Near Lebanon’s border with Israel, a Hezbollah missile specialist now braces for war like never before.

Wearing black tactical trousers, green camouflage, and a pistol – capped by a fatigued look that is by turns elated and anxious – the officer in the Iran-backed Shiite militia says his morale and expectations of imminent battle could not be higher.

That is because he believes Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 raid, which left 1,400 Israelis dead and triggered an Israeli ground assault into Gaza, is heralding a broader, long-awaited fight against Israel and its staunch American ally by every regional armed wing of Iran’s self-declared “Axis of Resistance.”

“Oct. 7: We can call it the day of the beginning of the fall of Israel; that makes our morale shoot sky high,” says the Hezbollah veteran of 22 years, who gives the name Hassan.

“We can assure you, as Hezbollah, when we do receive the order to intervene and take sides with Hamas against the Israelis, immediately you will see the difference,” Hassan says. “We are definitely going to put a stop to all these massacres committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians.”

Indeed, from Yemen to Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, the range of offensive moves taken so far by the Iran-backed factions – which have been cultivated, armed, and supported for decades by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – indicates that they have already been activated.

Hussein Malla/AP

Hezbollah fighters mourn as they attend the funeral procession of two comrades killed in recent cross-border fighting with Israel, in Kherbet Selem village, south Lebanon, Oct. 10, 2023.

The jewel in the crown of that “axis” is the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is battle-hardened after a decade of war in Syria and has an estimated arsenal of more than 150,000 missiles that has for years ensured mutual deterrence with Israel.

Yet orders for an all-out Hezbollah assault on Israel were not announced Friday in Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s much-anticipated first public comments since Oct. 7.

Mr. Nasrallah’s fiery rhetoric decried American “hypocrisy” and claimed there was no more critical fight than “against these Zionists,” but it masked a careful effort to navigate competing priorities and motivations for Iran, Hezbollah, and the other factions.

Hezbollah had increased its operations “day by day,” he said, taking a calculated “risk” to tie down Israeli troops to benefit Hamas.

“We are ready for all possibilities,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “Whoever wants to prevent a regional war, and I am talking to the Americans, must quickly halt the aggression on Gaza.”

Iran has applauded the Hamas assault, which harnessed years of clandestine Iranian support with arms, cash, and weapons-building technology to inflict the gravest attack on the Jewish state since its founding in 1948.

But the shock of that savage attack has also prompted a ferocious Israeli response, including more than 10,000 air and missile strikes – and a ground offensive bent on destroying Hamas altogether. Some 9,000 people have been reported killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Houthi Media Center/Reuters

Houthi fighters gather during maneuvers near Sanaa, Yemen, Oct. 30, 2023.

Already Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels have fired three batches of missiles and drones more than 1,000 miles toward Israel. Iran-backed Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq have likewise mounted dozens of attacks against American troops in those countries.

And Hezbollah has engaged with Israel in attacks that are gradually claiming more lives on both sides and expanding deeper into each other’s territory – including simultaneous strikes Thursday against 19 Israeli targets.

Iran: Success vs. setback

“If the Israelis don’t topple Hamas in Gaza, if they do a ground incursion and then withdraw, then it would be a major victory for the whole ‘Axis of Resistance,’” says Fabian Hinz, a Berlin-based expert on Iranian and regional missile capabilities at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

For the Iran-backed militias, past progress has usually been measured by episodes of conflict that afterwards created new levels of deterrence and capabilities against Israel, he says, without going so far as to risk the destruction of any single group.

But the sheer scale of the Hamas attack may prove to be a “major miscalculation,” says Mr. Hinz, by changing that gradual trajectory and triggering such a powerful Israeli response against Hamas that possibly no action – even from Hezbollah – could stop it.

“This carefully built-up deterrence ... [leading] to Hamas having tens of thousands of rockets and being able to make a ground incursion – basically all of that was gambled away by Hamas in that attack,” adds Mr. Hinz.

“If you [the ‘axis’] are not able to deter the Israelis from marching into Gaza, it is a major setback,” he says. “It’s a very high-stakes game.”

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

A protester holds a poster showing the leader of Yemen's Houthi movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthri (left) and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, at a demonstration against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, Nov. 3, 2023.

The Palestinian cause and anti-Israel venom have been an ideological pillar of Iran’s leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian officials boast that Palestinian militants, who once fought with stones, knives, and slingshots, today use rockets, ballistic missiles, and drones from Iran – in a transformation that Iran has repeated across its proxy militias.

“The hands of all parties in the region are on the trigger,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned last week, as Israeli tanks moved into Gaza.

Iran’s calculations

Iran has denied any direct role in the Hamas raid. Yet in the current battle, Hamas leaders have called on Hezbollah and Iran to do more to help them.

“I don’t think the Iranians want to sacrifice Hezbollah on the altar of Hamas, because at the end of the day, Hezbollah is a prime component of Iran’s deterrent strategy,” says Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based Hezbollah expert with the Atlantic Council.

“If you tell Hezbollah to go full-on with Israel, irrespective of the outcome, Hezbollah is going to take a battering, and there is no guarantee they’ll be able to reequip and rearm as quickly as they did after 2006, to continue serving as deterrence for Iran,” says Mr. Blanford, author of “Warrior of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel.”

“I sense cooler heads prevailing for now, but that is a logical assessment,” he says. “I think the Iranians are logical, but the calculus may change, given the carnage in Gaza.

“I can see a lot more activity” along the Lebanon-Israel border, such as drone attacks, limited incursions, and ambushes, “to keep it all bubbling along,” says Mr. Blanford. He notes that Hezbollah’s options short of all-out war include “many, many shades of gray.”

Hussein Malla/AP

Supporters of Iran-backed Hezbollah shout slogans, as they await the speech of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, at a rally in Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 3, 2023.

The rockets and drones fired by Yemen’s Houthis have so far all been shot down, either by American warships in the Red Sea or Israel, or landed in Egypt or Jordan. But Abdelaziz bin Habtour, the prime minister of the Houthi government that controls Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, said this week that Houthi forces would continue strikes as “part of the ‘Axis of Resistance.’”

There is “one ‘axis,’ and there is coordination taking place, a joint operations room, and a joint command for all these operations,” the Houthi politician said.

What the Houthis gain

“This is Iran’s investment in the Houthis manifesting itself,” says Nadwa al-Dawsari, a Yemen expert with the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“The Houthis were guerrilla fighters in the remote north of Yemen, but the Iranians have been training them for at least the last 20 years, [with] IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and Quds Force commanders on the ground, helping them develop missile and drone technology,” says Ms. Dawsari.

“Iran has made the Houthis what they are,” she says.

At the same time, taking part in the fight against Israel as part of Iran’s transnational “axis” also serves the Houthis at home, where criticism has grown over their ineffective rule during a year and a half of relative peace.

“Internally, the Houthis need war, in order to justify controlling the population without governing, so this is like a dream come true,” says Ms. Dawsari. “It is also a great opportunity for the Houthis to gain popularity and recruit fighters.”

Closer to Israel, on Lebanon’s southern border, Hezbollah missile expert Hassan – whom friends say is a “true believer” – recalls telling the Monitor in Beirut in August that his “main fear is to die without liberating Palestine – but we can see it getting closer.”

After Oct. 7, what did Hassan tell his family, when he left for this southern front?

“I told my family: Pray for me. God willing, I may become a martyr on the road to Palestine.”

A Lebanese researcher contributed to this report from near the Lebanon-Israel border.

For Tracey Love Graves, the childhood memory has the gauze of a fairytale: crossing the causeway at night, a turn down a gravel road, massive oak branches reaching across the car like claws in the moonlight.

Ms. Love Graves, a film actress, arches her arms and fingers into a canopy as she tells the story. Trepidation, she says, turned to relief when the car slipped into the driveway of the island homestead of Josephine Wright, her grandmother.

That formative sense of shelter runs strong for Ms. Love Graves, the youngest of Ms. Wright’s 40 grandchildren. Today, however, the oaks along the road have long been felled along with much of the maritime forest in which she played as a child. The threat now, she says, is no longer in her imagination. It is a developer suing Ms. Wright, who is now in her 90s, in a bid, the family believes, to force a sale to complete a large subdivision of high-end homes.

But Ms. Wright has fought back. She has built a coalition that includes the hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg and Atlanta film tycoon Tyler Perry, who has said Ms. Wright’s determination reminds him of his own grandmother. Recently, he even vowed to build her a new home. Ms. Love Graves calls her grandmother “a gentle force, always a presence.”

Ms. Wright’s story has resonated because “this isn’t just about money, but ... who we are,” says Ms. Love Graves in an interview in her grandmother’s front yard. “The struggle isn’t isolated to history or some remote island. In fact, where isn’t this happening?”

Black land loss

Property has always been a vital way for Americans to accrue wealth, and since Reconstruction, Black landowners have been systematically dispossessed of theirs. In 1910, Black farmers owned some 16 million acres, according to an American Bar Association study. Now, they own only 10% of that land. 

The means of Black land loss are many and varied. Through Jim Crow, Black landowners were killed or violently thrown off their land. Local governments and banks have historically used discriminatory practices. And businesses have swooped in to take advantage of complex laws and cases in which heirs dispute ownership to pick apart properties piece by piece.

The problem extends beyond rural America and beyond Black America. As a primal element of power, land has flowed from the weak to the strong for centuries. White communities in Appalachia and Hispanic and Native American communities in the Southwest see the same trends. But increasingly, forces are aligning around these underserved communities to help them maintain control of their land. And Ms. Wright’s story, though not concluded, shows elements of that shift.

“We live in a country which has always seen land as the major source of wealth, and, as a result, there are a bunch of people both empowered and disempowered – we’re now living with 300 years of that having played out,” says Scott Schang, director of the Heirs’ Property Project at Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

“What’s changed,” he adds, “is suddenly some people have rights again, and now you’re trying to untangle a legal system that tries very hard to make sure property ownership is clear and uninterrupted – and that’s clashing with people trying to save not only their wealth but also their sense of identity and culture.”

There are common denominators in heirs’ property losses, says sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University in Alabama. The first is the marginal status of owners. This is compounded by a lack of access to trustworthy legal services, and an inability, without clean title to property, to tap into equity and government benefits.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Atlanta-based film actress Tracey Love Graves talks with her nephew Sept. 10, 2023, outside the Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, home of her grandmother, Josephine Wright, whose battle against a developer is part of a larger struggle for Black land rights in the U.S.

“Shark repellent” wards off developers

During the past decade, however, more than a dozen states have reformed these laws to create what some experts call “shark repellent.” The new laws make it harder for predatory land prospectors to strike low-ball deals with distant heirs.

The shift has begun to seep into how disputes are resolved in courts and in the public square.

For example, in rural Karnes County, Texas, a county court this summer adjudicated a long-running dispute between a white ranch family and the descendants of a Black family who both held title to land targeted by oil and gas prospectors.

The jury waded through the complex web of deeds, titles, and historical documents to find that the more than 100 descendants of the Black Eckford family were entitled to what may amount to substantial royalties from tapping the land. 

Here in South Carolina, leaders in Beaufort County – which includes Hilton Head Island – took their own steps to help. In the 1990s, they created a heritage zoning overlay for neighboring St. Helena Island that bans gated communities and golf resorts. But this summer, a developer asked the local county commission to waive those restrictions to build a new golf course. 

The developer, Elvio Tropeano, noted at a hearing that the association of a golf course with culture loss had created difficulties in explaining a project that he proposed as a “purpose-built community” that would be an engine for revitalization and include environmental and cultural conservation.

The county commission denied the request, stating that the overlay was intended to bar golf course development. Hundreds of locals appeared in opposition to the project at multiple hearings. Mr. Tropeano appealed.

Ms. Wright is now caught in the middle of a different project. The developer, who did not respond to the Monitor’s inquiries, claims in a lawsuit that parts of Ms. Wright’s house are on land already sold by other heirs. The family sees it as a ploy to force a sale. But local elected officials took note. The Hilton Head Town Council this summer halted all permitting on the project until the dispute is settled.

The history of Black land loss is particularly fraught here on the Sea Islands, a necklace of barrier islands that spills from North Carolina to Florida. A century ago, the region was a center of Black land wealth. Most owners were Gullah Geechee, descendants of formerly enslaved people brought to Charleston and Savannah from West Africa.

For decades, the islands were considered inhospitable, if not unlivable. Yet the Gullah Geechee thrived by fishing and farming, often in near-complete isolation. (As a result, many natives still retain a distinct brogue.) But the rise of air conditioning and mosquito control created powerful incentives to transform the islands.

Barrier islands of white wealth

“All of a sudden, these places are where a lot of white wealth wants to be and wants to develop,” says Jessie White, the South Coast office director of the Coastal Conservation League in Beaufort, South Carolina. “A combination of multiple forces” led to rapid land loss.

Clouded titles often resulted from complicated heirs’ property laws. And skyrocketing property taxes created a growing burden that many could not afford.

“If the Native people are not able to afford to live in the paradise that they’ve lived in for generations, how is it considered paradise anymore?” says Luana M. Graves Sellars, founder of the Lowcountry Gullah, a nonprofit that assists families in protecting land. “How can you call it paradise if it’s only for someone else?” 

In his book, “The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South,” Andrew Kahrl, an African American studies professor at the University of Virginia, links the role of land ownership and development strategies along the Atlantic Coast to a broader struggle for economic empowerment for Black Americans.

The high rate of land loss, he writes, “causes us to reassess ... the slow, painful but nevertheless inexorable progress toward a just and equitable future.” In September, Black residents of the tiny Gullah-Geechee community on Georgia’s Sapelo Island sued to stop a new zoning that allows for bigger houses – and thus higher taxes that will push them off their land, they say.

Hilton Head “was the first great island to fall” to development, says Professor Thomson at Auburn, who studies the impacts of heirs’ property laws on communities.

Today, gated communities dominate Hilton Head’s beachfront and interior, while a few Gullah Geechee settlements remain tucked away on the island’s marsh side. Once-massive Black landholdings have been reduced to “crumbs,” says Ms. White, of the conservation council.

The 10,000 formerly enslaved people who remained on Hilton Head after the Civil War “knew that nothing in the United States was more important than land,” says Ms. Graves Sellars. “They understood the value of the land, but their blood, sweat, and tears are also in that land. Today, you can say a piece of property is worth a million dollars. Yet it’s priceless because of what went into it to provide the land for future generations.”

That is what Ms. Wright is fighting for. The Hilton Head Town Council putting a pause on development was a small victory. But Ms. Love Graves sees a bigger factor at work, too – South Carolinians’ desire to safeguard the value of home.

“We want to show ... that it’s possible to keep the land, generate wealth and live life on the land in peace,” she says.

Two American veterans who fought to defend China from Japan during World War II – retired Capt. Harry Moyer and retired Tech. Sgt. Melvin “Mel” McMullen – are flying high on a new mission. 

In the 1940s, the young aviators joined the “Flying Tigers,” the popular name for Americans serving with the 14th Air Force in China, commanded by Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault. With the benefit of that long lens, the 103-year-old Captain Moyer and 98-year-old Sergeant McMullen arrived in Beijing this week hoping to remind both Americans and Chinese of a powerful chapter in the countries’ shared history – one of extraordinary compassion and sacrifice – and encourage grassroots contacts despite tensions between Washington and Beijing.

During dire combat moments in China, “we knew that the best way – maybe the only way – we could survive was to fly our plane ... far away from the target area so that we might be picked up by a brave villager,” Sergeant McMullen said Monday at a ceremony honoring the visiting Flying Tigers delegation at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Highlighting such bonds is part of a recent ramping up of people-to-people ties by China and the United States. Both sides hope the exchanges will add ballast as they work to stabilize relations and prepare for a widely anticipated meeting – confirmed by the White House on Tuesday – between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November.  

Beyond possible agreements in areas such as counternarcotics, climate, travel, and technology, the U.S. and China have broad objectives for the meeting, experts say.

Washington hopes that a successful Biden-Xi meeting will “unlock, especially in the Chinese system ... [a] clear signal by Xi Jinping that it’s safe to engage with the Americans,” says Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

For its part, Beijing believes a meeting will “position Xi Jinping well domestically,” and that “stabilizing the relationship ... gives them a better chance to moderate future U.S. actions,” he says.

Andy Wong/AP

Harry Moyer (right) gestures to Mel McMullen (left) during an embassy ceremony in Beijing, Oct. 30, 2023. Mr. McMullen and Mr. Moyer – who just turned 103 – are among the few surviving members of the “Flying Tigers,” and came to China to honor a powerful chapter in the countries’ shared history.

Warm welcome

As U.S.-China relations have sharply deteriorated, public opinion has soured as well, with surveys indicating most Americans hold negative views of China, and vice versa. 

Both governments are now are working to counter this trend by strengthening cultural, educational, and business exchanges. The U.S., for example, welcomed a Beijing dance troupe to perform at a Chinese cultural festival in Washington this past September, and Mr. Biden sent a letter of congratulations to the Chinese Americans who organized the event. 

Mr. Xi has also publicly advocated for increased exchanges between ordinary Chinese and Americans in recent months. “In growing China-U.S. relations, the foundation lies in the people, and the hope,” he said last week. 

When Captain Moyer, Sergeant McMullen, and Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation Chairman Jeffery Greene together sent a letter to Mr. Xi in advance of their China trip, Mr. Xi wrote back. His letter featured prominently in China’s state-run media.

“In the past, our two peoples fought the Japanese fascists together, and forged a deep friendship that withstood the test of blood and fire,” Mr. Xi wrote, according to a front-page article in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main mouthpiece. He called for “a new generation of Flying Tigers” to advance U.S.-China relations.

Against this backdrop, the visit this week by Captain Moyer and Sergeant McMullen created a bit of a Chinese media sensation. National television reports and posts on China’s popular social media platform Weibo showed them chatting with Vice President Han Zheng, strolling along the Great Wall in olive-green World War II bomber jackets, and saluting a statue of General Chennault, who died in 1958. Hailing the visit with unusually upbeat remarks, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Wednesday called on Chinese and Americans from all walks of life to help “write a new chapter” in U.S.-China cooperation.

Ding Haitao/Xinhua/AP

Chinese Vice President Han Zheng (right) talks to Jeffrey Greene, chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, during a meeting with two U.S. World War II veterans at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Oct. 30, 2023.

An enduring love

Fanfare aside, listening to Captain Moyer and Sergeant McMullen’s down-to-earth accounts of their wartime China service, one can’t miss the compassion they felt for ordinary Chinese – and received in return. 

Growing up in Ohio, Captain Moyer loved visiting his father’s friend “Eddie,” a warmhearted Chinese man who ran a local restaurant. A 1937 film based on the novel “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck also left a deep impression. “It depicted the Chinese peasants tending their rice fields ... and the greenness,” he told the embassy gathering. “I can’t get that picture out of my mind.” 

When Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937, Captain Moyer was troubled by reports of Japanese atrocities. After being recruited in college by the U.S. Army Air Corps, he earned his fighter pilot wings, trained on the Curtiss P-40 “Warhawk,” and deployed with the 59th Fighter Squadron of the 33rd Fighter Group to combat German and Italian forces in North Africa and Italy. Then in 1944, when the 33rd received orders for the China-India-Burma theater, he had a chance to return to the U.S. – but, thinking of “Eddie” and the overall suffering of China’s people, he declined.

“I told the commanding officer, ‘I don’t want any orders to take me home. I’m going to go to China,’” he said. “And that’s what I did.” 

Upon landing in Kunming, China, General Chennault greeted him and the other 14th Air Force recruits, leaving a big impression on Captain Moyer. From there he flew to Sichuan province, with the job of defending the B-29 bombers striking Japan’s islands. He saw the rice fields. Chinese people “were so friendly,” he said. “They took care of us.”

“People are the same”

Sergeant McMullen, too, put his faith in Chinese villagers. An aerial gunner and assistant flight engineer, Sergeant McMullen was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service with the 14th Air Force’s 308th Bomber Group (Heavy), which flew B-24 Liberators in support of Chinese ground forces. He heard many stories of U.S. airmen being rescued after their planes went down.

“They would hide the airman by day, and by night, they would move him – from village to village – [until] they could finally be picked up by the Americans,” he told the embassy gathering. 

Sheltering Americans was dangerous work. When most of the U.S. bombers involved in the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo had to abandon their planes over eastern China, families there successfully safeguarded the airmen. But Japan later launched a brutal retaliation campaign, wiping out entire villages.

“There are hundreds of airmen that owe their life to those brave, brave people,” said Sergeant McMullen. “That’s something that we should all understand. People are the same. Governments may be different, but the people actually always have one desire, and that is to live and to raise their families in peace and in the customs of their predecessors.”

In all, more than 2,000 members of the Flying Tigers gave their lives to defend China, while thousands of Chinese died protecting American pilots in distress, according to official Chinese figures. General Chennault’s granddaughter, Nell Calloway, and Mr. Greene, from the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, work to educate young people in both countries about that shared sacrifice. 

“Americans don’t know that story,” Ms. Calloway told the gathering.

Captain Moyer, too, has a soft spot for China’s people, under his tough exterior. Holding a Guinness World Record for being the oldest licensed pilot – he made a solo flight on his 100th birthday – the former Flying Tiger celebrated his 103rd birthday in Beijing on Monday, cutting a cake decorated with the blue-and-orange Flying Tiger emblem. 

Returning once again to China, he said, “is just like putting on an old coat. ... It’s a great feeling. They put out their hearts for you.”

AP

Vehicles move past wind turbines in Livermore, Calif.

The transition to a green energy future required a long prologue as scientists and engineers sought efficient ways to harness wind, sunlight, and other renewable sources of power to curb climate change. Now that future may depend on tapping forces more commonly associated with building democracy than with developing technology.

That’s because green projects like wind turbines and solar farms, and new runs of high-tension power lines, face regulatory hurdles and opposition from diverse groups, calling on civic virtues such as listening, honesty, and fairness.

New polls show that more Americans may be willing to live near energy-producing infrastructure. One reason is that power producers are learning how to win over communities through patient engagement. Some critics of such projects “just don’t want it because they don’t want it,” Lisa Grow, CEO of Idaho Power, told the Los Angeles Times. So much of that resistance, she said, is based on misunderstanding. “But for people that have specific needs, I think it is worth the time to have a process where they can be invited in, and you can deal with some of those things upfront. If you wait until the end, you just have a fight.”

In a poll published Thursday, the LA Times and the University of California, Berkeley found that 56% of Californian voters support installing wind turbines in their communities. Even more (69%) say they would welcome solar farms. Almost double the number (52% versus 27%) back offshore wind turbines visible from their beaches.

Those views are even more widely upheld in polls across the United States. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in July found that more than 70% of Americans said they would be comfortable with solar farms and wind turbines in their communities. Engaging opponents of such projects, Doug Vine, director of energy analysis at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told The Washington Post, is “the secret sauce in making sure that these things come together.”

That idea is now the focus of a new course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first of its kind to focus on energy regulatory reform in the context of engaging communities. Larry Susskind, the professor who designed the course, argues that ignoring community concerns creates acrimony. The course looks for solutions to what often causes projects to stall – such as misinformation or concerns about environmental injustice. A listening-first approach for regulators in granting permits for new projects may seem simplistic, but it is winning converts.

“A lack of perceived fairness and equity, particularly in the decision-making processes at the local level, increases opposition” to proposed new energy projects, a group of researchers at UC Santa Barbara concluded in a paper published in September. That underscores the value of enabling the full range of stakeholders in a community to feel heard, they wrote.

A transition from fossil fuels is increasingly feasible because of technology advances. Public support is also helping that transition, driven by the light of patience and respect.