The United Nations human rights office took a forceful stand this week against China’s efforts to reshape the global rights agenda, experts say, by releasing a report that finds Beijing has seriously violated the rights of ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region, including possible crimes against humanity.

The report by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found “large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities” and “credible” allegations of patterns of torture of detainees confined in government facilities.

The long-awaited OHCHR assessment on Xinjiang was released Wednesday despite intense efforts by China, a powerful U.N. member, to suppress it.

China has in recent years increasingly advanced its own, state-centric rights model that prioritizes security, economic development, and a strong, sovereign state. Instead, the call by the world’s leading human rights authority for China to comply with international rights law represents a staunch defense of universal principles focused on protecting individual rights.

Beijing “wants to push other nations to adopt a different framing of human rights, one that would align with their values. And this report pushes back against that in a pretty strong way,” says Darren Byler, assistant professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University, who has conducted extensive research on China’s treatment of the Uyghur population.

The U.N. statement offers other countries “some clarity and ... an authoritative source to turn to” in taking a position on Xinjiang, he says.

Researchers, scholars, and activists focused on Xinjiang, as well as former detainees and the Uyghur diaspora, welcomed the report for corroborating their years of work to expose the human rights violations. For many victims, it marks the first step toward justice.

“We waited so long for the truth to be recognized,” says Rushan Abbas, a Uyghur American activist who’s been outspoken about her own relatives’ disappearances in Xinjiang. 

Ms. Abbas, the founder and executive director of the Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs, says she hopes the report will lead to concrete actions not only by the U.N., but also by countries that so far have remained silent on Xinjiang, including Muslim-majority nations.

Maria Danilova/AP/File

Mihrigul Tursun (right) speaks of the torture and abuse she suffered at the hands of Chinese authorities at the National Press Club in Washington, Nov. 26, 2018. For her and other camp survivors who spoke out, the U.N.'s report on the mass detentions and other rights abuses in Xinjiang was the culmination of years of advocacy, and a welcome acknowledgment of the abuses they say they faced.

China in tight spot

Amid rising geopolitical tensions in the world, the U.N. report highlights shared humanitarian values, experts say.

“This issue has become a geopolitical issue, which is very unfortunate because it’s a global humanitarian issue,” says Sean Roberts, associate professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“It was extremely important to see a U.N. body provide this report,” he says, “because the Chinese government’s primary rebuttal to accusations about the policies towards Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims has been that it is the product of disinformation from the U.S. and European governments who have an ax to grind with the Chinese government.”

Indeed, Beijing immediately denounced the report as the product of political manipulation by “anti-China forces,” saying it has “zero credibility.”

“This so-called assessment is orchestrated and produced by the U.S. and some Western forces and is completely illegal, null, and void,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a Beijing press conference Thursday. “It is a patchwork of disinformation that serves as a political tool for some Western forces to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China.”

Still, the U.N. report raises challenges for China diplomatically, experts say. As it grows in wealth and power, China has worked hard to raise its stature, influence, and participation at the U.N. 

In May, it hailed the first visit by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights to China in 17 years. On a six-day trip, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and traveled to the western region of Xinjiang, where Chinese officials said she was able to “observe and experience first-hand the real Xinjiang,” according to a report by the state-run Global Times newspaper.

At the time, official media praised Ms. Bachelet for “honestly and objectively” relating her experiences in Xinjiang and China. Yet this week, Beijing said the Xinjiang report overseen by Ms. Bachelet shows the OHCHR is a vehicle for disinformation. “The OHCHR has been reduced to an enforcer and accomplice of the U.S. and some Western forces in forcing the developing countries to fall into line with them,” said Mr. Wang.

Ng Han Guan/AP/File

Uyghur security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang region, Nov. 4, 2017.

What the report says 

China’s ruling Communist Party since 2016 has intensified a “strike hard operation” against what it considers terrorism, religious extremism, and separatist tendencies among Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Xinjiang, a strategic frontier with Central Asia. Sporadic violence has erupted between Uyghurs and ethnic Han Chinese in the northwest territory, and some Uyghurs want greater autonomy or even independence from Beijing. But experts view the root cause of unrest as China’s decades of repression and discriminatory treatment of Uyghurs – a perspective supported by the U.N.’s report.

Based on extensive research, including interviews with dozens of people who were held in or worked in the camps since 2016, the U.N. found that the government’s counterterrorism and counter-extremism strategies in Xinjiang “led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights,” imposed in a discriminatory manner on Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities. 

Researchers have estimated that as many as a million of the total Uyghur population of 11 million have been confined in what the government described as “vocational education and training centers” (VETCs) for education and rehabilitation. 

While not using the words “genocide” or “risk of genocide” – applied to China’s actions in Xinjiang by countries including the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as by the European Parliament – the report finds credible allegations of forced medical treatment and “individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.” The detention facilities “provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale,” it states.

“This report from the U.N. offers a lot of validation to the former detainees and their family members. It took a lot of courage for [victims] to speak to this body, knowing they could be exposed,” says Dr. Byler, the Simon Fraser University professor.

Already, he and other experts say that the international scrutiny of China’s crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang appears to have led Beijing to modify its policies. For example, he says significant numbers of detainees, especially older people, have returned to their communities or moved into factories in recent years, where conditions are better.

Yet there has also been a significant increase in criminal prosecutions in Xinjiang, as former detainees have moved into the formal prison system, he says.

Seeking justice

The U.N. report calls on China to release “all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty” in Xinjiang, “whether in VETCs, prisons, or other detention facilities,” and to ensure families of those detained have contact with their loved ones. The government should move urgently to ensure its counterterrorism laws in Xinjiang conform with international human rights law, and to repeal all discriminatory laws against Uyghurs and other Muslims, it says.

Ms. Abbas, the Uyghur American activist, believes the report will bring positive change for Uyghurs in China. “The pressure definitely works,” she says. 

Despite Beijing’s public posture, “little by little they are releasing some people,” says Ms. Abbas, whose sister, Gulshan Abbas, is serving a prison sentence on terrorism charges.

“Missing her and loving her keeps refueling me to fight harder,” says Ms. Abbas. “I will keep going until I see her.”

Adila Sadir, a Uyghur immigrant who runs a restaurant in Boston, says the U.N. report substantiating the rights violations marks “a huge improvement of the Uyghurs’ case.” 

Ms. Sadir says the mass detentions have had far-reaching impacts. Even though she has more freedom in the U.S., the knowledge that her father is imprisoned in Xinjiang and that she can’t do anything to help him is a constant source of anguish. “The Chinese government is detaining people not only in my hometown, but here in a foreign country, they mentally torture us. It is very painful,” she says.

“I think the report will be a really big help for Uyghurs, but I don’t know what will happen next,” she says.

The Kenyan presidential elections are over, but peace campaigner Beatrice Karore’s work is not done.

One recent cloudy morning in Nairobi, the founder of Wanawake Mashinani – Swahili for Grassroots Women – walks to her office in Mathare, one of the most densely populated slum areas in the Kenyan capital. 

Sliding a heavy-duty padlock off a thick metal door, Ms. Karore and her team file into the tiny room that serves as their headquarters, and sit on blue plastic chairs. Over loud music blaring from a nearby shop, Ms. Karore begins with a prayer for a good “walk for the peace” ahead.

Ms. Karore is one of dozens of grassroots peace activists across the country who sprang into action in the months leading up to Kenya’s Aug. 9 presidential elections. Now, as the country waits for a final verdict on disputed results, that work has become increasingly important.

The Supreme Court is due to hand down a judgment on Sept. 5, after opposition candidate Raila Odinga challenged official results that showed him losing to William Ruto by a margin of 200,000 votes. A former prime minister, Mr. Odinga has blamed five previous presidential election losses on rigging – claims that have sparked deadly riots in the past. 

For now, an uneasy calm is holding. But some campaigners fear the Supreme Court verdict could yet unleash the violence that followed disputed polls in 2007, when more than 1,200 people were killed, and again in 2017, when more than 100 people died. 

As her team walk out of their modest office into narrow passageways crammed with shacks, Ms. Karore says she knows the current lull is far from guaranteed. “We [are still] doing peace campaigns to empower the community,” she says. “We realized that when there is no peace, everyone loses.”

Paul Stremple

Residents walk up Mau Mau Street in Mathare, a Nairobi slum area, after Kenya’s presidential election. The area has in the past been a hotbed of election-related violence.

Future precedent

What happens in Kenya ripples out to the wider region. East Africa’s wealthiest nation is a business and technological transport hub for the continent, and has often hosted talks for more volatile neighbors like South Sudan and Somalia. 

Some analysts believe that the relatively peaceful election campaign, in which the main candidates ran on social and economic issues, rather than demanding voters’ ethnic loyalty, points to a maturing democracy. 

Widely touted reforms to the electoral process, including the effective registration of voters in the diaspora, may have given more Kenyans a sense of greater transparency. And battered by two years of COVID-19 lockdowns and rising costs of living, most Kenyans would prefer to accept the Supreme Court verdict than go to an election rerun, analysts say. 

“It’s deja vu and people are tired. They want to get on with their lives,” says David Mkali, a Nairobi-based political analyst. 

But the manner in which Kenyans navigate the decision by the court will set a precedent for future disputes across Africa. Mr. Odinga’s lawyers allege that supporters of Mr. Ruto hacked into the electoral system and replaced genuine photos of polling station results with fake ones, bumping Mr. Ruto’s final vote tally to 7.1 million votes. Mr. Ruto denies the allegations, which have split the electoral commission.

As the Supreme Court ordered a recount of ballots in 15 polling stations this week, Mr. Odinga said he would “basically respect” the final verdict.

Even if the fragile peace holds, electoral watchers caution it will take more than one election cycle to show Kenya has left violence in the past. And other crucial reforms, such as the use of digitized voter registers and verification, will be put under the spotlight when the Supreme Court hands down its judgment.

Waiting for freedom

For the past two presidential elections, Ms. Karore’s team has organized the kind of “holistic” monitoring that Kenya’s human rights commission says will transform how communities like Mathare – which typically bear the brunt of any unrest – participate in the post-electoral process. Wanawake Mashinani has held several community meetings at which faith-based leaders have encouraged people to remain calm. It’s given safety tips to residents on election day. 

And in a neighborhood that’s neglected by officials, where violence, drug abuse, and crime are prevalent, perhaps the group’s most important work is also the simplest: It checks in on residents and listens without judgment. 

On this August morning “peace walk,” Ms. Karore stops first to talk to a group of women selling hair-care products outside a corrugated iron-roof shack. Speaking in Swahili, she asks them how they are and how things have been since the elections. The discussion is light and jovial; the women laugh at a joke about a fake flour scandal doing the rounds in Mathare. 

Paul Stremple

Reagan Victor Ondigo stands with his children on the small plot in Mathare where they have been staying during Kenya’s election. He says supporters of an opposition candidate burned his nearby home down in a bid to intimidate him.

One vendor, a young woman called Kim, says that things have been quiet and business has been slower. She tells the group they are glad major protests didn’t break out after the results were announced, because that would have meant they would have lost everything. 

“Anything small can trigger violence on the streets,” Ms. Karore says. “Many people leave their homes and go to rural areas at this time, or where people of their same tribe live.”

Research has shown that when marginalized communities feel that their favorite candidate loses an election due to irregularities, they are more likely to resort to violence. Human rights organizations say the unrest often breaks out along ethnic and identity lines; meanwhile, as neighborhoods become engulfed in riots, security officials who move in to quell the violence often fuel it further with extrajudicial killings.

As Ms. Karore and her team walk deeper into the township, checking in on neighbors and store owners, they are greeted by passersby who recognize them from previous door-to-door visits.

Buoyed by the work of peace campaigners across Kenya as a whole, the political atmosphere has been significantly calmer than in two previous elections. A range of activists, from artists to religious leaders, have been galvanized into action in recent months. A campaign by artists in Kibera, Kenya’s largest township, displays works that celebrate the country’s ethnic diversity. Another group of activists organized a “peace caravan” across the country, carrying messages urging voters to remain calm during the heated polls.

Still, violence and intimidation persist. At least one elections officer died in suspicious circumstances.

In Mathare, Reagan Victor Ondigo says he barely escaped with his life when a mob of men tried to burn down his home as he and his family slept. 

“[Those] people came to my place and told me that if I don’t vote for Raila, there will be no peace,” he says, as Ms. Karore stops to listen to him.

Mr. Ondigo, who used to run a cellphone repair shop from his home, now relies on handouts to feed himself and his two children. He blames politicians for whipping up ethnic grievances, but he’s cautiously hopeful that those perceptions are slowly changing.

“I hope that my daughter will know that freedom is there,” he says.

As dusk falls, Ms. Karore and the other peace campaigners hurry back to the main street in Mathare, worrying about the risk of crime on unlit backstreets. 

“The challenges are many here in Mathare, but I hope that peace will prevail,” Ms. Karore says.

Chileans vote Sept. 4 on a new constitution that would replace the charter adopted during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The referendum is the culmination of a process first sparked amid widespread anti-government protests in 2019 and has attracted international attention.

Although nearly 80% of the population has said it wants a new constitution, polls show the final draft is highly divisive. What’s at stake for Chile – and the region – with this weekend’s constitutional referendum?

Why is Chile preparing a new constitution?

When protests against the rising cost of living and widespread inequality overwhelmed Chile in 2019, the government of the day sought to defuse them by agreeing to rewrite the constitution, which dated back to General Pinochet’s dictatorship and makes social and political change difficult.

In a 2020 referendum, Chileans overwhelmingly agreed they wanted a new constitution and chose to create a Constitutional Convention to draw it up. That group of 155 elected delegates has been praised internationally for being highly representative: There is gender parity, and the convention includes seats for long-overlooked communities such as Indigenous peoples and LGBTQ citizens.

The convention spent the past year debating and crafting a new draft constitution from scratch, which will either be voted in as the new Magna Carta this weekend, or be rejected wholesale.

Why is the document controversial?

The proposed constitution includes 388 articles. It guarantees new rights concerning the environment, gender, and education, and it eliminates the 200-year-old Senate, replacing it with a chamber of regions. The draft also recognizes Chile as a “plurinational” state, “composed of various nations,” a nod to Indigenous peoples and their autonomous territories and justice systems.

Conservatives have “had some success in framing the constitution as a project that weakens the unity of the Chilean state,” says David Landau, a law professor at Florida State University who studies constitutional design. “That framing isn’t necessarily accurate ... [but] there’s a perception that these are radical changes to the Chilean state.”

Polls show the gap between “reject” (46%) and “approve” (37%) narrowing in the lead-up to the referendum. Observers say no matter which way the vote unfolds, the process of drafting a new constitution will have lasting regional and global implications.

“There are some really important ideas in the constitution that will be influential,” says Dr. Landau, who spent several months in Chile studying the constitutional rewrite this year. “This is the first constitution I know of that would have gender parity across all major state institutions, not just Congress,” he says. “It’s not going to be the last.”

What happens after the vote?

Sunday’s vote, in which citizens are obliged by law to participate, is “one of the most important” in Chile’s recent history, says Cecilia Osorio Gonnet, a University of Chile professor. If the draft is approved, it will go into effect immediately, though several aspects, such as overhauls to the education and health care systems, will need to be legislated. There is also the likelihood that some other clauses, including the “plurinational” designation, could be amended by Congress after approval.

If the draft is rejected, it’s back to square one.

“The current constitution has to be modified. There’s a clear understanding that it doesn’t work and it is delegitimized,” says Dr. Osorio. That could mean another Constitutional Convention, as suggested recently by President Gabriel Boric, or an overhaul by traditional political parties and their elected officials in Congress.

Although polls indicate that the draft constitution will be rejected, Dr. Osorio points out that such opinion surveys have been wrong before. If, for example, enough young Chileans obey the law and go to the polls, she says she wouldn’t be surprised if the draft constitution wins more votes than expected.

Regardless of the outcome, supporters say this process has been a boon. Chile has been “able to use the constitution-making process as a peaceful way to try and resolve deep social divisions,” says Dr. Landau. “Even if the text is rejected, it shows the possibility and promise of this kind of democratic process – both regionally and globally.”

When Kenny Varner attended the 60th birthday party of a family member recently, he was somewhat startled after the conversation turned to the enduring appeal of “Goodnight Moon.”  

He had mentioned how the much-beloved children’s bedtime story by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd would turn 75 in September. Dr. Varner, who directs the Gayle A. Zeiter Literacy Development Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, had been thinking about the reasons “Goodnight Moon” is as popular today as it was decades ago.   

“We pulled it up on our phones, and we’re looking at a digital version of it together, and it’s just a text that is really robust,” says Dr. Varner, who focuses on literacy, language, and cultural identity. “And then family members and other folks, from the ages of 5 to over 90, all began to share memories of the importance of this book, both in their own childhoods and now and with who they are as parents. So there’s this interesting intergenerational thing happening with ‘Goodnight Moon,’” he says. 

Indeed, for generations this book about a great green room with a telephone and red balloon has been a part of millions of bedtime rituals, making Dr. Varner and others marvel at the aesthetic and developmental power that continues to make it a family favorite. 

The playful language excited the 5-year-old at Dr. Varner’s family gathering – the kittens, the mittens, the bowl full of mush! The person over 90 recalled, too, how the black-and-white prints interspersed in a book about a “great green room” were actually meant to keep costs down. Color prints could make a picture book prohibitively expensive back then.

“But that, actually, that’s one of the most memorable features of the book,” says Dr. Varner. It creates an aesthetic rhythm, melding perspectives of time, blinking back and forth between modern color and familiar black and white – even as time is grounded in subtle visual details, like the clocks, which move forward 10 minutes through the frames, and the moon, which rises bit by bit behind the window.  

Consuelo Kanga/Courtesy of HarperCollins

Margaret Wise Brown wrote picture books that dealt with children’s everyday realities, rather than fantasy stories with a moral.

“A small child is able to experience a comforting, structured routine without a deep, complex storyline,” Dr. Varner says.

But when “Goodnight Moon” was first published in 1947, such techniques were both innovative and radical, says Cara Byrne, professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. A scholar who focuses on the history of children’s storybooks, she begins all of her classes each semester with a discussion of the popular bedtime classic.

“‘Goodnight Moon’ is actually a really great book to bring in first, because at its time it was doing something really radical,” says Dr. Byrne. “Her books were part of a movement of educators who were trying to push away from some other, older models of educating children – other norms or ideas about children as needing a particular type of instruction, needing to be moralized in a particular way.”

Indeed, in 1935, Ms. Brown studied to be a teacher at Bank Street College of Education, the alternative teacher training school in New York’s Greenwich Village. Its founder, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, believed children needed stories anchored in the familiar rather than the fantastic – and grounded in empirical research about the psychologies of children as they interacted with their worlds.

Ms. Brown never finished her studies or became a teacher, but as she began to write storybooks she moved away from the kinds of traditional folk tales and fables that conveyed simple moral messages. Instead, she wrote stories about the preoccupations of children, their curiosities and emotions and fears.  

She also sought out illustrators more in tune with modernist and avant-garde visual sensibilities. Mr. Hurd’s illustrations in “Goodnight Moon,” many have observed, are similar to Henri Matisse’s “L’Atelier Rouge.” The illustrations in “The Runaway Bunny” could have been inspired by Georges Seurat’s “The Circus.” 

“I think it’s one of those beautiful books that not only was revolutionary in its time; it was also kept out of some library collections because it was so different and odd,” says Dr. Byrne.

"Goodnight Moon," by Margaret Wise Brown, HarperCollins, 32 pp.

One of the book’s detractors was Anne Carroll Moore, the influential head of the children’s wing at the New York Public Library. A major historical figure and innovator in her own right, Miss Moore practically invented the idea of having a children’s wing in libraries. She introduced storytelling hours to NYPL’s vaunted main branch and instituted policies to allow even the poorest of immigrant children to check out books.

Persnickety and traditional, Miss Moore was also in many ways a powerful foil to Bank Street’s radical new ideas about childhood development and storytelling. A staunch proponent of magical, fantastic tales with plots upholding a moral order, she was enthusiastic about the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and Beatrix Potter while famously disliking E.B. White’s classic children’s stories “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web.” 

Similarly, the powerful New York librarian thought little of Ms. Brown’s storytelling, and because of her influence, “Goodnight Moon” was kept off shelves until 1972, the year of its 25th anniversary, when it was selling almost 100,000 copies a year. 

Mike Scott, a writer and communications specialist in Cleveland, has been reading “Goodnight Moon” and other books by Ms. Brown to his kids and grandkids for over 35 years. 

“For me, ‘Goodnight Moon’ is a weirdly sweet book, and I always enjoyed the poetic rhythm,” says Mr. Scott, who read the book to his adult children decades ago and is now again to his 3-year-old son, Ulysses, whose nickname is Ulee. 

“But it’s also a book with some very unexpected things in it. ‘What’s that mouse doing in the middle of the room? Who keeps a bowl of mush next to their bed? And what is mush, anyway?’” 

These are the questions he asks each generation of his family, and they respond to the book’s quirky hilarity as well as to the overall warmth of the book, he says. “It’s a fun book. Reading it is like going back into time, but sort of sideways and landing into an odd room, indeed.”

Ulee now loves the story – it’s one of his favorites, Mr. Scott says. They shared a special moment recently, too, when Ulee was excited to notice that the painting hanging on the left wall of the great green room – a black-and-white sketch – was actually a scene from “The Runaway Bunny,” another Margaret Wise Brown story they read together. 

“It was a pretty cool moment when we made that connection,” says Mr. Scott.

Reuters

Founder of "Weaving the Streets" project, Marina Fernandez Ramos and her father Manuel display a canopy made of recycled material to protect people from summer heat in Valverde de la Vera, Spain, Aug. 26.

In 1993, the outdoor clothing company Patagonia had a novel idea. It spun used plastic containers into soft, insulating microfibers. The fleece anorak you reach for this autumn was once 25 detergent bottles.

Reusing waste has a long history, of course. The walls and building foundations of ancient Pompeii were made with crushed pottery. But on a warming planet of 8 billion people who are “overusing the Earth’s biocapacity by at least 56%, according to the Zoological Society of London, Patagonia’s model is fast becoming the imperative rather than the exception. Climate change, material scarcity, and plastic waste are driving innovations in consumption, manufacturing, and building design.

“The eventual result,” a World Economic Forum study said, will be “that a discarded item is no longer seen as ‘waste,’ but rather as a still-useful object about to enter a new phase of value generation.”

The outlines of this new era, in which waste management and energy savings propel a “circular economy” of use and reuse, are just beginning to be drawn. The European Green Deal, for example, seeks a 55% net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in part through new rules requiring all made goods to be “repairable, reusable, and recyclable.”

That goal is influencing everything from automobiles to architecture, and it carries lofty expectations of immediate benefits. A study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation predicted that a shift from new to renewable materials could boost European gross domestic product from 4% to 11% and cut use of primary resources by 32% by 2030. In just over two years, Patagonia claims, all its products will be made from reusable and recycled materials – including its own worn-out clothing.

A new book due to be released this month, titled “Building for Change: The Architecture of Creative Reuse,” underscores the shifts in thought imposed by those targets. Moving away from “cycles of new build, refurbishment, and demolition” to a repurposing of existing buildings with existing materials starts with humility.

For a profession that prides itself on creative originality, the book notes, architecture based on reuse starts with “a more humble and time-consuming design process.”

A circular approach to manufacturing requires design decisions and material choices that anticipate the future value, use, and energy draw of each part of a made good. Car companies like Ford, BMW, and Toyota, for example, have begun rethinking their models based on their secondary usefulness – long after they have left the lot and landed in the junkyard. “There’s a lot of room for improvement at the end of life of the vehicle,” Greg Keoleian, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems, told The New York Times.

Confronted by two environmental emergencies, humanity is turning climate change and material waste into engines of innovation. One day it may even apply the lessons from that shift more broadly, dropping notions of inevitable decline for a view measured by renewed purpose.