Peter has been a Conservative Party supporter for his entire adult life and is currently a party member. As an officer with the Metropolitan Police in London, he sees the impact of government policies up close every day.

But when the Conservative government descended into chaos in recent weeks over Britain’s economic future, Peter, like many others, questioned where the Tories are headed. (Peter asked that his full name not be used.)

The party has let him down, he says, mostly because of all the infighting and the lack of coherence. “I just hate this extreme politics. People are trying to hit a target and miss a point.”

The last two months in the United Kingdom have been a real-time case study of what happens when a centrist government – hitherto broadly aligned with its electorate – swerves, suddenly and with little warning, to the extreme right. The last time the country voted, in 2019, it elected a government that, while populist, was economically and socially in the center. But sharp policy shifts by Liz Truss – who became comfortably the shortest-serving prime minister in British history – led to what was, in hindsight, an inevitable loss of confidence from both the markets and the people.

Now, under new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Tories have an opportunity to renew their relationship with the British public. But experts – and Britons more generally – say that the most likely outcome may not be a meeting of the minds between government and the public, but simply a period of calm governance by No. 10, without any missteps or infighting by the Conservatives.

“I’m a public servant. I just want to get paid a decent wage,” says Peter. “There is an individual politics where you have to maintain some moral integrity. And if it gets to the stage where I think these guys are not representing me, I’d have to consider leaving the party.”

“Off in quite a radical direction”

Until 2001, like most parliamentary democracies, British political parties chose their leaders – and therefore the prime ministerial candidate – through a poll of members of Parliament. In recent years, however, both the Conservative and Labour parties have experimented with giving their dues-paying memberships more power. MPs pick two candidates for leader, and the members get the final choice. The 172,000 Conservative Party members who are eligible to vote represent about 0.3% of the total U.K. electorate and tend to be older, wealthier, and whiter than the rest of the population.

While the primary voters gave their support to Ms. Truss’ libertarian ideas, the rest of the country didn’t get a say and didn’t approve – her popularity ratings plummeted faster and lower than those of any British political leader in the history of polling. In the end, it was the misguided, ideologically driven mini-budget, with $45 billion of unfunded tax cuts for the rich – the biggest since 1972 – that crashed the economy and the prime minister’s political career.

Peter Morrison/AP

A woman walks past a mural by artist Ciaran Gallagher depicting, from left, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, and Boris Johnson, all candidates to succeed Liz Truss as prime minister, aboard a dinghy named RMS Titanic, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Oct. 28, 2022. Mr. Sunak was the only one of the trio to move to the final round, earning him the top job.

“It was a very neoliberal agenda, and I don’t think she even had time to win over the nation,” says Rainbow Murray, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London. “When you’re too right wing for the markets, you’ve really gone off in quite a radical direction.”

A snap Financial Times survey of British political scientists last month suggested that out of 275 parties in 61 countries, Ms. Truss’ Conservatives were the most right wing of the lot, beating out the U.S. Republican Party under former President Donald Trump and the party of Brazil’s just-ousted, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. In fact, scored on a scale from 0 (full-blown communism) to 10 (an extreme low regulation, low tax, free-market approach), the former prime minister had managed to drag her party so far to the right that it registered a score of 9.4. On the same economic scale, the average U.K. voter fell at 3.1 and the average Conservative voter at 4.2.

In contrast to the Conservative Party membership, public sentiment has been moving steadily in the opposite direction. Tax increases to prop up crumbling public services are more popular than tax cuts to stimulate growth. Polls show that over 66% of the British public – including 62% of Conservative voters – are in favor of the nationalization of energy companies, with similar numbers supporting public ownership of water. Almost half of the country supports rail strikes. Were there to be a general election tomorrow, multiple senior Conservatives have publicly expressed fears their party could be wiped out as an electoral force. Polls suggest Labour could even beat the landslide that brought Tony Blair to power in 1997.

The cost-of-living crisis and high energy prices do not just loom over the poorest in society. They cast an increasingly threatening shadow over the middle classes – senior nurses, teachers, and office workers with annual salaries of £45,000 ($51,300) and above – who are the backbone of the electorate. Many people who by inclination are natural Conservative supporters question whether the government is able – or willing – to help them weather the coming storm.

“It is now generally felt among the public that a lot of public sector workers and others have had a bad deal from this government for a long time and that something should be done about it,” says Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe, a research organization, and professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London.

“Throughout the economic problems we’re going to have for the next year or so, Labour will be able to say, probably wrongly but almost certainly effectively, that what we’re going through is down to Tory ineptitude. That’s the gift Liz Truss has given them: a single incident, where it absolutely is the case that a decision by the government has made this economic situation worse rather than better.”

Professor Murray points to Black Wednesday, the day in September 1992 when the value of the pound fell so low that the U.K. was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in what was seen as a national humiliation. There is a direct line from that event – as contrasted with the Conservatives’ reputation for fiscal responsibility built by Margaret Thatcher a decade before – to the Tories’ subsequent electoral wipeout in 1997 that launched Mr. Blair’s New Labour into government for the first of three consecutive terms.

Now, many are asking if history is about to repeat itself. “[The Conservatives] lost their reputation for economic competence then, and it was five years nearly until the next general election, but people hadn’t forgotten,” says Professor Murray. “[The economic reputation was] hard won. And once you lose it, it’s hard to get it back.”

Alastair Grant/AP

Leader of the opposition Labour Party Keir Starmer (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper leave the Cabinet Office in London, Oct. 31, 2022. Labour is widely expected to win the next parliamentary elections in Britain, which will happen no later than January 2025.

Steadying the ship

While Ms. Truss is gone and her mini-budget has been rolled back, thus preventing an immediate economic catastrophe, the shift from Ms. Truss to Mr. Sunak still leaves a Conservative Party in power that is further right wing than the British public wants or voted for.

For Mr. Sunak, the newest resident of No. 10 Downing St., the challenges going forward are multitude. After a decade of austerity, his ability to cut public spending is constrained. Hence he is faced with an unavoidable need to raise taxes in order to balance the books and placate the markets, even if it goes against the “Conservative values” he and his party advocate. How does the prime minister get tens of billions of dollars of tax increases past his right-wing party?

“If you look at the appointments Sunak’s made, he’s definitely playing to the anti-immigrant, anti-woke side of the party to try and give them something back for the fact that he’s going to be raising taxes,” says Professor Murray. “Sunak’s in a very strange position where in order to appease the social conservatives, he’s actually undermining the economic efforts at a time when we’re experiencing labor shortages and need immigration to address that.”

For the next two years, even as Britons look doubtfully at a ruling party whose values appear to be out of sync with their own, the best-case scenario is a period of calm. A prime minister who sees out their term in office, soothes the financial markets, and steadies the ship would be welcomed by most.

Natural Tory sympathizers have been driven away more by a perceived lack of competence and by internal division than disagreement over the actual lines the party is taking, says Professor Murray, especially now that those lines, at least on the economy, are more moderate again. “If the party can stay united, if they can avoid any more absolute clangers, and if they can get the economy stabilized between now and the next general election, I think their more natural supporters will come back to them.”

Peter, who voted for Mr. Sunak over Ms. Truss in the party elections, says the best thing to do is to write off the last six weeks.

“We need to start again,” he says. “I hope it doesn’t sound defeatist, but I have no choice but to pin my hopes on Rishi. There is no one else. And he does seem like a safe pair of hands.”

Damian Dovarganes/AP

"Yes on Measure H!" volunteer Ed Washatka canvasses in Pasadena, California, Oct. 29, 2022. Several California cities and Orange County, Florida, are asking voters to approve ballot measures that would cap rent increases and stem skyrocketing housing costs.

This year’s midterm elections will determine which party controls Congress, multiple governorships, and different statewide offices. But on Nov. 8, voters won’t just be electing officials to govern for them. They’ll also be making some crucial policy choices themselves.

More than 130 statewide ballot measures, spread across 50 states, could prove unusually consequential this year. In many states, the public will be voting on new election laws. There are also a record number of measures on abortion, just over four months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

In multiple states, ballot measures themselves are, well, on the ballot – with critics calling them unrepresentative and often misleading. The ease of passing future such measures could come down to votes this November.

What are ballot measures?

Primarily, they include ballot propositions and initiatives. In the former, the state legislature proposes a policy change directly to the public on the November ballot. In the latter, a policy idea originates with the public – clearing a required number of signatures – and is then voted on statewide.

Twenty-four states permit ballot initiatives, says Joshua Dyck, director of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Of the 140 statewide ballot measures this year, 110 are propositions and only 30 are initiatives – continuing a downward trend since the pandemic. 

Andrew Selsky/AP/File

Some 24 states allow citizen initiatives that let voters decide issues directly. This year, abortion rights, election laws, and ballot initiatives themselves are topping state ballots. Above, Raevahnna Richardson signs a petition supporting a gun safety ballot measure on June 7, 2022, in Salem, Oregon, as signature gatherer Rebecca Nobiletti holds the clipboard.

What are the most important ballot measures this year?

Voters in different states will get to weigh in directly on everything from legalizing marijuana to sports betting to tax policy. Two of the biggest issues cropping up in multiple places are abortion and election laws. 

Since the Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the federal right to an abortion, states have been resetting their policies. This year there will be a record-high six abortion-related ballot measures. One already took place in Kansas – where 59% of voters said no to an amendment that would have removed protections for abortion rights from the state constitution.

California, Vermont, and Michigan are all deciding whether to add abortion rights to their state constitutions. Earlier this year in Michigan, courts froze the state’s existing legislation on abortion: a no-exception ban passed in 1931. The issue is clearly motivating Democratic voters in the state, says Daniel Smith, an expert on direct democracy at the University of Florida. But it’s unclear whether that will help Democratic candidates much, he adds.

“Voters may be able to have their cake and eat it too,” says Professor Smith, with pro-choice Michiganders feeling like they can safely vote Republican if abortion rights seem likely to be secured.

The 12 ballot measures covering state election laws could also have enormous impact, coming just two years after the contentious 2020 presidential election, and will help shape the process in 2024.

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Ballotpedia

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Experts say it’s not so much the number of measures that’s significant – 12 is “a little high but not breaking any records,” says Mandy Zoch of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Rather, it’s the scope: “What’s different this year is that a lot of these election measures are really big ones.”

Nevada is considering becoming the third state in the U.S. – following Alaska and Maine – to use ranked-choice voting for congressional and certain statewide offices (the measure would require approval this year and again in 2024).  

Connecticut is deciding whether to add no-excuse early voting to its constitution. If a measure in Michigan passes, the state constitution would guarantee some voter access policies – like early voting and prepaid stamps. Elsewhere, Arizona and Nebraska have measures on voter ID requirements, while Ohio – followed by Louisiana a month later – has a measure that would ban voting by unauthorized immigrants. 

Are ballot measures effective tools?

In a way, voters will be considering that question, too. Among Arizona, Colorado, South Dakota, and Arkansas, this year there will be six ballot measures to reform the ballot measure process. 

John Locher/AP/File

Nevada voters will consider a ballot question on Nov. 8, 2022, that would make it the third state to institute ranked-choice voting. Another initiative, if passed, would enshrine in the constitution a ban on discrimination based on race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin. Above, people walk along the street in Tonopah on July 18.

Most of the measures would make initiatives more difficult to pass – generally by raising the threshold required for passage from, say, a simple majority of 50% to a supermajority of 60%. South Dakota already voted against its measure to raise the required majority for tax-related initiatives. 

Republicans have historically leveraged ballot initiatives more effectively than Democrats have, but the GOP now dominates many state governments – and some red states are trying to put guardrails on the process.

“The general takeaway is the party in control of the state government tends to despise the initiative process,” says the University of Florida’s Professor Smith. 

That doesn’t mean guardrails are necessarily bad, however.

Professor Dyck’s research suggests that voters rarely understand the often-complicated language of most ballot measures. The electorate can also differ enormously from cycle to cycle – with participation often falling significantly during nonpresidential years – meaning a majority of the vote might not reflect true majority will. 

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

For some measures, voters can rely on certain cues – like a party campaign or endorsements – to make up their mind, says Craig Burnett, a political scientist at Hofstra University. But that’s not the case for most, he says, including some of the most complicated and consequential measures.

Still, with a conservative U.S. Supreme Court giving states more control over matters like abortion and gun rights, state ballot measures can act as a check on the legislature. 

“It’s not perfect by any means – but neither is the state legislative process,” says Professor Smith.

Sayed Sheasha/Reuters

View of a COP27 sign on the road leading to the climate conference area in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, as the city prepares to host the COP27 summit next week.

We’re just days away from the most important climate conference since the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015, and it is confronting world leaders with two very different challenges.

One is dominating the pre-conference headlines. It is the urgent need for governments to rediscover their will, and reaffirm their wavering commitment, to prevent a climate emergency from escalating into a climate catastrophe.

A United Nations report last week spoke of a “wasted year” since last year’s climate conference, lamenting the “negligible” progress toward bringing down harmful emissions as most governments focused on the economic and energy repercussions of the Ukraine war.

The title of the U.N. Environment Program report – “The Closing Window” – captured its message. Without “system-wide transformation,” it warned, there was no longer a “credible pathway” to meeting the Paris target of keeping the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

That is the point, according to the scientific consensus, at which the already punishing effects of climate change would risk becoming dangerously and irreversibly worse.

This is where the second challenge comes in. It has made few, if any, headlines, but it could prove critical to reigniting progress.  

It involves not just a change in policy, but a fundamental shift in mindset: an ability to think analog, not digital or binary.

Where climate change is concerned, that would mean moving away from an all-or-nothing, success-or-failure focus on the 1.5 C. target, toward recognition that every tenth of every degree on either side of it makes a real-world difference: to the number of plains parched or flooded, villages incinerated or washed away, lives blighted or lost.

The evidence has been getting starker. Though our planet is still roughly 0.4 C below the Paris target, increasingly frequent “extreme events” have been destroying woodland with wildfires, inundating plains, expanding deserts, and buffeting waterfront towns and cities worldwide.

An “analog” approach would not ignore the 1.5 C target, but it would not regard it as the only measure of climate policy success.

Michael Sohn/AP

Wind turbines turn on top of a dump next to a BP oil refinery in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Oct. 22, 2022. Spiraling energy costs, caused partly by the Ukraine war, could be a turning point toward cleaner energy, the International Energy Agency said in a report last week. It found the global demand for fossil fuels is set to peak or plateau within a decade or so.

It would recognize that even if the window on 1.5 C does close, there’s a huge difference between capping our planet’s temperature increase at 1.6 C or 1.7 C above preindustrial levels, and the 2.4 C to 2.8 C range currently projected by the U.N. Environment Program.

And another major report issued last week did offer encouragement that those higher temperature rises, at least, could yet be averted.

It came from the International Energy Agency, and suggested that recent Ukraine-related spikes in the use of high-emissions fuel like coal are likely to prove temporary, with many governments instead reacting to the war by prioritizing investments in cleaner energy.

The IEA foresees world demand for all fossil fuels peaking fairly soon: coal within the next few years, natural gas by 2030, and oil a few years after that. By contrast, annual investment in clean energy is set to rise from $1.3 trillion today to more than $2 trillion by the end of this decade.

The rub? Even that level of investment would not put the world on course to meet the 1.5 C target. Double that figure – $4 trillion a year by 2030 – would be required, according to IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

Still, the underlying assumption of both of last week’s reports remained that with sufficient financial and political will, the target could still be reached – that while the window was closing, it wasn’t yet fully shut.

That is the message the reports’ authors hope will get through to the delegates of the nearly 200 nations convening for next week’s COP27 conference in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh – especially given the loss of momentum since last year’s meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.

David "Dee" Delgado/Reuters

Police officers arrest protesters during a climate change demonstration on Park Avenue at the residence of Stephen Schwarzman, founder and CEO of Blackstone Group, in New York City, Oct. 27, 2022.

At the same time, they appear to acknowledge the demotivating downside of thinking too digitally – of defining climate action success by the binary measure of a 1.5 C target which, U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen warned, currently seems “a tall, and some would say impossible, task.”

“We must try,” she said. “Every fraction of a degree matters. We must strive to get as close as possible.”

In other words, the Paris target is achievable. It must be achieved. But at the same time, the world should keep other goals in mind and remember the importance of restraining any temperature rises above the target as much as possible.

It’s an approach that seems to echo an oft-quoted observation by one of America’s most celebrated authors, from an age before climate change had begun to figure on the world agenda.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

“One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

This is one of three winning entries in a teen essay contest for Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians that was sponsored by Heart of a Nation. The essay prompt was “What do you most want to improve about your own society and how?” Winners were chosen by the organization; the Monitor supported this cross-cultural program by agreeing to publish the winners’ essays. Views are those of the writer, who is from Nablus in the West Bank.

My society is a society of religion, books, and the past. We are still stuck in a scary time. We take the rules and ways to live our lives from the commandments of the Messenger, and that applies to education, communication, lifestyle, and everything else. These commandments dictate how we should live – after all, we have learned before them, but we feel other societies’ contempt. Other societies see us as horrible, infidel, and murderous. How did we not recognize what is lacking in Arab society? Where did we go wrong?

My society is degrading to women. It sees her as a private thing to hide and be ashamed of. It sees her as less than: She is incomplete, and only suitable for the kitchen. She is forced to marry young to a husband who is her father’s age. My society has insulted, despised, beaten, and killed her with pathetic excuses to justify such disgraceful acts. You argue that this is what the Messenger taught us and what he commanded us to do – that we, as Muslims and Christians, have the right to transcend women. They are disgracefully wrong. The Messenger taught us to protect women, put them above our heads, treat them with kindness and love, and forbid causing them pain. Our society lacks humanity. Religion doesn’t matter; we are all humans after all.

There is no solution but to remind these men of humanity. They will not learn or change; we will not influence them except to remind them that we, too, are human beings, and that what they do is contrary to the Messenger’s commands and other religions. They are making a terrible mistake.

What I can do is write down what I see in our society, point out who doesn’t believe in humanity, and push change for these mentalities. What I can do is say out loud that we are not something to hide. We are bosses, teachers, managers, doctors, mothers, and sisters. We can reach space if want. We can write a book or make the impossible happen. Don’t underestimate a woman. Make her a crown on your head; she will be your princess. She will complete your religion’s text and be your half. She will be heaven for your children. Remember humanity and remember how you came to the universe safely.

The writer is from Nablus, in the West Bank. At the writer’s request, this essay is being published and distributed with an alias instead of the name it was submitted under.

To read other Heart of a Nation Teen Essay Competition winners, visit Teens Share Solutions to Global Issues.

“Enola Holmes 2” begins with the titular character – a detective, like her brother Sherlock – running through Victorian-era London. Police are in hot pursuit. The game is, indeed, afoot. The sequel to Netflix’s 2020 hit finds Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) struggling to launch a detective agency. In a montage featuring Monty Python-style cut paper animation, the teen details how prospective clients dismiss her because she’s a girl. Besides, they’d rather hire her famous older sibling (played by Henry Cavill). Enola eventually finds a case: A girl who works at a match factory has gone missing. Director Harry Bradbeer (“Fleabag,” “Killing Eve”) again teamed with screenwriter Jack Thorne for a sequel based on the young adult novels by Nancy Springer. The Monitor recently interviewed, via Zoom, the Emmy-winning British director known for stories that feature compelling female protagonists. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

We’ve come a long way since the 1880s, and women have rights they didn’t have back then. Why do the themes of equality in the Enola Holmes films resonate with audiences today?

As you say, we’ve come a long way and yet we haven’t come very far. The progress we make can suddenly be dramatically reversed, as we’ve seen in some countries. Women are still clamoring to have their voices heard and to be given respect in their own right. So it’s everywhere. We see it in parts of the Middle East. ... You can’t stop making that argument. It still has to be made. There’s no room for complacency. We see, again, in another country at the moment, it’s only by uniting men and women together that change seems to happen. 

Who came up with the storyline based around the real-life working conditions at a matchmaking factory in 1888, and how does that plot inform the movie’s themes?

We wanted to tell a story of going from “I” to “we.” The first film was about a girl learning to be able to stand on her own two feet and be a detective in her own right, to some extent beside her brother. So it was about finding individual power. The second film we [threw] her into the world of London with many different challenges. ... We wanted to find where to push it narrow to the point where she has to cooperate with others. She has to learn to work [in] a group.

And as we were working on that story, we were looking ... for a subject and a relevant event as we had in the first film, where it was the Great Reform Act. Jack thought of the Match Girls’ Strike of 1888. Because when you’re fighting, as the match girls did, the powers of authority and of capitalism and of big business, you can’t do it on your own. It has to be a group. And the idea of the very first female-led strike was just irresistible to us.

Enola’s love interest, the Viscount Tewkesbury, shows her how to dance in the ballroom. She shows him how to fight. How does the sequel explore how Enola and the viscount each subvert traditional gender roles? 

We followed the truth of them because he, at the start, is a man standing on his own feet, actually forging his way as a real man in politics. What’s tricky for her is his strength and confidence at a point where, in her own life, she’s struggling – first of all, getting a job and then solving the mystery she’s given. So we reversed the roles to some extent, and then they meet in the middle. They still have things to learn from each other. He teaches her something soft. She teaches him something hard. 

Prior to the first film, you expressed hope that stories after the pandemic would be less cynical and would value human relationships more. How do those values inform “Enola Holmes 2”?

I think we’re all basically [asking], “What’s my motivation?” It’s always you want to be loved. ... So that’s been universal in my work, and I think I probably would have done that with or without the pandemic. But I was struck at how much people related to the first film, particularly its emotional aspects, and how people cried at the end. I wanted to build on that by building more complex relationships between all the characters. 

The most uncynical aspect of the second film is how the film ends with the way that Enola ... brought those [matchmaking girls] together. So the idea of uniting and forming a common cause, I think, was one of the most uncynical things I think I’ve ever put together. 

“Enola Holmes 2” debuts on Netflix on Nov. 4. It is rated PG-13 for bloody images and some violence.

Reuters

A pizza is baked in a traditional Italian pizza oven fired with natural gas at a restaurant in Bonn, Germany, Oct. 11.

Earlier this year, barely a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union set a prescient goal. It required all of the bloc’s natural gas storage facilities to be filled to 80% of capacity by Nov. 1 to safeguard against potential energy disruptions caused by the war. When the deadline arrived yesterday, Europe had smashed its targets. Its reserves stand at 95% – despite the flow of Russian gas being reduced to a trickle.

That’s not all. As the continent heads into winter confronting an acute energy crisis – Europe has relied on Russia for 40% of its energy needs – the EU has required all its members to reduce electricity by at least 5%. Countries like France, Switzerland, and Greece have gone even further, setting their own goals to cut energy use by as much as 15%. Some have already met their targets.

Europe’s energy-saving goals fit a newfound urgency about the continent’s resilience. The EU has spent decades coordinating for the unexpected. But a sudden confluence of crises – the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, weather disruptions, the use of digital disinformation to undermine elections – has shaken assumptions about security. One concern, for example, is Europe’s dependence on powerful autocracies like Russia and China for energy and commercial supply chains. As German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung last month, “We can no longer allow ourselves to become existentially dependent on any country that doesn’t share our values.” 

That point hints at a common denominator in dealing with diverse challenges – whether in Europe or elsewhere. As the recently published Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll found, the ability of societies to cope with and overcome shocks depends on the confidence that individuals have in their communities and public institutions to uphold the common good. Europe filled its gas reserves in part by shifting temporarily to coal for some industries and generating more electricity by wind and solar. Finns are taking fewer saunas. Italians are boiling pasta less.

“There are countries that have saved 10% or 20% very quickly in an emergency where people feel solidarity and public purpose,” Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, told the French newspaper Le Monde.

“It’s absolutely crucial to bear in mind that societal resilience is not just about government activity, nor should it be,” Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Carnegie Europe. “Resilience is the responsibility of the whole of society, and fortunately a great deal is happening there.”

Instead of merely bracing for a winter of hardship in the face of energy shortages, Europeans have found strength in shared solutions and sacrifice. They are showing the best defense starts with ideals that bind people to act for a common good.