takeover and the German CEO soon announced his departure. References to failed Chinese investments in Frankfurt-Hahn Airport followed closely behind.

There’s also Parchim International Airport in the northern region of Mecklenburg. A Chinese company purchased that airport more than a decade ago, with locals expecting 1,000 new jobs, import-export activity from Belt and Road, and Chinese tourists with bulging wallets. Yet today the airport enjoys only traffic from training flights, very few tourists, and a handful of missed construction deadlines. “No takeoffs, no landings,” barked a recent news media report.

In Germany’s southwest, the town of Lahr saw Chinese investment become an issue in the last mayoral campaign. Lahr has built up school exchanges with three Chinese cities, and Chinese economic interests followed, especially as Lahr’s airport is fortuitously situated at the triangular border of Germany, France, and Switzerland.

Yet, a Chinese bid to manage the airport was portrayed negatively in the press, and the community became hesitant to invite Chinese investment. “All the mayoral candidates were critical,” says Wolfgang Müller, Lahr’s outgoing mayor. “It was a matter of principle. We don’t need the money.”

Ultimately, Mr. Müller says, Germany and China “need each other. We can’t be naïve. We can’t just fold our arms and say ‘no.’”

Back in Duisburg, Andree Haack, the city’s deputy minister for economic affairs, says development decisions will be made appropriate to the behavior of its partners. Ultimately, Haack says, when something happens that is “not compatible with our values … the international collective normally finds an answer.”

Burkhard Landers, head of the region’s chamber of commerce, offers more specific thoughts. “Sure, the public image of Chinese money isn’t always positive and we are, of course, reluctant to sell out on Germany,” Mr. Landers says. “But Duisburg isn’t for sale, and if a business from China is looking for a strategic partnership, the economy should be open to it.”

Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal/AP

Caily Stoyanov talks about her life-threatening vaping experience at Revere High School on Oct. 22, 2019, in Richfield, Ohio. Some schools, colleges, and cities have banned the flavored nicotine cartridges believed to be most alluring to teens.

The online vape store looks legitimate: It warns away those under 21; a customer chat box pops up when you open the home page; there are online coupons, even a Black Friday sale, for the cartridges filled with marijuana ingredients.

But you can’t pay with credit cards, only cash transfers (Western Union or Zelle), gift cards (Amazon or iTunes), or bitcoin. And the brand the store specializes in – Dank Vapes – is probably counterfeit, says the U.S. government.

This unregulated, gray-market corner of the vaping industry plays a large but underrecognized role in a pair of public health crises that are rapidly tarnishing the image of vaping. Once thought of as helping to wean adults off of smoking, vaping is increasingly viewed as a menace, enticing teens to try smoking with cool-looking e-cigarettes and fruity and other alluring flavorings.

The substantial rise in teen nicotine vaping threatens to undo decades of progress in reducing teen smoking. But the epidemic that has caused the most alarming health effects may well stem from adults using vaping devices to inhale marijuana rather than teens finding new ways to get nicotine.

These twin crises, overlapping and intersecting at vulnerable places, such as schools, are testing researchers and policymakers alike as they search for solutions.

“It’s a mess,” says Dan Romer, research director at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “The whole thing is wrapped into a whole lot of uncertainties, because we don’t know if vaping or other liquid nicotine is safe. ... We’re in a regulatory no-man’s land.”

Until recently, vaping was considered safer than smoking. Instead of burning tobacco or marijuana plants, creating tar and potentially other toxins, e-cigarettes or vaping devices warm up liquids containing nicotine or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the mind-altering compound linked to the marijuana “high.” But since the spring, public health officials have contended with a fast-moving epidemic of vaping-related lung injuries and fatalities.

This epidemic has led to a backlash against teenage nicotine vaping, even though the main culprit appears to be THC vaping by adults. Of the 48 fatalities and nearly 2,300 cases requiring hospitalization, the large majority involve THC and those over 18, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half the cases specifically involved Dank Vapes marijuana cartridges, which the CDC says “appears to be the most prominent in a class of largely counterfeit brands … that is used by distributors to market THC-containing cartridges with no obvious centralized production or distribution.”  

The other crisis, involving teenage use of legal nicotine vaping devices, has drawn far more attention from policymakers. Schools, colleges, and cities have banned the flavored nicotine cartridges believed to be most alluring to teens. On Nov. 27, Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law the first permanent statewide ban on all flavored nicotine vaping products as well as flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes.

“I’m so, so proud of Massachusetts,” says Gwendolyn Stewart, director of Tobacco Free Mass, a statewide advocacy coalition for tobacco issues. “It was an incredible step forward for preventing young people from becoming addicted to nicotine.”

Surveys of teens suggest that their nicotine use is on the rise again after decades of declines in teenage smoking. More than half of high school students and a quarter of middle school students have tried a tobacco product, the CDC reported last week, and a third of high-schoolers have used one within the past 30 days. That’s up from 20% in 2017. The teens most commonly use e-cigarettes although often in combination with cigars, chewing tobacco, and other products.

The Vapor Technology Association, representing the legal nicotine part of the industry, is suing Massachusetts, arguing its ban on flavored tobacco products will be detrimental to its members and that a better solution would be to raise the legal age for smoking from 18 to 21.

The industry has had some success with its lobbying efforts. In September, White House officials publicly said they were moving to ban most flavored e-cigarettes nationwide. But in November, after a pushback from vape-shop owners and vaping enthusiasts in person and on social media (#WeVapeWeVote), President Donald Trump backed away from the plan.

The uproar caused by the THC devices, made by unknown people containing unknown substances, has hurt sales of nicotine-vaping companies. “There has never been a stronger argument in favor of legalization and regulation,” says Troy Dayton, CEO of The Arcview Group, an investment and market research firm for the cannabis industry. “This is the equivalent of people dying and going blind from bathtub gin during alcohol Prohibition.”  

The outbreak of lung injuries spread so quickly that researchers are still unsure what has caused it. The CDC has pointed to Vitamin E, which is used to thicken the THC-containing liquid before it is heated, as a potential problem. But as quickly as it spread, the crisis may have already peaked as new reported cases decline.

Law enforcement is also struggling to catch up. Illegal THC liquids are often seized while agents are looking for other drugs. “It’s just too new,” says Katherine Pfaff, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “This is absolutely something that we are diligently looking into.”

Advocates argue that vaping legal nicotine saves lives because it doesn’t involve the tar and other toxic ingredients that combustible tobacco does. There are as yet no long-term scientific studies on those claims. And the lines of separation between nicotine and THC and the legal and illegal portions of the industry are not quite as solid as the industry suggests.

In Massachusetts, for example, at least 28 of the 90 people with confirmed or probable vaping injuries inhaled nicotine, not THC, according to the state’s public health department. And of the THC-related cases, five probably involved THC from a legal, state-licensed marijuana dispensary.

In the face of the twin crises, the company often credited with sparking the popularity of vaping devices is fighting a rear-guard action. In the past few months, once high-flying Juul has been sued by local school districts, replaced its top executives, slashed jobs, is reportedly under federal criminal investigation, and has seen China and India seal off their huge markets. It has reduced its offerings to tobacco- and menthol-flavored cartridges in an effort to restore its image.

“We must reset the vapor category and reduce underage use,” Joe Murillo, the company’s chief regulatory officer said in a statement last week. “If we don’t, we will lose a historic opportunity to reduce the harm caused by smoking.”

This fall, thousands of students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst found a new type of menu waiting for them at their dining commons. The “diet for a cooler planet” menu featured a variety of “delicious low carbon and regenerative foods,” according to flyers that had been put up around campus.

This meant herb-roasted lamb, raised with a carbon-friendly silvopasture approach, which involves integrated tree farming and livestock grazing. It included “gleaned” masala sweet potatoes that had been picked from a local farm’s field post-harvest. From the French onion lentil gratin to the sautéed cauliflower and broccoli leaves, the options were plant-heavy, locally grown, and involved little to no packaging.

Meanwhile, student volunteers and a panel of farmers, professors, and climate advocates talked with diners about a growing focus for those worried about climate change: the connection between food and a warming planet.

“It was an opportunity to engage more of the campus community and to empower them, as well,” says Kathy Wicks, sustainability director for UMass Dining. “We wanted to let them participate in climate action by making choices about their food.”

The university is far from alone in this effort. Increasingly, American consumers and institutions are starting to think about how their food choices factor into climate change. For many, tangible choices at the grocery store, dining hall, and restaurant can feel more accessible than big ticket options like purchasing a fuel-efficient car or installing home solar panels and less daunting than some climate solutions such as protecting tropical forests.

And research suggests that even small changes in dietary habits can make a big difference.

Although fossil fuels and transportation systems have been the traditional targets of climate activists, a number of studies point to agriculture, and the food system overall, as one of the largest contributors to global warming. According to Project Drawdown, a research organization that evaluates climate solutions, the way food is grown, transported, and consumed accounts for about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in all of those sectors could reduce atmospheric carbon by 321.9 gigatons by 2050, the group estimates.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of numerous organizations hoping to persuade people to reduce their carbon footprint through food, whether by reducing food waste, eating less meat, or avoiding plastic packaging.

“One estimate we have calculated is that if, on average, Americans cut a quarter pound of beef per week from their diet – so, one hamburger – it’s like taking 10 million cars off the road a year,” says Sujatha Bergen, director of health campaigns for the health and food division of the NRDC.

Beef, indeed, is a regular target of climate activists. Cattle, particularly cows raised in concentrated feed lots, are greenhouse gas intensive for a number of reasons. Producing their feed requires extensive fossil fuel-based fertilizer. Clearing pastureland cuts into tree cover. And animals produce excessive amounts of methane when crammed together eating corn their stomachs were not meant to digest. If cattle were a nation, it would rank third behind China and the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse emitters, according to a 2016 estimate from World Resources Institute.

Faced with that data, a number of institutions have decided to shift away from meat-based menus. The University of Connecticut replaced its 100% beef burger with a “blended burger” of meat and mushrooms. The co-working company WeWork made headlines last year when it pointed to the climate crisis as the impetus for no longer serving meat at company events. And consumers are flocking to plant-based substitutes, as well: Sales of meat alternatives have skyrocketed in recent years.

Even the New York City public school system has pledged to take part in the Meatless Monday program, a public health campaign created with the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“We wanted to get people to recognize the connection between diet and climate,” says Ron Hernandez, the managing director of The Monday Campaigns. “I think people are getting more of that relationship.” 

That’s what Katherine Miller, vice president of impact at the James Beard Foundation, sees as well.

“The chef community has been paying attention to climate change for a long time,” she says. “They’ve noticed how extreme weather has affected their supply chains. ... Now what’s so exciting ... is that consumers are starting to pay attention to it, too.”

Restaurants are explicitly branding themselves as climate friendly, she says. Groups such as Zero Foodprint give a label to restaurants that take particular steps to reduce climate change. The Beard Foundation in 2018 started the Waste Not initiative – a series of efforts to help both culinary professionals and home cooks to reduce food waste.

Project Drawdown lists reducing food waste as the third most impactful climate solution. While much waste occurs before consumers are involved – food left on the field or discarded because it does not fit appearance standards – Americans also end up throwing out a significant amount of food they have purchased: about $1,600 worth a year per family of four, Ms. Miller says.   

Stopping food waste, she says, is the sort of win-win that consumers are happy to embrace – they can save money and help the planet at the same time. The James Beard Foundation published its “Waste Not” cookbook in 2018; it quickly sold out of two runs.

“People are beginning to understand that their food choices make a big impact on climate,” says Megan Larmer, the director of regional food at the Glynwood Center For Regional Food and Farming in the Hudson Valley of New York.

But she cautions that substantial change will be more complicated than individuals deciding to not eat meat, or to buy locally. The entire food system is set up in a way that rewards farming and distribution practices that are not climate friendly, she says, from big monocrop production and fertilizers to the commodification of corn and other staples to incentives for food corporations to source and trade globally.

“I think about climate change a lot,” she says. “All the time. If we are going to tackle it, we need to think about reforming agriculture with tools that are different than those that have been used to build our system. ... It took us 100 years to get here so it’s going to take us some time to get out of it.”

AP

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi takes her seat Dec. 10 for the first day of hearings at the International Court of Justice about charges of genocide against her government.

For two prominent winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 10 was not an easy day.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 winner for her pro-democracy efforts in Myanmar, was at the United Nations’ highest tribunal, defending her country’s military for the mass killing of Rohingya Muslims. The International Court of Justice in The Hague is considering a charge of genocide against her government, which is largely controlled by the military.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, received the 2019 Nobel Prize on Tuesday even as critics note his peace efforts with neighboring Eritrea, along with his democratic reforms in his own divided country, are still a long way from reality. Wary of his critics, Mr. Abiy refused to hold a press conference after the awards ceremony.

The harsh spotlight on both these icons of human rights may well be deserved. Not every recipient of the peace prize, such as Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk, has been consistently virtuous. Yet criticism of the two winners comes at an unusual time in world events. Many people are challenging the traditional need for inspiring leaders to bring about change. In fact, mass protests in such places as Algeria, Hong Kong, Chile, and Iraq are forcing democratic change even as these uprisings are largely leaderless.

Many of the protests have been self-organizing, relying on hundreds of grassroots conveners and facilitators who use digital tools such as social media to develop “horizontal” consensus. The protesters defy the historical notion of leadership as one of a “great man” with top-down authority and soaring rhetoric. Instead they rely on the idea that leadership implicitly exists in each individual.

In addition, they see leadership as an activity, not a position. And that activity requires modest persuasion and a willingness to cooperate and listen to other ideas and plans. Leadership is not “seized” but shared. Instead of power over others, there is power with others. Instead of pulling rank, people pull together.

When Alfred Nobel set up the peace prize more than a century ago, he wanted it to be given to “champions of peace.” Through much of the 20th century, progress was indeed driven by individuals. Only in recent decades has the prize been given to organizations, such as the European Union or Tunisia’s trade unionists. Such collective efforts at peacemaking are now more recognized.

The need for charismatic figures and vertical hierarchies is hardly over. But as the world sees more Nobel laureates not always living up to the accolades given them, the more people will rely on peacemaking from below, or the quiet influence of people caring for each other as much as they care for a common purpose.