The United States might be the world’s oldest democracy, but there is one thing it has never done: It has never held a former leader accountable for criminal wrongdoing.

That inexperience sets it apart from other democracies. Countries from France to Argentina to South Korea have held that former presidents were not above the law. In the process, both the countries and the individual leaders had to face the consequences. These trials invariably strain countries – sowing mistrust of other democratic institutions, like the courts, and dividing the public itself – with varied final outcomes.

America may be inching toward its own such moment.

The legal jeopardy surrounding former President Donald Trump looms over the country. The 2024 presidential candidate is individually the subject of investigations into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, improper handling of classified documents, and questions of fraud. And that’s not including the House referral to the Justice Department for prosecution on grounds that he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. A grand jury in Georgia has completed its election-tampering investigation. A special counsel is just beginning his work for the Justice Department.

Mr. Trump has consistently and categorically denied any wrongdoing, criticizing the investigations as political witch hunts.

For some, the dangers attached to prosecuting – some might say persecuting – a former leader are reason to avoid it altogether. This is the path the U.S. has taken in the past, most notably when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Political consequences – like impeachment or electoral defeat – are seen by many as the simplest, lowest-impact solution.

But in some cases, experts say, political consequences may not be enough to protect democracy. Sometimes legal consequences are necessary – especially if wrongdoings involve subverting democracy. Surveying the many countries that have experienced these trials reveals that while prosecuting a former leader is a serious test of a democracy, it’s a test that many democracies have passed.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before in American history,” says James Hollifield, director of the Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at Southern Methodist University.

“You can’t have [former] presidents being constantly harassed and prosecuted,” he adds. But “if you don’t have accountability, your democracy is on the ropes.”

AP/File

President Gerald Ford reads a proclamation in the White House on Sept. 9, 1974, granting former President Richard Nixon “a full, free, and absolute pardon” for all “offenses against the United States.”

Rock, meet hard place

In most countries, sitting government officials are shielded from legal actions. Former leaders don’t have such protection, but pursuing criminal charges is one of the most dangerous paths a democracy can take, experts say. It’s even more dangerous if your democracy is already weak.

Public trust in Argentina’s democratic institutions had been declining long before Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – a former president, and the country’s current vice president – was convicted of fraud last month. Her sentence is six years in prison and a lifetime ban from public office, and it came in relation to a kickbacks scheme that funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to a family friend.

Last year ended, according to a report by the firm Zuban Córdoba and Associates, with “an abyss of mistrust” among the Argentine public. Around two-thirds of respondents had little or no confidence in the Congress or the media, and three-quarters had little or no confidence in federal judges (the judicial branch that convicted Ms. Kirchner).

“There’s a general pessimism” about democratic institutions in the country, says Ignacio José Muruaga, a political analyst with Zuban Córdoba.

Ms. Kirchner’s conviction, he adds, “is not the determining factor. It’s one more scene in a very long movie.”

Ms. Kirchner herself played no small part in sowing that mistrust. She maintains her innocence and has repeatedly said that she is a victim of a media and judicial campaign of persecution against her.

Still, she made the surprise announcement that she would not seek public office in elections later this year. While her career in politics may be over, sentiment on the streets of Buenos Aires suggests the lack of faith in Argentina’s democratic institutions will linger.

Ms. Kirchner “is guilty from here to China,” says Marcella Kessel, a treasurer at a university in the city. But she also feels that “knowing how the justice system is,” the conviction could be overturned “at any moment.”

Francisco Gómez, a server on Buenos Aires’ Corrientes Avenue, believes Ms. Kirchner “did a lot” for the country, but he agrees.

“Politicians are all corrupt,” he says. And “I have no faith in the justice system.”

Natacha Pisarenko/AP/File

A woman holds a sign that reads, “There is no democracy without Justice, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in jail,” outside her home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug. 22, 2022. The former president was sentenced to six years in prison and barred from holding public office for leading a criminal conspiracy that awarded public works contracts to a friend.

Worst-case scenario?

The democracy with perhaps the richest experience dealing with the legal malfeasance of its leaders is Israel. And it may now be an example of how prosecuting a former leader can backfire.

Dozens of national politicians have been convicted of crimes and many sent to prison, including one prime minister (Ehud Olmert, corruption) and a president (Moshe Katzav, rape and sexual assault). Israel’s democratic institutions withstood all these tests. 

In all those cases, the official either resigned by choice or was compelled to do so. Like Watergate, most of these cases saw political consequences for political wrongdoing: The individuals involved quietly left office, sparing the country a democratic crisis.

That should always be the first resort, but “sometimes it’s not enough,” says Sam Van der Staak, head of the Europe Programme at the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

A long-running criminal investigation into past and present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is illustrating why political consequences may not be enough. And it is threatening democracy in Israel like never before. 

In 2019, Mr. Netanyahu became the first serving prime minister to cling to power even after being indicted – and even after the start of his trial on a slew of corruption charges. He was voted out in 2021. Then in November, after the coalition government that replaced him failed, he made a dramatic comeback to the prime minister’s office. His trial is ongoing in the Jerusalem District Court.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convenes a Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Jan. 8, 2023. Mr. Netanyahu became Israel’s first serving prime minister to cling to power even after being indicted on corruption charges. He was voted out in 2021. Then in November, he made a dramatic comeback. His trial is ongoing in the Jerusalem District Court.

“In Israeli history, every time a politician was indicted, they resigned,” says Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. “The Netanyahu case is unique in [that] sense.” 

Mr. Netanyahu has consistently maintained his innocence, alleging a vast “deep state witch hunt” against him and the entire Israeli right by the country’s legal authorities and the media. 

The case has divided and radicalized Israeli society. Roughly half the country is convinced there is a conspiracy arrayed against him, according to opinion polls. It has forced democratic institutions like the court system “into a defensive crouch,” says Dr. Fuchs, turning them “into figures of hate amongst 50% of the country.”

The potential consequences may include a vast restructuring, and weakening, of the country’s checks and balances.

Last week, Mr. Netanyahu’s new coalition government introduced plans to “reform” the country’s legal system, including allowing the legislature to override Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority vote. A likely next step: weakening the independence of the attorney general, which legal analysts expect will ultimately result in Mr. Netanyahu’s trial being halted.

This has prompted some analysts in Israel to question – in one case openly – if the country would have been better served dropping the case against Mr. Netanyahu.

Roni Alsheich, who headed the country’s national police force during the Netanyahu investigations, told Israel’s Channel 12 News last month that, due to the “spiral” the country was in, he would recommend ending the Netanyahu trial with a plea deal. 

Mr. Van der Staak believes the opposite. If the judiciary shies away in cases like this, “you [would] actually end up with a democracy that is weaker than what you started with,” he says, pointing to similar actions recently in Hungary and Poland.

“If the judiciary is afraid of stepping in, then actually the whole system that is there for the judiciary to function in can crumble too,” he adds.

Strong courts and strong citizens

Some democracies have proved more resilient in bringing criminal charges against former leaders.

When Nicolas Sarkozy stood trial in 2020, he was the first former president to do so in person since Marshall Philippe Pétain, who collaborated with the Nazis. Mr. Sarkozy was convicted in two separate trials in 2021, first for corruption and influence peddling, and then for illegally funding his 2012 reelection campaign.

Francois Mori/AP

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (right) arrives at the courtroom for his appeal Dec. 5, 2022, in Paris. A Paris court in 2021 found Mr. Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling and sentenced him to a year in prison.

Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative, is appealing both rulings and has denied any wrongdoing. Although, like other former leaders facing criminal charges, he has criticized the investigations as purely political, the French public has been largely unmoved. The actions taken by the courts have been accepted, and the country has effectively moved on.

“A lot of people agree with the judge’s decision,” says Arnaud Mercier, a professor at the American University of Paris.

Even a good amount of France’s right-wing electorate “are indifferent” to the verdicts, he adds. For most of the country, “Sarkozy now is in the past.”

Key to this outcome has been the reputation of the French judiciary. Judges in France are civil servants, completely independent of the political branches. They decide which cases merit investigating, oversee investigations and evidence-gathering in those cases, and rule without a jury. Judges, in short, are powerful, and they have used these powers fairly and indiscriminately.

Dr. Mercier points to the Parquet national financier – a financial crimes watchdog – which has investigated conservative politicians like François Fillon, who served under Mr. Sarkozy, and left-wing politicians like Bruno Le Roux.

The agency “proved that it can [go after] right and left [politicians], so they gained credibility,” says Dr. Mercier.

Where corruption isn’t tolerated

In South Korea, meanwhile, allegations of corruption clouded the presidency for decades following the country’s democratization after military rule in the 1980s. 

Political leaders formed close ties with the chaebol – a small group of family-owned industrial conglomerates that came to dominate the country’s economy after World War II – but it became increasingly clear to the public that the relationship was rife with corruption and abuse of power.

A sprawling corruption scandal in the mid-2010s saw hundreds of thousands of South Koreans take to the streets calling for the ouster of then-President Park Geun-hye. In 2017, she was impeached and sentenced to 24 years in prison for corruption and abuse of power. Three years later, her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, was sentenced to 17 years in prison on bribery and embezzlement charges.

“South Korean people are absolutely, in a wonderful way, intolerant of corruption,” says Laura Thornton, senior vice president for democracy at the German Marshall Fund.

Because of the history of military rule, and the more recent history of the chaebol system, “they have an unbelievably mobilized civil society on [corruption] issues,” she adds. “Trust in the election commission, trust in courts, trust in institutions is [also] pretty high.”

Chung Sung-Jun/AP/File

Former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (center) appears for trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, May 23, 2018. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison on bribery and embezzlement charges.

Nearing a crossroads

Prosecuting former leaders in a democracy is fraught, with no predictable outcome (except, perhaps, the embattled leader saying the case is purely political and without legal merit). Strong institutions, like courts, are important. Paradoxically, those institutions can lose the public confidence they need in such a case by hearing the case at all.

To muddy the waters further, the prosecutions may be inherently political. Ms. Thornton, who spent part of her career working in Southeast Asia, points to Cambodia, where multiple opposition leaders have faced dubious charges. “I lived in Cambodia. I saw elections being stolen,” says Ms. Thornton. “That happens. Witch hunts happen. There are kangaroo courts. It gets so tricky.”

Deciding whether or not to prosecute a former leader “is basically a choice between bad and bad,” she adds.

Brazil recently reelected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known universally as Lula, as president after a decade of controversial legal travails. 

He led the country from 2003 to 2010, but after leaving office he became implicated in a corruption investigation that resulted in a 9½-year prison sentence. Lula always denied the charges, repeating the familiar line that he was a victim of political persecution. But there’s a plot twist: In 2021 the Brazilian supreme court agreed, ruling that his trial judge had been biased and annulling his conviction.

The legal odyssey suggested to the world that Brazilian democracy may be backsliding – with a politicized judiciary excluding a popular leader from the ballot, according to one analyst – but the country may be back on track. Lula’s new term, as a persecuted leader returned to power, will help decide if that’s true – especially in the wake of supporters of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, storming government buildings (including the supreme court) Sunday.

“Brazilian democratic institutions will be tested in a third Lula administration,” wrote Nicolás Saldías, Latin America analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, in an email last week.

“Like [Ms. Kirchner], Lula and [his supporters] have accused the judiciary and the media of being biased against them,” he added. “If the going gets tough for Lula, these allegations may resurface and further polarize Brazilian politics.”

The U.S. is in a similar boat, and in similarly stormy seas. Both countries are politically polarized. Lula’s conviction barred him from running in Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, a motive he claimed was behind the case against him. Mr. Trump and his allies have made similar claims regarding the 2024 election. 

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol voted unanimously to refer former President Donald Trump, his former chief of staff, and his lawyers for criminal charges on Dec. 19, 2022.

The main difference between the U.S. and Brazil is that Brazil has experienced this strain on its democracy before. Indeed, that strain is still being felt, with Sunday’s violent protests striking observers as a scene eerily reminiscent of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack in the U.S.

To date, America has chosen to address misdeeds by political leaders in the political sphere, such as impeachments and quiet plea deals. The clearest reasoning for this was articulated by Mr. Ford’s pardon of Mr. Nixon in 1974.

In prosecuting a former president, he said announcing the pardon, “ugly passions would again be aroused, our people would again be polarized in their opinions, and the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged.”

It was an unpopular decision – a majority of Americans wanted to see Mr. Nixon prosecuted for his crimes. In this case, Mr. Ford paid politically, losing the presidency to Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter. Support for the Nixon pardon did increase over the decades, but some experts now believe that American democracy would be stronger today if that particular challenge had been confronted at the time.

After Watergate, “the feeling [was] that we all need to heal, we’re already divided enough, [a prosecution] will just divide us further. That’s terrible – and it’s true,” says Ms. Thornton. “But what’s the alternative? What’s worse to me is lack of accountability for a leader.”

Mr. Trump may end up not facing criminal charges. Still, some loss of trust in democratic institutions is almost inevitable when legal jeopardy clouds a former leader. But democracies around the world have shown that having a former leader stand trial doesn’t have to be a fatal misstep. 

“This is not just an average criminal investigation. This is a criminal investigation that’s part of how we’re trying to defend democracy,” says Mr. Van der Staak at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

“In the short run, people will lose some of their trust in democracy” when former leaders are taken to court, he adds. “In the long run, you often see that systems can be repaired step by step, and that public confidence then grows again.”

Pausing to reflect as she tends to sprouting tomato plants, Hanin Rizaqallah, a 40-something mother of two, says she never imagined she would become a farmer.

But standing in the 100-square-foot, plastic-canopied greenhouse behind her traditional stone-and-concrete home, she says she now feels a connection to her land, her village, and her “elders.”

“I never thought I would be farming like my grandparents, but having a home garden is not only economical, it is something that is ours,” she says, speaking over the moos of her neighbor’s cow from behind the fence.

Last season she sold 11,000 pounds of molokhiya, a leafy green obtained from jute plants, supplying her village and several area markets with the Palestinian staple. And she is constantly studying village and market needs for the next season, with her dutiful husband, Maher, working alongside, under her watchful eye.

Part traditional farmer, part entrepreneur, in two short years Ms. Rizaqallah has become a pillar of her village community and a provider of food for dozens of households.

“We all contribute. To depend on yourself and your neighbors for food and income is something powerful,” she says as she and her husband check on their current tomato crop. “This is a safety net if one of our neighbors’ crops fails. Here, we can count on each other.”

In Farkha, you are never far from a helping hand.

In this West Bank village, residents are building on centuries of rural, small-town cooperation – blended with modern concepts of volunteering – to create their own model: social solidarity for self-sufficiency.

It’s an ambitious model that has helped Farkha make communitywide improvements while enhancing its autonomy by relying less on Israel and the inefficient and distrusted Palestinian Authority.

Taylor Luck

Farkha Mayor Mustafa Hammad carries a box of freshly picked peppers at the village’s eco-farm, one of several community projects designed to make the West Bank village self-sufficient, Oct. 25, 2022. “In this village, volunteering means work, time, and effort,” he says.

“Stronger together”

Just as in the old days, everyone here pitches in when a neighbor needs to patch a roof, a farmer is struggling to finish his harvest, or the girls’ school needs a new coat of paint – tapping into the Palestinian concept of al Ouneh, or collective philanthropy.

But today in this village, 21 miles northwest of Ramallah, all community works are highly organized, drawing on corporate efficiency and the participatory spirit of town hall democracy.

The coordination can be seen in the 230 home gardens that have popped up in the past few years. Residents like Ms. Rizaqallah and her husband grow crops and raise livestock in their backyards and distribute to one another on a rotation, so everyone’s food needs are met.

This revival of al Ouneh is thanks to a generation of millennial and Generation Z residents entering local politics. After years of volunteering, these young leftists and political independents are merging a passion for community service with a reverence for a lost way of farming life in the West Bank that was once sustainable and self-reliant.

“Others may say volunteering will only take a bit of your time, but in Farkha that is not the case,” says Farkha’s youthful mayor, Mustafa Hammad.

“In this village, volunteering means work, time, and effort. But at the end of the day there are real results, and everyone is stronger together.”

Volunteering roots

Farkha’s modern volunteerism dates to the 1980s, when village youths who participated in volunteer camps organized by then-Nazareth Mayor Tawfiq Zayed, a communist and champion of community work, launched their own volunteering “festival.”

Since 1991, thousands have taken part in the Farkha International Youth Festival, during which volunteers carry out public works across the village, learn new skills, and eat food home-cooked by grateful families.

Beginning in 2017, young men who grew up taking part in and organizing the festival started running for the local village council, winning seats and applying their volunteer experience on a wider scale in the form of public policy.

Under their municipal volunteer scheme, Farkha’s village council lists weekly projects, and within hours people pledge their time, funds, and materials to carry them out.

Taylor Luck

A donkey carries a day's worth of a farmer's olive harvest up to the village of Farkha, West Bank, Oct. 25, 2022.

For the past five years, the maintenance of schools and streets has been conducted year-round and self-funded by the community; residents no longer wait for the lethargic Palestinian Authority to act.

The program has transformed the look of the village: Residents have renovated Farkha’s historical center and Ottoman stone houses, rebuilt part of a high school, created a football pitch, built the village’s first children’s center, and developed an eco-farm.

“When people started to feel the value of their public spaces and facilities, they started to take care of them. They began to realize that ‘private’ property is not more important than ‘public’ property,’ but in fact public spaces are more important,” says Mr. Hammad. “Volunteering has become a culture here.”

When COVID-19 and its lockdowns hit, the young village council members provided residents with saplings and seedlings to manage food shortages and encourage a return to their farming roots.

While some grow spinach and potatoes, today other residents raise chickens or sheep and provide eggs and milk to one another, harking back to a time before the first intifada 35 years ago when the village was completely self-reliant for food.

Independence bid

There is a deeper purpose to this revival of social solidarity.

Farkha still relies on the Palestinian Authority and Israel for a large portion of its water.

The high price and taxes imposed on water from Israel and the Palestinian Authority have raised costs for farmers, many of whom say they have turned their backs on commercial farming as economically noncompetitive.

Instead, many work on Israeli settlements within the West Bank, where they can make three times the income.

To help people return to farming, the Farkha village council took over the distribution of water to farmers directly, without the service fees the Palestinian Authority normally charges.

It has already made an impact.

Taylor Luck

Agricultural engineer Ghazi al-Sharif prunes tomatoes at the farm he recently opened in Farkha, West Bank, Oct. 25, 2022, amid community cooperative reforms ushered in by the village council. “To be able to practice what I studied in my home village is something special,” he says.

Ghazi al-Sharif, a 20-something agricultural engineer, did his own economic feasibility study and found that with the new lowered water costs, growing vegetables in a plastic hothouse could be profitable. He acted.

“To be able to practice what I studied in my home village is something special,” he says as he prunes a tomato vine in his hothouse. “Some of my friends think I am crazy, but I am making a living from our own land and selling to my neighbors. We are becoming more connected.”

Now, the village council is focusing on building two large artesian wells, in compliance with Israeli restrictions to complement home wells, to make the village completely water independent. The new wells are expected to cut water costs for Farkha farmers and residents by half; a solar energy project is planned that aims to take Farkha off-grid.

“We cannot become 100% self-sufficient in all areas within the next four years, but we can become completely self-sufficient in some areas,” says Mr. Hammad.

“If you can cut water costs for people, you will encourage people to farm. If you encourage people to farm, you will have food security and a source of income, so people don’t feel like their only choice is to work in settlements on occupied land.”

Community in a bottle of oil

This community-first ethos can be found even in Farkha’s olive oil.

To lower farmers’ costs and encourage residents to process their olive oil in line with European Union standards, the village council and nearby voluntary associations came together and built their very own olive press.

Taylor Luck

Farmers wait for their olives to be pressed at a community-run olive press in Farkha, West Bank, Oct. 25, 2022.

After learning about certified organic and environment-friendly production methods of extra-virgin olive oil at Farkha’s community eco-farm, the village now exports to France and Belgium.

At the communal olive press on a late October night, farmers backed their trucks in to unload hundreds of pounds of freshly picked olives and stayed with one another until everyone’s press was done.

“We have all helped picked each other’s trees; now we press oil together,” says Mohammed, a Farkha resident. “My harvest is not finished until all our harvests are finished.”

Farkha’s young visionaries have larger plans: spreading their al Ouneh-based model to other Palestinian communities.

They have established a West Bank volunteer network, with a second branch in Tulkarm – founded by young men and women who participated in Farkha’s festival – and a third in Ramallah.

Under the new network, democratic local councils will identify and organize public works, just as in Farkha.

“Topography and geography do not make a village,” Mr. Hammad says. “Social cohesion is what makes a village.”

Over the past half-century, the so-called Kerala model of development has helped transform a poverty-stricken state in southern India into a bastion of economic and social well-being.

From a foundation of equity and inclusion, Kerala built what experts describe as one of the developing world’s first safety nets, and has repeatedly ranked high above the rest of India on the Human Development Index, despite low per capita income. Literacy rates, life expectancy, and human rights records in Kerala state resemble that of developed nations. 

It’s a story of transformation and human progress that many Keralites relate with pride – yet increasingly with criticism as well.

“I have witnessed the many improvements that came with the model we followed,” says Jose Dominic, a local business leader who started out as an accountant and built CGH hotels, one of the country’s top hospitality and tourism enterprises. “It’s something Keralites can be proud of, but we must recognize it was a transformation of the 20th century. … In many ways Kerala is not keeping up.”

Indeed, Kerala today is known more for low job growth, high out-migration of its educated young people, and a hostile environment for the private sector, the main driver of growth in India. Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones for Apple in China, came to look at Kerala for a new iPhone plant that will create 30,000 jobs. But the tech manufacturer opted instead for neighboring Tamil Nadu, where it recently opened the first phase of its new India operations.

Of all the challenges facing Kerala today, Mr. Dominic and many other Keralites believe the most important test will be whether the state can adapt its development model to the 21st century to ensure new generations find the same prosperity Keralites built in the past.

“The big issue today for Kerala is this: Can we afford to preserve the benefits of our model,” he says from his spacious home in the business capital of Kochi, “while decentralizing our economy and freeing up the private sector to create jobs so people can stay here?”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Kochi, historically known as Cochin, has been a port of the Malabar Coast's spice trade since the 14th century. Old Town Kochi's famed Chinese fishing nets were introduced to Kochi by Chinese fishermen centuries ago.

The birth of the Kerala model

As India marked a decade as an independent nation in 1957, many in the former crown jewel of British colonies seemed to have little to celebrate. Yes, India was a democracy, but millions of Indians were poor and illiterate, focused day to day on staving off hunger and unable to give much thought to building a better future.

That same year, one Indian state stood out – even drawing the alarmed attention of the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington. Kerala, home to the storied Malabar Coast and once the production end of the spice trade that enriched Europe, became one of the first places in the world to bring a communist government to power through elections.

Kerala’s voters were not attracted by the notion of revolution, historians and political scientists say, but rather by a vision of economic and social development based on universal education, public health, and equity of economic opportunity across castes and religions. 

What would come to be known as the Kerala model of economic and social development was born.

Ensuing decades of leftist rule stuck to the model, as Keralites elected governments alternating between the Communist Party (Marxist) and the traditional leftist Congress Party – or what some describe as steady “left or left-of-left” governance. For Brown University sociologist and India expert Patrick Heller, what took hold in Kerala was not so much classic communist rule but “social democratic governance in a third-world setting.” 

Although it helped put the state on the map, some worry Kerala has outgrown its model. 

“India is young, but Kerala is turning old, and I worry that unless we open the doors to a vibrant economy with jobs for our young people we will end up with an old population living off remittances,” says Mr. Dominic. “That is not a model for Kerala or India.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

A Kochi fishmonger displays his offerings in Kochi's old town on Nov. 12, 2022.

Ongoing exodus

There are signs that Kerala’s leftist political leaders recognize the state has deep economic problems – including a crushing debt built up over years of paying for the safety net. Even some of Kerala’s communist leaders acknowledge that the vaunted model needs to change to survive.

Still, for many Keralites, change is not happening fast enough. Welder Shelju Josh plans to take his skills to New Zealand, where his Keralite wife is already working as a nurse. 

“Yes I hear about Kerala changing to allow more jobs, but what I see is everyone I know looking to go to another country,” says Mr. Josh.

“Kerala is home but there are no good jobs here,” adds the young father, “so how can you stay?” 

Vinod Mathew, a Malayalee (as Keralites call themselves) and longtime economics analyst, says the loss of the Foxconn plant and other blows to Kerala’s self-image may be the jolt the state needs to refashion its model for the 21st century. 

“Malayalees have long seen education as their passport to economic freedom,” he says. “But we haven’t continued to move forward, especially in the quality of higher education. Now most families will now beg, borrow, or steal to send their children abroad.”

Indeed some streets in Kochi, Kerala’s largest city and business capital, are crowded with recruitment agencies using giant billboards to attract college students to higher education opportunities in Europe or high-tech jobs in the United States.

Mr. Mathew cites as a product of the Kerala model his mother, who despite having no money growing up was able to rise all the way to a postgraduate degree in social work to fulfill her dream of assisting Kerala in its march forward in living standards and well-being.

“Those kinds of life stories were more the norm in her era,” he says. “Over time we got complacent with the good thing we have, and we forgot to look out at the world and see the change.”

Now, he adds, “young Malayalees with ambitions like my mother had are dreaming of opportunity anywhere but here.”

Indeed, more than 4 million Keralites are estimated to have left for the Gulf alone over the past two decades, while others seek work in Europe, the United States, and even other Indian cities.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Jafir Malik, pictured on Nov. 11, 2022, is the director of Kudumbashree, a government-funded organization in Trivandrum, Kerala, that promotes women's participation in the economy. He says that over three decades, the organization has assisted hundreds of thousands of Keralite women enter the workforce.

Possibility of progress

Of course, there are still examples of the Kerala model at work.

On a recent day in the capital of Trivandrum, a team of seamstresses was busy assembling uniforms for a nearby martial arts school and mass-producing cloth bags to meet new demand created by Kerala’s recent ban on plastic bags.

They work for Needle Touch Garments, a small sewing business that used a $2,400 loan from Kudumbashree, a government program that aims to expand women’s access to the economy, to increase staff and purchase new sewing machines.

“I used to stitch for my own family and sometimes for neighbors, but now with this I’m also fulfilling a dream of helping other women improve their lives and conditions for their families,” says Needle Touch founder Maya Redi, who has a masters degree in commerce.

Kudumbashree’s new young director, Jafir Malik, says that over three decades the organization has assisted hundreds of thousands of Keralite women enter the workforce. But he recognizes that Kudumbashree’s focus on microfinancing for individual women’s small businesses and skills-building classes in talents like sewing is no longer meeting Kerala’s needs.

“That approach worked well in the past, but with the changing times we realize that the small-scale units won’t meet the needs of large enterprises or our goal of helping more women improve their lives,” Mr. Malik says.

Under his direction, Kudumbashree has shifted to focus on three new priorities: boosting the skills of younger women, helping meet the employment needs of large companies, and working more with disadvantaged communities such as disabled people and trans women. 

Over the last three years, Kudumbashree has trained 74,000 women in new skills including tech-manufacturing assembly and understanding software. “Of those, 65,000 got jobs allowing them to build their lives here in Kerala,” Mr. Malik says.

The changes reflect both Kudumbashree’s and the state government’s recognition that the model that helped make Kerala an example for India has failed to evolve with a changing national and global economy, he says.

At the same time, Mr. Malik insists that the image of a failing Kerala that is hidebound, unfriendly to business, and unattractive to its young people “has also not kept up with the reality.”

As evidence, he points to a recent survey gauging the ease of doing business in Indian states which found that Kerala is moving up. “For a long time Kerala was stuck at 28 of the 30 states,” he notes, “but it’s now nearing the top 10. That’s real progress.”

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File

Protesters fill the street in front of the United States Supreme Court in Washington after the court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, June 24, 2022. Justice Samuel Alito offered adoption as an alternative to abortion in his opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Five decades ago, Kathy Aderhold was told to keep a secret. 

The nursing student hid the reason for her monthslong absence from siblings and friends. She couldn’t bring a camera where she went, she says, let alone her full name. The other girls called her Kathy H. 

The secret weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces when she opened her eyes to the world in the hospital wing of a Salvation Army maternity home in Omaha, Nebraska, in January 1972. For a few days after the birth of her daughter, Ms. Aderhold recalls being allowed to sit in a storeroom for one hour, away from the other mothers, and hold the soft-haired wonder she named Jessica Ann.  

“Every day I told her I would find her again,” says Ms. Aderhold, who knew what came next.

Facing pressure from her Catholic family as an unwed 20-year-old, and without counseling about alternatives, Ms. Aderhold says she felt she had no choice but to “surrender” her baby to a Catholic organization for adoption. 

Adoption was promoted as a way to save Ms. Aderhold, and other middle-class white women of her generation, from social shame. Instead, she says, secrecy and loss shattered her sense of self-worth.

Her story may seem far removed from adoption today, which Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito offers as an alternative to abortion in his opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That June ruling ended women’s nearly 50-year right to abortion through Roe v. Wade, decided a year after Ms. Aderhold left the maternity home, childless.

According to the justice, Americans who support abortion restrictions note that “a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home.”

Yet, while abortion opponents hail adoption as a mutual blessing for parents on both sides, the number of families wanting to adopt has long outpaced the number of women who choose to relinquish. And despite an increasingly open process in which birth mothers have a say in choosing a “suitable home” for their child, adoption remains a rare choice for pregnant women.

Several adoption practitioners interviewed doubt the Dobbs decision will change this. But some see the fresh attention to infant adoption, where concerns about informed consent still exist, as an opportunity to further improve the process. Key changes that could better meet expectant mothers’ needs include enhanced transparency and openness, along with better representation and resources. 

“Adoption is complicated, and it should not be seen as a simple solution to an unintended pregnancy,” says Janice Goldwater, founder and CEO of Adoptions Together, a nonprofit agency in Maryland. Beyond a one-time legal event, she adds, adoption has lifelong implications. “In a sense, we have to go against our biology,” she says. “We’re wired as living creatures to care for our young.” 

Secrecy and the sexual revolution

While stigma associated with unplanned pregnancies outside marriage still lingers in some communities, the social push for secrecy has largely dissolved. White women were the primary ones pressured to relinquish their babies during what’s called the American “Baby Scoop” era – between the end of World War II through the early 1970s.

Ms. Aderhold remembers routing letters home to Shelby, Nebraska, through someone in California, so that no one in her small hometown could detect that she was just 100 miles east in Omaha in a maternity home she likened to a “jail.” As she waited out her pregnancy, she says a priest warned her she’d go to hell if she kept the child. (The Salvation Army, in whose facility she lived and gave birth, did not respond to requests for comment. The agency listed on Ms. Aderhold’s relinquishment record, which later “reorganized” as Catholic Social Services of Southern Nebraska, hasn’t offered adoption services since the ’90s, says executive director Katie Patrick.) 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Kathy Aderhold, a "search angel" who helps others find long-lost relatives through genetic genealogy, sits in her home office in Denver, Aug. 29, 2022. She says she felt forced to "surrender" her first child for adoption in 1972 while staying at a Nebraska maternity home.

Over time, the sexual revolution reduced the emphasis on secrecy before and after birth, as stigma around pregnancy outside of marriage receded for well-off white women. For low-income women of color, a new stigma took hold, that of the “welfare queen.”

The end of the Baby Scoop era also coincided with a dramatic decline in relinquishment rates by never-married white women. A summary of research by Child Welfare Information Gateway offers “social acceptance of single parenthood” and a higher number of unmarried mothers in their 20s rather than their teens as possible reasons. Other researchers, including those at the Guttmacher Institute, attribute declines, in large part, to abortion.

Today, private domestic adoption in the United States – sometimes called infant adoption – is a complex institution subject to varying state laws. Families can match either through private, state-licensed agencies, or independently through self-matching or with the help of lawyers or unlicensed facilitators. It’s unclear how many infant adoptions are arranged outside traditional agencies, since the internet plays an outsize, untracked, and largely unsupervised role in expectant women and potential adoptive parents finding one another.

Faced with declining placements through adoption agencies, including prominent religious ones, many have scaled back their adoption services or stopped them entirely in recent years. Michigan-based Bethany Christian Services, a large evangelical organization, announced a reduction to its domestic infant adoption programs in the spring. According to a spokesperson this month, the decision to pause the intake of families at many of its locations remains in place despite the overturning of Roe.

Whether arranged through agencies or independently, some 25,700 private domestic adoptions took place in 2019, estimates the advocacy and membership organization National Council For Adoption in Alexandria, Virginia. That includes adoptions by relatives but excludes those by stepparents and is not limited to infants. NCFA research counts nearly 6,100 fewer in 2020, as the pandemic began, though changes to methodology make those figures hard to compare with prior years.

Unlike international adoption or adoption from state-run foster care, private domestic adoption rates haven’t been consistently tracked by the federal government, and the data NCFA collects from states varies widely.

“It’s hard to overstate how little we know, really, about private adoption in this country,” says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies abortion and adoption. 

Yet, however many adoptions occur annually and however mainstream the process has become, it remains the “first choice for very, very few women, whether or not they actually end up relinquishing,” says Dr. Sisson. Still, she estimates that the overturning of Roe could mean up to some 10,000 more private, infant adoptions a year. Comparatively, there were 930,160 abortions in 2020 counted by Guttmacher, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

“It grew truly into an incredible relationship”

Adoption professionals who resist one-to-one comparisons of adoption and abortion argue that relinquishing parental rights isn’t a reproductive decision but a parenting one. And though a birth mother’s desire for continued contact with her child may evolve over time, research suggests it can help her process grief.

Every family situation is unique, but “the data is pretty overwhelmingly clear that maintaining contact has benefits for everyone that’s involved,” says Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO at NCFA. 

Open adoptions, today considered the norm, can range from semi-open with limited contact through a third party, to fully open arrangements with visits. But no level of openness can be guaranteed. 

Jess Nelson in Michigan has seen both the precariousness and value of open adoptions. In 2011, when she became pregnant in her early 20s while finishing college, Ms. Nelson turned to adoption after it became too late for her to access an abortion.

“I chose adoption so that I wouldn’t have to struggle being a single mom,” she says. “I wanted more for her life than I could give her at the time.”

Ms. Nelson’s agency didn’t provide post-placement support, she says, and the adoptive family effectively closed what had been discussed as an open adoption involving text and Facebook messages. Within the same month that the adoption was finalized, the family sent her a Christmas card, she recalls, then never contacted her again. 

But Ms. Nelson has also witnessed the power of the alternative.

When she later became pregnant unexpectedly in 2017, she “self-matched” with an adoptive family through a friend of a friend, outside of an agency. She also found a counselor to help her work through her grief and trauma. Her second adoption remains open through regular communication and visits, she says. She has joined the adoptive family for a few holidays, including Christmas morning.

“It grew truly into an incredible relationship,” says Ms. Nelson, who works as a community manager at PairTree, an adoption startup based in Seattle, where she supports expectant mothers who create adoption plans.

The extent to which agreements outlining contact after placement are legally enforceable is hard to pin down. About half of states have some provision for enforceability, according to NCFA tracking as of July 2021, but the specifics vary widely.

Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium/AP/File

Michigan Supreme Court Justice David Viviano and Berrien County Chief Judge Mabel Johnson Mayfield join 11-year-old adoptee Kamryn LaRatta on the bench for photos on Nov. 21, 2022, during National Adoption Month, at the Berrien County Courthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan. The federal government tracks public adoption, but not private domestic adoption.

Abrazo Adoption Associates, a Texas agency that specializes in open adoptions, has a voluntary, customizable post-placement contact agreement for defining how, when, and with whom outreach is permitted between adoptive and birth families. But the document, which parents on both sides sign, underscores that such contact is a “privilege,” not necessarily a right (as some Texas law firms also note), regarding private adoptions in the state.

“In an open adoption, there has to be a certain level of accountability,” says Elizabeth Jurenovich, founder and executive director of Abrazo. “There has to be a willingness on [both sides] to put the child’s best interests at the heart of everything that’s done,” she says.

The prospect of openness wasn’t a make-or-break factor for Keshia Allsup when she chose adoption. But the Texan in her early 20s says it did ease the placement process.

In the summer of 2021, Ms. Allsup juggled work in food service while raising two kids under the age of 3 on her own. Finding herself unexpectedly pregnant, she couldn’t imagine affording time off with a third baby – much less diaper money.

“I knew that I would not be able to give him the life he deserves,” she says.

Ms. Allsup is against abortion, with limited exceptions, so didn’t consider it for herself. Through an online search, she chose Abrazo Adoption Associates, because the nonprofit agency mostly serves infertile adults and she wanted to help someone who couldn’t birth a child on their own. Though leaving the hospital without the baby was hard, she considers her unplanned pregnancy a “blessing.” 

“Maybe not for me, but for somebody else it was a blessing,” she says.

Transparency before, during, and after adoption

Angie Swanson-Kyriaco found herself unexpectedly pregnant in 1997. She says she was underemployed and dealing with an abusive partner, and abortion was logistically not an option. 

She thumbed through the Yellow Pages and found a local adoption lawyer, who helped her connect with the adoptive parents she ultimately chose. But she says the attorney ended up representing both her and the adoptive family, though she didn’t pay any of those legal fees.

“I didn’t have an advocate for me and my child, because the focus goes to the prospective adoptive parents and their needs,” says Ms. Swanson-Kyriaco, executive director of MPower Alliance, a San Francisco-based support network for birth parents. Her organization offers grants for mental health counseling, education, and financial emergencies – examples of post-placement support that other professionals would like to see expanded. 

The frequency of dual representation in adoption today is unknown, but the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA) is clear in its Birth Parent’s Bill of Rights: “You have the right to be represented by your own attorney at no cost to you.”

But it’s impossible to ensure birth mothers receive independent counsel.

“That’s the problem. … We can’t help something we don’t know anything about,” says New Jersey attorney Deb Guston, adoption director at AAAA.

In light of ongoing concerns about the potential for coercion – including the legal and ethical minefield around what expenses hopeful adoptive parents can cover for an expectant woman – birth mother advocates say education and transparency are key.

Part of that transparency has come from birth mothers, or “first” mothers, themselves, who have gained visibility over decades of going public with their adoption stories. Advocacy and support groups like Concerned United Birthparents, which emerged in the ’70s, have encouraged that community.

“Maybe the hardest part of all was that for 35 years, I was in emotional isolation,” says CUB board member and activist Leslie Pate Mackinnon, a first mother herself, living in Asheville, North Carolina. “I didn’t know there was another woman out there who had been through what I’d been through.”

She’s among the critics who see adoption leaving expectant mothers open to intimidation, because of their often-desperate situations. So is Renee Gelin, whose regret over having placed her second child for adoption led her to co-found Saving Our Sisters. It works to help expectant mothers choose family preservation over adoption, she says, by connecting them with resources – like education about their rights and financial aid averaging $2,500 – through a national network of volunteers.

“There’s a lot of people who make a lot of money, you know, separating mothers and their babies instead of supporting them. … We are filling that gap,” says Ms. Gelin, the nonprofit’s president, based in the Tampa, Florida, area.  

Many expectant mothers decide to shoulder the challenges of parenting rather than give up their parental rights, because they’re attached to their child, notes Laura Sullivan, program director at the Choice Network agency in Ohio, which serves around 300 pregnant women a year and facilitates about 15 adoptions annually. Despite new abortion restrictions across the country, Ms. Sullivan says she is still referring interested clients to abortion funds and clinics as part of Choice Network’s options counseling.

“We believe that adoption can’t be a wholehearted and ethical choice that a woman makes unless all options are available to her,” she says.  

A friendship 

The only option Ms. Aderhold felt she had at the Nebraska maternity home five decades ago was to relinquish her child. But Ms. Aderhold, now based in Colorado, never let go of her daughter emotionally. Decades after giving birth, she searched for her for months, eventually cold-calling her in the late ’90s. 

Kathy H. had kept her promise to Jessica Ann.

Except her name is Corry Key.

Courtesy of Lisa Moffatt

Corry Key, a veterinarian, was raised in a Catholic home knowing that she was adopted. Her birth mother, Kathy Aderhold, searched for and connected with her more than two decades after placing her for adoption.

The women met at the Denver International Airport the following winter. Asked to describe the encounter in separate interviews, both choose the same word. “Surreal.” 

Dr. Key grew up in what she calls a “wholesome” Catholic home, as an animal lover who eventually became a veterinarian. She says she was raised fully aware of being adopted and recognizes she may be “lucky” for generally not having felt compelled to find a genetic “missing piece.” Now with children of her own and living in Dardanelle, Arkansas, she says she was also concerned how her parents would feel if they learned she was searching.

“I’ve always had a very positive feeling about adoption because of being adopted, and that’s why I have my whole life been very pro-life,” says Dr. Key, who is Catholic. 

That’s tough for Ms. Aderhold, who supports abortion rights but says abortion was “not ever in the picture” for her in the early ’70s. Her experience not only soured her perception of adoption, but made her leave her Catholic faith. Yet despite their differing views, both agree their friendship is upheld by mutual respect and love.

Ms. Aderhold, who became a nurse and midwife and raised two children, has shared openly about her experience for years, served on adoption-related boards, and spoken with media. Now retired, she serves as a “search angel,” applying her skills in genetic genealogy to help others find long-lost relatives. 

In her Denver home, opposite the front door hangs a painting.

“It’s really special to me,” says Ms. Aderhold, pausing at the frame. 

In muted hues, a woman cradles an infant. Eyes are closed as they embrace. 

Dr. Key says she bought it as a gift, recognizing “she missed out on a lot of that with me.”

JAN WOITAS/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP/FILE

A boy takes on a hill in Leipzig, Germany. Pedaling uphill may leave you gasping for breath; going downhill can also leave you breathless.

I paused at the top of the hill, my right foot pressed back against the coaster brake on my bicycle. All I needed to do was lift my foot, and I would be swept down the hill. But I paused. To my 12-year-old eyes, the hill was a mountain and the slope impossibly steep.

The hill was at the back of the tennis courts in the park. Even though our small Kansas town was in the middle of a prairie, the park, just a block off Main Street, sank into the ground like a bowl. Old elm trees filled the basin, making it shady and cool. A small creek ran through the bottom. We often rode our bikes there.

On this day, we’d gone to the park and found a new challenge. Visitors had been taking a shortcut from the creek path up the hill to the tennis courts, and a faint dirt trail had formed on the hillside. 

What if we raced down it? 

***

When I returned to my hometown more than five decades later, I wanted to see three places: my family home, the public swimming pool, and that hill in the park. The passage of time has a way of distorting things, and I wanted to compare my recollection with reality. 

Our house seemed much smaller than I remembered. I couldn’t imagine a family of seven living inside, and I certainly couldn’t picture playing pickup games of football with my friends on the postage-stamp front lawn. Our house had been on the very edge of town. Next to it was an open field where I had driven the family car in circles, learning to use the clutch to shift the “three-on-the-tree” standard transmission. Now a house occupied that field.

I had a similar take on the public swimming pool. I had spent hundreds of hours in that pool, but in the 1960s, it had seemed much larger, capable of holding far more yelling, laughing kids than space would actually allow. The high diving board, which had given us such a different perspective on our neighborhood, was gone.

While our house and the swimming pool were smaller than I remembered, my memory of the hill in the park was still pretty accurate.

When my friends and I had first paused at the top of that hill, cars did not routinely have seat belts and bicyclists did not have helmets. More than half a century later, I stood once more at the top of that hill, looking down, but this time with a different set of eyes and an altered frame of reference. No wonder I’d held tight against the brake as a young boy.

Now, the risks seemed more obvious, even larger than we’d imagined as kids. With adult judgment, I could see the hill was at least 15 feet high and angled at about 35 degrees. There was plenty of slope to gain speed, to set up potential disaster. There were trees to the left and the creek with rocks to the right.

***

We pedaled to the base of the hill and walked our bikes up. They were old bikes, passed down through families and often through the neighborhood. They’d been scarred by spills, beaten by mishaps. We didn’t care. They were our tickets to freedom and adventure. 

Pushing our bikes to the top made us aware of the challenge. We knew that once we started down, there was no stopping or turning back. And right at the bottom of the hill, we would have to steer left to avoid dumping into the creek.

Dave went first. The tires on his bike bounced as he flew down the hill and along the creek, the momentum carrying him most of the way across the park. 

I was next. 

My heart was pounding. I balanced on the edge for a moment. Then I released the brake and yielded myself to gravity. 

Instant speed. Blurred vision. It felt as though I were falling, flying down the hill. Then a sinking back to the earth, back to horizontal. I bounced along the walking path, the bumps rattling my teeth, my hands clutching the handlebars in a death grip. I skidded to a stop next to Dave. Scott followed.

The three of us spent several minutes laughing, draining off the adrenaline. We had met the childhood challenge of riding our bikes down the steep hill.

We didn’t know it then, but we’d face many similar passages over the years – leaving home, getting married, moving to a different town, starting a new job, and many others – that would cause us to pause at the edge and collect our courage before we launched ourselves down the trails of our lives.

NASA via AP

In this false-color image, the blue and purple shows the hole in Earth's protective ozone layer over Antarctica on Oct. 5, 2022. Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing, a new report says.

Amid repeated studies showing that humanity is falling short of its targets to reduce global warming emissions, the United Nations issued some good news this week. The ozone, a thin layer of the upper atmosphere that shields Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, is healing.

That offers timely confirmation that nations can successfully unite to address environmental problems caused by human activity and potentially reverse the course of climate change. The conclusion was published in the agency’s latest four-year assessment of compliance with a 1987 international treaty banning an array of chemical substances that were damaging the protective layer.

The success of the Montreal Protocol charts a pathway in human thinking from alarm to cooperation to innovation in response to a common threat. It is “an encouraging example of what the world can achieve when we work together,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted.

A bond of three oxygen atoms, ozone is found in the stratosphere about 9 to 15 miles above the planet’s surface. In the early 1970s, scientists began warning that the gases then commonly used as refrigerants and spray-can propellants were deteriorating the layer by breaking apart ozone molecules. Those initial warnings led to limited bans on aerosols made of chlorofluorocarbons in the United States and a few European countries.

But broader consensus was elusive until scientists reported a massive hole in the ozone over Antarctica in 1985. That sparked a global response. Within two years, 46 countries gathered in Montreal to sign an agreement phasing out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances. Today it is one of the few universally ratified environmental treaties, adopted by 197 countries and amended to govern 96 different substances used in thousands of industrial applications.

Although climate change is a much larger and more economically diversified challenge, the global response to the ozone threat holds useful lessons – particularly building trust among potential adversaries – that can lead to stronger regulations and faster innovation. As Robert Falkner, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, noted in the 2005 book “The Business of Global Environmental Governance,” chemical companies played a pivotal constructive role in the Montreal Protocol’s design and subsequent success.

“The fact that we rarely talk about the ozone anymore is a testament to our success in tackling it,” wrote Hannah Ritchie, head of research at Our World in Data, in Works in Progress online magazine. “We can involve every country. ... And we can take action quickly when we’re running up against time.”

The U.N. estimates the ozone layer will be restored to its 1980 condition by 2040. The study found that compliance with the treaty and subsequent amendments has helped mitigate global warming by as much as a full degree Celsius.

“Science,” the U.N. stated, “has been one of the foundations of the Montreal Protocol’s success.” The report is a note of calm in an atmosphere of alarm and frustration. It marks the potency of honesty, unity of purpose, and persistence – qualities of thought that can brighten humanity’s pathway through climate change.