For eight years, the families of 43 students who went missing in September 2014 have been clear about who they believe is responsible for the crime: “Fue el estado.” (“It was the state.”) The phrase is regularly featured on banners at public demonstrations and graffitied across streets and buildings in Mexico.

This month, a government official for the first time publicly agreed, labeling the haunting disappearances “a state crime.”

In the days following that announcement, former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam was arrested for his role in the initial investigation. At least another 80 arrest warrants have been issued for government officials – from local police to soldiers – and gang members implicated in the case.

And just last week, Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, who heads up the case’s truth commission, took many by surprise once again by elaborating on the state’s involvement not only in the cover-up of what happened to the students but also in how it played a direct role in some of their deaths.

The Ayotzinapa case, named for the teachers’ school in the southern state of Guerrero, has gripped Mexican society, drawing thousands of protesters to the streets almost weekly in its immediate aftermath and monthly in the near decade since. The case became a symbol for widespread impunity, dishonesty, and lack of care for victims in the Mexican justice system.

Now that the government has taken some responsibility for it, the state has a chance to regain trust of the populace. There is still much more to be done, families and experts say – whether that’s actually seeing those responsible convicted for their crimes or identifying where any remains might be. Ultimately the implications of this case lie in whether the government offers lip service about responsibility or holds those responsible to account.

Marco Ugarte/AP/File

The Mexican attorney general's office announced this month it had detained former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam (pictured here). Mr. Murillo Karam was in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of 43 student teachers who went missing in southern Mexico in 2014, a case that has just been declared "a state crime."

“If you see your justice system failing over and over and over again, then you lose faith. You feel there is no system,” says Kate Doyle, a senior analyst and director of the Mexico Project at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit housed at George Washington University in Washington. “But if this case actually leads to convictions, leads to the identification of remains, or changes in the law, then [it sends a message] that this can’t happen again. Even if it’s just one case, it helps people think about the system differently.” 

“In my ... heart every day”

Protesters turned out in the pouring rain Friday carrying banners emblazoned with the boyish faces of the missing young men, all budding teachers. The energy was cautiously hopeful.

But for Mario González Contreras, who has marched down Mexico City’s main thoroughfare, Reforma, on the 26th of nearly every month since his only son’s unexplained disappearance, the demonstration didn’t feel different. His son, Cesar Manuel González Hernández, is still missing. It’s a reality that overwhelms him with pain, “rage, and anger that we feel month after month, day after day,” he says.

Nearly a decade later, a motive for the disappearances remains unclear, although most believe it’s connected to Mexico’s drug-fueled violence and that scores of student activists from the teachers’ college were inadvertently caught in the crosshairs. They were taken off buses by police in the town of Iguala. They’ve never been seen again.

Thanks to the interim report released by the Truth and Justice Commission on Ayotzinapa (COVAJ) this month, Mr. González knows more facts about the disappearance than he ever has. He knows which bus Cesar Manuel was riding on, which street the bus was stopped on, and that it was the local police who kidnapped him. That’s where the information ends, though – and it’s just not enough for Mr. González and his wife, Hilda Hernández Rivera.

“I’m going to keep searching for him with the same love and energy as always,” Ms. Hernández says. “I love my son and he is in my thoughts and heart every day and night, but the government just doesn’t understand that.”

The COVAJ report formally debunked former Attorney General Murillo Karam’s version of events, referred to by the former administration as the “historic truth” of the Ayotzinapa case. His story described all 43 students being brought to a garbage dump where they were supposedly killed and incinerated, with their ashes tossed in a river. The storyline has long been criticized as an attempt to quickly close a controversial case.

For Mr. González, debunking that theory was one of the most significant parts of the new report. “Murillo Karam caused us so much harm” with his version of the truth, he says. But more than just sitting behind bars, Mr. González wants to see Mr. Murillo Karam, who was arrested on charges of forced disappearance, torture, and obstruction of justice, share any information that he might have – such as who was carrying out orders and why.

Mr. Murillo Karam’s arrest wasn’t satisfying for Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexico City-based political analyst. “A lot of people will celebrate that he’s in jail. But in a country like Mexico, with so much impunity and manipulation of the justice system, putting someone in jail ... does not mean justice is being served,” he says. The same skepticism extends to acknowledging the state’s role in the tragedy.

“We are recognizing it’s a crime of the state – that’s great. But if that doesn’t come with actual names and evidence and an actual explanation of what happened, then it’s just empty rhetoric.”

Eduardo Verdugo/AP/File

A woman carries a banner that reads in Spanish, "We are missing 43," referring to the 43 missing students from a rural teachers' college, during a march in Mexico City in November 2015. A truth commission created to find out what happened to the missing students presented findings this month, suggesting the possible responsibility of the Mexican army in some of the disappearances.

Trust the army?

Additional revelations – some not included in the preliminary report – continue to trickle out. On Friday, Mr. Encinas shared that six of the Ayotzinapa students were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days following their abduction. The students were turned over to a local army commander, who then ordered their execution, Mr. Encinas said.

The role of the armed forces could be a complicating factor for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pledged to resolve Ayotzinapa when he took office in 2018. Although the president campaigned on demilitarizing Mexico’s approach to public security, the armed forces have become central to his presidency, as soldiers carry out infrastructure projects or control migration.

Although public trust is high for the armed forces, confidence falls when they carry out tasks like controlling protests, a recent study shows. How this administration moves forward now that it’s become clear that the armed forces were intimately involved in the Ayotzinapa case could determine how much the public will continue to tolerate their role in everyday government tasks.

Transparent trials and convictions of military officials and others implicated will be central to progress, Ms. Doyle says. Until 2018, Mexico resisted setting up a truth commission, making it one of the few countries in Latin America – a region wrought with a complicated history of human rights abuses at the hands of the state – without one. The commission is imperfect – parents like Mr. González and Ms. Hernández wish it was in better contact with them, sharing report findings before making them public. But it could help create accountability.

“If this all ends with the status quo we have today,” of no real answers or criminals answering for their actions, “that will be crushing for Mexico, never mind personally for these parents,” says Ms. Doyle.

After nearly eight years without their son who had dreamed of becoming a teacher, Mr. González and Ms. Hernández aren’t waiting for anyone to provide answers for them. For three years, Mr. González participated with COVAJ as one of five family members. He participated in its searches scouring hillsides, rivers, and caves across Guerrero state in pursuit of answers. The couple have traveled the world, meeting with other social activists whose loved ones have been disappeared and Mexican communities in the United States that have supported their crusade for truth.

In many ways, they understand that the responsibility to find their son, who Ms. Hernández says “is still alive” until she sees scientific evidence to the contrary, falls on their shoulders.

“Hope dies,” Mr. González says, only “when one stops breathing.”

Doug Struck

Rancher Matt Hanson stands beside the Root River, which floods more frequently now. He placed his land in conservation trusts because of the increased floods at his family ranch in Chatfield, Minnesota.

The West is drying and burning up. The Southwest is baking until it cracks. The South is sweltering, and the East is eyeing rising seas. So, to hide from climate change, Minnesota, tucked away in a northern nook of the country, might seem ideal.

One Harvard researcher even suggested “Climate-Proof Duluth” could be the perfect escape, with no oceans around the city to rise, plenty of cool weather, and all the fresh water one could want with enormous Lake Superior at its feet. Townsfolk talk of “climate refugees” moving there from southernly states.

But Minnesota is changing because of global warming. It is getting too much rain and not enough cold. 

“Our state is becoming warmer and wetter,” says Katrina Kessler, head of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. 

These changes are already altering the state’s landscape, bringing unprecedented flooding, shorter winters, and new challenges for farmers and outdoor enthusiasts. But even as climate change is shifting the traditions and economy of this northern state, many are realizing the need to adapt – and some are already seeking new paths of resilience.

Matt Hanson, for instance, lives on a farm in southeastern Minnesota tucked in the curls of the Root River. His family settled here in Chatfield a century ago. He has about 150 Hereford beef cows and owns 150 acres to grow corn and hay.    

When Mr. Hanson was younger, “every year you would get a spring flood from the snow melt. And then we’re usually done for the year,” he recalls. “Now we get floods all summer long. And there have been times that it’s been flooded four times in one summer.

The flooding, which Mr. Hanson blames on the increased rain and the corn and soybean fields upstream that shed the water in torrents, taking soil with it, can kill crops on the fields and endanger his cattle.

“You’d be out there in the middle of the night getting cattle out of the way for the flood so they didn’t get washed away,” he says. “I’ve spent many nights out there with a four-wheeler in the dark and a spotlight. I just got tired of that.” 

So he did what farmers and ranchers usually are loath to do: He gave up almost half his land. He put 140 acres into conservation trusts, guaranteeing it would be left wild. He moved his cows and crops off those fields, and planted natural prairie grasses. The 4-foot-tall grasses help hold the soil during floods, shelter wildlife, and keep the river clearer and moving slower.    

Minnesota officials say such sustainable land practices – natural buffers along riverbanks, cover crops, and no-till farming that lessen erosion – are needed to deal with the new climate.

Even beyond flooding, the climate changes afoot are serious business for Minnesota, which thrives on outdoor activities and a tourist-luring lore of “the land of 10,000 lakes.” 

“We may appear to be sort of quiet and cool from the outside,” says Meredith Cornett, climate change director for The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota and the Dakotas. “But we actually are experiencing some very significant impacts. We are warming more rapidly than most of the other places across the United States.”  

Minnesotans say they feel the change.

“When I was a kid, it was nothing to have a three-day blizzard. Now we hardly have anything in the winter,” says Ken Bertelson, chatting with pals at the Freeborn County Fair in Albert Lea, a town of about 19,000 in southern Minnesota. “I guess it’s global warming.”

Beside the cow barn at the fair, teenager Lindsey Nielsen is hosing off Wanda, her showcase breeding heifer, for the third or fourth time on this August day, when the heat index nudged 100 degrees. “The heat can be pretty serious for her,” says Ms. Nielsen.

Doug Struck

Lindsey Nielsen (in purple) and her friend Ellen Merkouris hose down Wanda, Ms. Nielsen’s showcase breeding heifer, on a hot August day at the Freeborn County Fair in Albert Lea, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says in the Twin Cities, average annual temperatures increased by 3.2 degrees F and rainfall increased 30% between 1951 and 2012, greater than the U.S. and global rate. Nighttime lows in the state have steadily marched upward, affecting ice thickness on lakes.   

“There’s not as much ‘good ice’ now,” says Dan Brown, who runs Legend Outdoors in Brainerd, in the middle of Minnesota. His company builds “fish houses” that ice fishers tow onto the lakes. “It used to be when I was younger, you could go fishing on Thanksgiving. Now a lot of times you can’t get out until after Christmas or early January,” he said as he took a break from his work. 

Of course, the image of rugged Minnesota fishers huddled beneath a blanket over a hole in the ice fades in looking at the accommodations Mr. Brown’s company builds. They are spacious trailers, with heat, television, and kitchens to cook in while the fishing line dangles through a porthole in the floor.

His 24-foot model, for example, weighs 6,000 pounds, and Mr. Brown recommends 17 inches of thick ice before towing it out with a pickup. 

The state says winters have shortened by 16 days since 1970, and there are 12 fewer days of lake ice. That trend “translates to millions and millions of dollars,” says Ms. Cornett.  

The overheating of global warming can throw local weather patterns into a tizzy. Summer heat waves snapped into floods in Texas, West Virginia, Nevada, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Yellowstone National Park. Globally, catastrophes unfolded in Pakistan and England. 

Minnesota, too, is seeing a wild swing of extremes. The state had record-breaking drought in 2021; by midsummer 2022, International Falls was having its wettest year ever. But the general trend is for more rain – according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Midwest has seen a 37% increase in precipitation from heavy rains from 1958 to 2012.

That has brought complications for farmers and periodic flooding to towns. New Ulm, Minnesota, 90 miles southwest of Minneapolis, is nestled between the Minnesota and Cottonwood rivers. The “all day soakers” – gentle rain that fell steadily – no longer are common, says the mayor of the town, Terry Sveine. Instead, the rains fall in fierce downpours, bringing flooding and challenging the sewage system. 

What the state authorities call “mega rain” events are four times more common than before 2000, costing millions of dollars in infrastructure damage.  

Minnesota has compounded the problem by wholesale drainage projects to shift water off farm fields, sending it crashing down rivers into towns like New Ulm. Mayor Sveine and his friend Scott Sparlin, an environmental consultant, sit in the mayor’s office in the town of 14,000 – once labeled the most German city in America for its heritage – and recall town floods that pumped the rivers dozens of feet higher.

“We need to start to mimic what nature used to do, which was to detain water,” says Mr. Sparlin.

Less obvious changes threaten cherished icons of the state. As summers and winters become warmer, experts predict animals, including moose and the state bird, the loon, along with species of the vast northern forests like paper birch, quaking aspen, balsam fir, and black spruce, will shift northward into Canada. Walleyes may not thrive in warmer lakes, which will increasingly be vulnerable to mats of algae, state administrators say. 

“You can joke that, oh, Minnesota has a lot of weather and we can certainly do without the minus 40-degree days,” Ms. Cornett says. “But for a moose, they are actually at risk of overheating in the warming winter conditions.   

“There’s a very strong sort of cultural tie and mystique about the Northwoods,” Ms. Cornett says, as she watches a trumpeter swan – another species finding warming unaccommodating – fly above the nearby birch trees. “This is a real pivotal moment.”

Stan Sholik/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

Andrew Yang, co-founder of the Forward Party, made a surprise appearance at the 2022 Orange County Asian American Bar Association Installation Dinner, where he introduced himself and his party on July 28, 2022.

Like Coke and Pepsi, the Democratic and Republican parties bestride the U.S. political marketplace. But their customers – the voting public – aren’t exactly thrilled at their choices. According to Gallup, 62% of voters say neither of the two major parties adequately represent the American people. More voters now identify as independents than as Democrats or Republicans. 

Meanwhile, a surge in political extremism, particularly on the right, has alarmed scholars of democracy who warn that politicians are pandering to partisans and abandoning the center. In part that’s because so few districts are competitive anymore, and most elections are decided by primaries, where moderation is rarely rewarded. 

Is it time for a new national party? And haven’t we seen this movie before? 

The latest aspirant is the Forward Party. Launched last month, the party is being led by Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential hopeful, and Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey. Its pitch is that most voters want pragmatism not partisanship and that the current duopoly isn’t up to the task.

“There’s a tremendous amount of common ground” in policymaking, says Joel Searby, the party’s national director. “But it’s not advanced because the extremes grab the conversations.” 

Skeptics say the electoral system – single-member districts won by a plurality – is stacked against third parties, which is why they barely register at election time. Nor does voters’ stated independence translate into a winnable bloc since most in fact have a partisan lean, even if they don’t identify as Republicans or Democrats. The major parties also enjoy a huge head start in organizing and fundraising. In some states, simply getting on the ballot is a challenge. 

Then there’s the problem of spoilers in presidential elections. Minor candidates are more likely to siphon support from one side and hand victory to the other, thus installing a minority vote-getter. 

History shows that new parties can emerge and shake up the status quo, says Bernard Tamas, an associate professor of politics at Valdosta State University in Georgia. It happened before and could happen again, particularly in an era of polarization and dysfunction. “Third parties have the capacity to throw a monkey wrench in the system,” he says. 

But such parties also tend to “sting and die” like bees after their electoral victories force a course correction by larger parties, says Professor Tamas, author of “The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties.” This is how the Republicans and Democrats absorbed the challenge from Progressive candidates in the early 20th century. 

The Forward Party says it seeks to “cut out the extreme partisanship, reintroduce a competition of ideas, and work together in good faith.” But it offers no prescription for social or economic policy, nor any vision of America’s role in the world. 

Mr. Searby says that’s intentional – and that its members will get to decide on a national platform. Party leaders will hold an official launch in Houston in September followed by a national convention in 2023. The goal is to get candidates on the ballot in all 50 states by 2024. 

Whatever platform is adopted will be flexible, as policies that work in some states or cities won’t work in others. “It’s a new kind of politics and policymaking,” says Mr. Searby. “We’re building this party from the ground up.” 

That flexible approach doesn’t convince everyone. Matthew Shugart, a political scientist at the University of California, Davis, says that parties typically organize around a social or economic interest. But Mr. Yang “has asked us to ‘imagine’ a political party with no ideology and no special interest ties. ... That’s just not how successful political parties are built,” he says via email.  

Where the Forward Party fits on the left-right political continuum is unclear. Mr. Searby says he’s heard from both alienated Republicans and Democrats in search of middle ground, though he argues that extremism on the right presents a greater danger to democracy.

Most voters associate third-party candidates with presidential runs: Ross Perot in 1992 and Ralph Nader in 2000. In 2016, Mr. Searby was an adviser to Evan McMullin, an independent who ran as a Never-Trump candidate; Mr. McMullin is running this year for the U.S. Senate in Utah. 

By contrast, the Forward Party is initially focused on finding and supporting candidates for local and state elected positions, not a presidential run. “We’re not going to show up in 2024 and compete with the two main parties,” says Mr. Searby. 

In recent years, billionaires such as Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg have flirted with independent presidential runs; Mr. Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, wound up seeking the Democratic nomination. Both presented themselves as problem-solving pragmatists who leaned right on fiscal matters and left on cultural issues, broadly in tune with their social peers. 

But that probably isn’t the best combination for a viable third party, says Jack Santucci, a political scientist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “Most Americans are left on economics and right on social issues,” he says. 

One set of issues the Forward Party does advocate is ranked choice voting, open primaries, and other reforms to “give Americans more choices in elections,” its website says. These innovations are already happening in states like Alaska and Maine and are popular with young voters, says Professor Santucci. And these electoral reforms could outlive whatever else the new party does, in terms of shaking up the duopoly that is the two-party system. 

“The Forward Party is more likely to succeed at popularizing anti-party reform than at electing its own candidates,” he says. 

Odesa stand-up comic Bogdan Bogachenko has the crowd in stitches as he imagines aloud the horrors Russian invaders would face if they ever tried to subdue this famously free-spirited port city.

Everyone crowded into the open-air “Hidden Garden” events venue on a recent evening knows that Vladimir Putin covets Odesa, a crown jewel of Russia’s imperial past. They know as well that Russian troops hold positions in occupied Ukrainian territory barely 100 miles away, and that the Russian navy has gamed an invasion of Odesa by sea.

So when Mr. Bogachenko takes the stage of a benefit stand-up comedy festival looking like an everyman in white T-shirt and jeans, the crowd of about 150 Odesans is ready for some fun relief.

As he launches his routine describing for the already familiar the unruly urbanization and questionable political environment the hapless Russian forces would encounter, he looks out over the crowd, pausing for effect, and says, “I really pity them.”

The audience instantly relates and roars in approval.

It’s the kind of comfort by comedy that has long been a hallmark of Odesan life – to the point where “Odesa humor” became a piece of the city’s identity, like jazz to New Orleans or gruff street talk to New York.

The city’s traditional comedy is rooted in a past of mixed cultures (the modern city of Odesa was founded by Catherine the Great in 1794 following its capture from the Ottomans) influenced by Jewish humor and was further molded by the Soviet era. But a new wave of comedy comforting Odesans these days is in no small measure the product of Russia’s 6-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

“We are experiencing a huge boom in Ukrainian stand-up comedy just in the last six months, so it’s a boom that corresponds to the beginning of the war,” says Yulia Onyshchenko, an Odesa comedian and events organizer who helped raise the funding to make the stand-up festival possible.

In a way, she says, the war has taken the vaunted Odesa humor that had become a little stale and given it new life.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Stand-up comic and events organizer Yulia Onyshchenko says a byproduct of the war in Ukraine is a “boom” in stand-up comedy, in Odesa, Ukraine, Aug. 20, 2022.

“Humor really helps people pull together in times of high stress, and the stress of the war is something all Ukrainians are experiencing,” says Ms. Onyshchenko, who spent recent months organizing Ukrainian comedy shows in Berlin to raise money for her country’s war effort.

“When the comic is talking about his problems from the war in a funny way, everybody can relate to it because of this common experience,” she says. “The war has caused many Ukrainians to rediscover the importance of humor,” she adds, “but it has also given stand-up comics a new purpose.”

For Kyrilo Osadchyi, the updated style of humor he’s witnessing is helping Odesans not just to cope with the war, but also to envision a better and more united future for Ukraine.

The comedy festival’s manager and a stand-up comedian himself, Mr. Osadchyi says he appreciates how Odesa’s history as a port city and melting pot of disparate working-class cultures gave rise to a distinctive sense of humor. But he says that even before the war, the traditional comic figures of Odesa humor were losing their relevance.

“We have this rich history that gave rise to a particular style of humor, but now we want to move comedy in new directions and away from the Odesa stereotype,” he says.

As he speaks, a succession of stand-up comedians provides a backdrop of relatable tales about social media dating during wartime or common-enemy-number-one Mr. Putin. But then the boyish and somewhat nerdy Mr. Osadchyi gets serious with an evolve-or-die perspective on Odesa humor.

“As comedians we want to relate to the audience as humans to humans with common problems and common hopes for the future,” he says. “But it won’t work to do that through the old Odesa stereotypes of the funny old Jewish woman, the petty criminal, or the drunken sailor.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Odesa comedian Kyrilo Osadchyi at the stand-up comedy festival he organized to benefit displaced children's education, in Odesa, Ukraine, Aug. 20, 2022. He says humor is helping Odesans not just to cope with the war, but also to envision a better and more united future for Ukraine.

Humor and the comedians who deliver it have a critical role to play, Mr. Osadchyi says. First, by helping Ukrainians cope with the hard times of war, and then by contributing to the effort he says is visible across the country: to build a new sense of unity and solidarity.

Dedicating the proceeds of the festival’s ticket sales to displaced Ukrainian kids’ education and online learning is a practical example of what he means.

But as for the actual comedy, he says, “it has to be in ways people identify with today.”

Across town at the landmark Maski Theater, theater founder and nationally recognized funnyman Borys Barskii cracks a slow, wry smile when asked about Odesa’s new generation of stand-up comics who speak of chafing at old norms and creating new means of making humor relevant.

“When we were beginning and growing into our sense of humor we said the same things, and that’s a good thing; it’s a healthy reaction for the young comics,” says Mr. Barskii, who started Maski Theater with a team of comedians under Soviet rule in 1984. With trial and practice, he adds, “they will learn to do the right thing for their times.”

But then from among all the ceramic clowns, circus posters, funny hats, and certificates of recognition that adorn his office he picks up a foot-high metal statue of Charlie Chaplin.

“‘The Great Dictator’ is the consummate example of reducing the oppressor with humor,” he says, referring to Chaplin’s classic 1940 film. Comedians will try new and contemporary ways of delivering the same point, he adds, “but there are things that are unchanging and universal.”

What that tells Mr. Barskii is that “humor itself is not something temporary, it is something very human, but it is also its own thing and it lives on,” he says.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Borys Barskii, founder of Odesa’s Maski Theater, stands next to a sign that says “Embassy of Humor in Ukraine,” in Odesa, Ukraine, Aug. 21, 2022. Mr. Barskii says humor at its best is unchanging and universal.

And that just might be where a Chaplin and Odesa’s young comedians meet.

“The notion that we keep joking and helping people laugh in the dark times,” he says, “is an invincible and undying notion.”

Indeed, that desire to laugh in dark times is what brought Andrii Antonov and his girlfriend to the comedy festival. A tactical medic on three-days’ leave from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Antonov says what appealed to him was the idea of joining with other Ukrainians in finding humor in challenging times.

“I needed some fun to put the stress away,” he says, “but here it’s better because we can laugh together.”

This desire to share laughs and create a sense of community, especially in “dark times,” seems alive and well at the comedy festival.  One comic, playing on rampant disregard for air raid sirens, tells the crowd about an audience that stayed put in anticipation of his punch line after an alert had sounded. Another relates how for a time she based her acceptance or rejection of dating app invitations on whether or not the suitor could promise her a favorite mineral water that the war had made scarce.

All of this lighthearted banter is a relief for Mr. Antonov – who describes himself as not just a native Odesan, but moreover as a product of Moldavanka, the working-class neighborhood from which Odesa humor is said to have sprung.

Maybe, he says, “that’s one more reason I’m happy here, laughing.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

A drive through hills and vineyards of northern San Diego County leads to a community built especially for equestrians. Paddocks dot the generously sized lots and so do citrus trees, lots of them, with ripe grapefruit waiting to be picked and no one to harvest them. 

That’s what brings a small band of volunteer gleaners to the home of John and Carolyn Melka, who have more than 90 grapefruit trees on their hillside property. At the top of their driveway, Nita Kurmins Gilson is giving a brief tutorial to the volunteers, starting with an explanation of gleaning. “Most people ... think we’re saying ‘cleaning,’” she says. But the word refers to the ancient practice of farmers leaving the four corners of their fields unpicked for widows and orphans – the most famous gleaner being the biblical widow Ruth. 

Gathering excess and distributing it to those in need, that’s the purpose of ProduceGood, the nonprofit led by Ms. Kurmins Gilson and co-Executive Director Alexandra White. On this morning, the efforts of their four volunteers – two retired teachers and two college students – will multiply into 700 pounds of grapefruit that will help feed people experiencing food insecurity at a nearby charity. The volunteers are part of ProduceGood’s vast network of cooperation that relies on thousands of volunteers helping hundreds of local growers get fresh fruit to food relief agencies throughout San Diego County. Ms. White estimates that ProduceGood feeds about 90,000 people a year.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Monica Reyes, food-rescue manager for the Brother Benno Foundation in Oceanside, California, unloads grapefruits July 27, 2022, from that morning's gleaning by volunteers for ProduceGood. "There's a really big need for fresh produce" to help feed low-income and unhoused people, she says.

“We’re trying to reduce food waste and hunger at the same time while building community,” says Ms. Kurmins Gilson – pointing out that as much as 40% of all food in America is wasted, while nutrition insecurity in San Diego County increased from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 people during the pandemic. She underscores the unity of purpose and cooperation among all the many people and organizations involved. “We could never do this by ourselves.”  

Though data is hard to nail down because of the grassroots nature of gleaning, it’s “definitely on the rise” in the United States, says Laurie Beyranevand, director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School in South Royalton, Vermont. “With all the increased attention by government on food-and-nutrition insecurity and food waste, people have become increasingly interested in gleaning as a way to resolve this issue.” A bonus is that it “builds community,” she says, connecting residents with farmers and turning volunteerism into a recreational activity. The Association of Gleaning Organizations counts more than 200 groups doing this work in the U.S.

Like the ubiquitous citrus trees of San Diego County, ProduceGood started from a seed. Ms. Kurmins Gilson recalls her teenage daughter despairing over dismal statistics about the environment. Her daughter was only 14 and had already given up on the world, but this mother was not ready to abandon hope. She impressed upon her daughter that one person, taking one step, could make a difference.  

Ms. Kurmins Gilson, who had long been disturbed by fruit rotting on the ground wherever she looked, took that first step in 2009. She went to the local grocery store, picked up boxes on a Friday night, gleaned with friends in someone’s yard the next morning, and then drove the fruit to a food bank before it closed at noon. The casual gleaning turned into something much bigger, and in 2014, she and a mother-daughter team – Jeri and Alex White – created the 501(c)(3), ProduceGood. Now they could get grants. “From that point, it’s been like a rocket ship,” she says.

The pandemic proved pivotal. With restaurants and workplaces shuttered, farmers had no place to take their produce. At the same time, people were home, looking for things to do and ways to be outdoors. Meanwhile, food insecurity escalated. ProduceGood responded, filling a point-to-point need of getting fresh produce directly to people who needed it – including a pop-up food table in a heavily hit neighborhood in San Diego. 

The nonprofit has expanded its definition of gleaning to food recovery. Volunteers gather up unsold leftovers at three farmers markets every week and pick up bumper crops from growers – providing participating farmers with a tax deduction. They’re also working with local grocers. For instance, they may go through a bag of a dozen oranges, remove the one moldy one, and save the rest. Otherwise, the entire bag would be tossed. 

Mr. Melka, who is one of 700 growers on the ProduceGood roster, is full of gratitude for the gleaners on his 2 1/2 acres. “It’s nice to be able to help out the community and get the fruit picked,” otherwise his gardeners would simply throw out the grapefruit. “We love that it goes to help feed people.” 

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

John Melka stands in front of grapefruit trees at his residence in Bonsall, California, July 27, 2022. Most of the citrus trees on his 2 1/2 acres are grapefruit, and on this day, volunteer gleaners for the nonprofit ProduceGood collected 700 pounds of them to give to a local charity. Were it not for the volunteers, the fruit would be thrown out by gardeners. He and his wife, Carolyn, "love that it goes to help feed people," says Mr. Melka.

It’s a win, too, for the volunteers, who can be church groups, students, and corporate employees donating a service day. Debbie Dahlquist, a retired fifth grade teacher from Oceanside, is a “pick boss” for ProduceGood, which now has about 3,500 volunteers in its database. Clippers in her back pocket, a large straw hat on her head, she reaches her pick pole high into one of Mr. Melka’s grapefruit trees. She taught environmental science and ran the recycling program at school. “My passions are waste reduction ... and being outdoors.”  

But perhaps nobody is happier than Monica Reyes, food-rescue manager for the Brother Benno Foundation in Oceanside – just 10 miles from Mr. Melka’s place. By noon, she and her colleagues had unloaded the grapefruit. It will be put to immediate use for their guests, she says, available at their free, hot breakfasts; in sack lunches; and at their distribution center next door. People who live in their cars come in on delivery day and grab some to store in their vehicles to help them stay hydrated. 

“It’s really important to us to make sure that fresh produce is available because it’s really scarce among the unhoused and low-income community,” she says. “None of it goes to waste.”

ProduceGood estimates it leaves behind 15 million pounds a year at its glean sites. The organization would like to keep growing, but it’s a matter of capacity and funds.

They have grants from the state, county, and foundations; corporations and individuals also donate to support the staff of five and other operating costs. Three cities, including Oceanside, have also contracted with them to help implement California’s new organic recycling law, which mandates diversion of organics from landfills in order to reduce greenhouse gases. 

“It’s the wave of the future,” says ProduceGood’s Ms. White, about the recycling law, which adds a climate change element to their work. 

Colleen Foster, who is Oceanside’s environmental officer, says that 15 years ago, the city’s waste department only had disposal and recycling. “Today, our program includes gleaning services with ProduceGood.” Residents can call the city to schedule a pick. It’s a triple win: collecting excess, getting it to hungry people, and reducing greenhouse gases. “The residents love it.”

AP

A family lives in a tent next to their demolished house, surrounded by floodwaters, in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, Aug. 29.

The last time Pakistan faced catastrophic floods, in 2010, the international scientific community wasn’t yet prepared to draw a straight line to climate change. Silt deposits record that the Indus River menaced earlier civilizations, too. Nor had the world begun to grapple practically with how climate change would recast questions ranging from global cooperation to urban design.

All of that has now changed. A third of Pakistan is underwater – the result, scientists agree, of months of record-breaking heat that melted glaciers in the Himalayas and intensified the annual monsoon. The humanitarian impact is enormous. More than 1,100 people have died and tens of millions have been displaced. One town measured 67 inches of rain in a single day.

Yet amid the destruction, there are signs that humanity may be learning from overlapping crises to reject helplessness for resourcefulness, poor governance for accountability, and division for unity.

“I think what COVID-19 has done is make people realize the importance of global solutions to global risks and that what happens in one country can affect all countries,” argued John Scott, head of sustainability risk at Zurich Insurance Group, in a recent posting. “We need to harness our existing solutions and all our innovation ... to build climate resilience,” as societies did during the pandemic.

The Pakistan floods have begun to deliver a few dividends on these fronts. Longtime rival India has reopened closed trade corridors and may extend disaster aid to its neighbor for the first time since the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party came to power eight years ago. And the often-divisive politics in Pakistan may be on pause. Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chair of the Pakistan Ulema Council, has called on government leaders, Islamic scholars, and philanthropists to create an atmosphere of understanding and harmony.

One measure of progress may be better governance. A Gallup Poll found that 57% of Pakistanis supported the ouster in April of then-Prime Minister Imran Khan because “his government was unable to sort out inflation.” His successor, Shehbaz Sharif, faces even more pressure. Besides inflation, Pakistan has acute shortages of fuel, food, and health care supplies. A month before the monsoon came, it defaulted on a foreign loan for the first time. On Monday, the International Monetary Fund approved disbursement of $1.1 billion to Pakistan. To keep the loan, Mr. Sharif will have to address problems that have resulted in a cumulative debt burden of $24 billion.

“People always want cash after a disaster,” said Ayesha Siddiqi, a geographer at the University of Cambridge who studied Pakistan’s 2010 flood response, in an interview with Vox. What the state needs to learn, she said, is “how do we rehabilitate people ... so that they are not this vulnerable again?”

From Texas to China, places grappling with record floods, fires, or heat waves can follow how Pakistan copes with this disaster. It is on the front lines of both climate change and how governments can respond to it.