For Rute Gabriel and Pipo Vieira, it was the tomato plant on their 25th-floor balcony in Toronto that convinced them to return home. 

The couple, sweethearts ever since high school in this Portuguese region of stone-fenced fields and olive groves, were sharing an apartment with Ms. Gabriel’s grandmother. Their friends back home thought they had hit the jackpot. They had managed to move from the country to the city. They had immigrated to a higher-income country. And in the middle of the 2010s, they had jobs at a time when the global financial crisis – known here simply as “the austerity” – was still hitting Portugal hard. 

But the couple had a sense that something was wrong. They were in their 20s and working constantly in jobs they did not love. They missed the bright sunlight and rosemary-fresh scent of home, and had a growing unease about what felt like an unsustainable lifestyle – not only in their balance of life and work, but also in their lives and the
environment. 

They say it was all anxiety-producing – spending days working for the next paycheck, running on a consumer treadmill, knowing the world was heating but feeling there was nothing they could do about it. 

Then one day, browsing the internet, Ms. Gabriel came across a YouTube video about “permaculture.” An increasingly popular term in environmental, landscape, and agricultural circles, permaculture is a philosophy that focuses on re-integrating humans into their habitats in a way that’s mutually beneficial for people, the land, and animals.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Farmer Pipo Vieira, kneeling among his zucchini plants at his family homestead, Projeto Liberta-te, came home from Toronto to rural Portugal to lead a less anxiety-producing life.

Ms. Gabriel was fascinated, she recalls. This was the sort of lifestyle she and Mr. Vieira were craving. 

They tried to implement bits and pieces of permaculture at their high-rise apartment, putting a little tomato plant on their balcony, and then trying out “companion planting,” in which they added peppers and carrots to the same container.  

That little plant, they say, was a glimpse of what could be. 

“We take ourselves out of our habitat, and we wonder why we are struggling so much,” she says. “We realized we had to go back to the country.”

So in 2016, they did what generations of young Europeans have avoided: They moved back not only to their homeland, but also to the countryside and an agrarian life. Their plan was to build a homestead and run Portuguese-language permaculture classes – to support themselves, to regenerate the land, and to help others create sustainable lifestyles. 

Many of their friends thought they were crazy. Farming, once the occupation of nearly one-fifth of the Portuguese population, has a reputation as a low-status, low-income profession. For years, most young people born in agricultural areas have fled, to the point that Portuguese officials are scrambling to fix what is widely known as the “young farmer problem.” Over the past decades, some rural villages have dwindled to five, eight, or 20 people; schools have closed, and health clinics have shuttered. Portuguese farmers are the oldest in the European Union, with 51.9% above age 65, according to government data. Only about 6.4% are under the age of 40.

But some in the Climate Generation – as we’re calling the cohort that was born since 1989 and into a world of accelerating impacts from a heating atmosphere – are bucking this trend. Government data shows a small but clear uptick in young people entering the agricultural sector over the past few years. And some are coming back to rural areas in Portugal to intentionally step onto the front lines of their country’s climate struggle, trying out new methods of climate-friendly food production. 

The full size of this movement is hard to quantify because many of these young people hold other jobs and may not identify themselves as farmers for government statistical purposes. But it is recognizable. From Barbados to Namibia to the United States, a large portion of the Climate Generation is focused on food – growing it, sharing it, and questioning the status quo approach to it.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

A view of agricultural Chão das Pais, Portugal, is seen near a “permaculture” model homestead created by Rute Gabriel and Pipo Vieira.

This is in part because the Climate Generation knows that what we eat, and how we grow it, has huge climate implications. Everything from shipping feed to making fertilizer to throwing wasted food in a landfill contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. But by focusing on rebuilding soil’s natural fertility, “regenerative” farming practices can sequester carbon – a potential climate solution. 

Young people recognize this. As part of a 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, officials polled thousands of young people about their attitudes toward food. Overwhelmingly, wrote UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, children understood the connections between food systems and climate change – both in how agricultural practices can exacerbate climate change and in how climate change is increasing droughts, reducing food nutrition, and, according to international scientists, threatening food security for huge swaths of the world. 

But food systems reflect something even more for the Climate Generation. Food is a tangible, everyday doorway into larger questions about how we relate to the earth and how we consume and share resources. Look at food closely, and it illuminates questions about how and why we work. It brings a tangible practicality to philosophical theories – about whether we keep demanding more by expanding and growing, about modern consumption and lifestyles, about what it means to continue extracting from a planet showing its limits in the form of wildfires, droughts, storms, and heat waves. 

To some in the Climate Generation who have decided to move, literally, closer to the food chain, the answers to these questions seem obvious.

“This is the future of humanity,” says João Rodrigues, a 34-year-old artist-turned-farmer, standing by his tomato plants in the interior of Portugal. “To go small.”

Local consumers willing to pay extra 

Mr. Rodrigues and Raquel Silva purchased their hilly, 25-acre property outside the ancient interior Portuguese city of Viseu in 2017. The land had a decrepit stone barn, an oak forest, and a few small, uncultivated plots. The former owners had run a vineyard and cultivated pine trees. There was no electricity or running water. But the couple believed that, with regenerative practices, they could grow food on this land. At the time, they owned a design studio – a business they began shortly after graduating from an arts college outside Lisbon, where they had met. In 2019 they had their baby daughter, Teresa. And some months after, they moved into a camper on the farm. They added a stucco facade with blue shutters and a pavilion with an outdoor kitchen. This would be their temporary lodging until they finished building their house. 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Raquel Silva and João Rodrigues, here with their daughter, Teresa, left careers in art to revive farmland in Mangualde, Portugal. The first year, a half-acre plot they started with didn't give them enough food for a season. But they've expanded their operation and now supply subscription food boxes to 20 families.

At first, the plan was to simply grow food for themselves, Ms. Silva says. But they soon realized that in a half-acre field, they couldn’t get enough food for a season; they’d have broccoli, say, for a few weeks, but no more. The next year, they tried planting another plot but quickly ended up with more food than they could eat themselves.

They didn’t want those vegetables to go to waste, so they took their extras to sell at their studio in Viseu. At first, they weren’t sure if they would have buyers. For them to break even, their food had to be priced higher than at grocery stores, where economies of scale and industrial agriculture allow for lower prices. 

But it turned out there were many people in town who wanted to pay extra for something that tasted and felt better. They sold out quickly. The next year, they tried subscription boxes, eventually supplying food boxes to 20 families.

Soon, they were earning more from farming than from their studio. They decided to shift into full-time agriculture, although they still maintain their Etsy shop and their storefront.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Kunekune pigs thrive at Quinta d’Arminho farm, where Raquel Silva and João Rodrigues use regenerative farming techniques.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

String beans and okra are harvested at Quinta d’Arminho, a regenerative farm in Mangualde, Portugal, operated by João Rodrigues and Raquel Silva.

They regularly get inquiries from people hoping to be part of their CSA, or community-supported agriculture, plan. But they don’t want to get too big. They believe the best way to create a sustainable food system is to have many small farmers supporting small groups of nonfarmers – a connected web that will prove resilient even if larger systems collapse. 

This is not just theoretical, Ms. Silva says. Inflation, plus the food price fallout from the war in Ukraine, reveals “the tip of the iceberg on how climate change will affect the food supply all over the world,” she says. “This approach that we have can really help in the bigger picture to reduce some of the effects of climate change. And we do think that having a big chunk of food coming from local sources is key to having a very strong food supply chain, and also having food sovereignty.” 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

“This is the future of humanity. To go small,” says João Rodrigues, a 34-year-old artist-turned-farmer shown here by his tomato plants at his 25-acre plot he farm in the interior of Portugal.

A different approach to agriculture can be a climate solution 

The impact of climate change on agriculture is particularly clear in Portugal. 

Over the past decade, the country has faced increasing droughts, wildfires, and heat waves. This has been especially true in the rural, sparsely populated interior regions, home to most of Portugal’s farmland. Fewer residents means that wildfires can erupt and burn longer without being noticed. And according to the Universidade Nova de Lisboa’s Platform of National Desertification Observatory, more than 54% of the country is vulnerable to desertification, which is when soil becomes so parched and degraded that it cannot support plant life. 

“Once I said on social media that this is the worst time to start a farm because of climate change,” says Ms. Silva. “Last year we had the driest year since the ’30s – so the worst drought in 100 years.”  

Indeed, according to the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere, nearly 90% of Portugal was suffering from drought in April of this year, with 34% experiencing “extreme” or “severe” drought. That means chalky gray soil and dying citrus trees, shriveled winter grain and farmers selling livestock they can no longer feed.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N.-supported project of thousands of researchers from around the globe who summarize the existing scientific understanding of climate change, says one of the most serious impacts of a heating world will be the effect on agricultural systems. (That’s even beyond extreme weather events and habitat.) This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, but Europe is impacted as well. Climate change is resulting in everything from decreasing land productivity to seed viability, according to the scientists. A 2019 report from the Global Commission on Adaptation forecast that global food yields will decrease between 5% and 30% by 2050, while food demand increases.   

Part of the problem, scientists point out, is that agriculture is accelerating its own demise. 

SOURCE:

World Atlas of Desertification

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

For years now, the public conversation around climate change solutions has primarily focused on changing energy sources – shifting from coal to solar, for instance, or from gas-powered vehicles to electric cars. Agriculture, though, is also a huge greenhouse gas contributor. Along with other land-use and forestry sectors, it’s responsible for up to a fifth of all warming, according to the IPCC. 

Industrial agriculture is particularly tough on the climate because it requires fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers. Shipping food or livestock feed around the world also results in heat-trapping gases going into the atmosphere. 

But a different sort of agriculture can be a climate solution. Regenerative agriculture, like the sort Ms. Silva and Ms. Gabriel practice, can rebuild the soil structure that captures carbon from the atmosphere. Local food has a dramatically lower carbon impact than food shipped long distances. Increasing numbers of organizations, from the climate change-focused Project Drawdown to the World Bank, have started to encourage regenerative agriculture as a climate solution, and industry organizations have predicted a significant increase in the market for regeneratively farmed products. (One group, Research and Markets, believes the European regenerative agriculture market will see a 14% increase annually from 2023 to 2029.) 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Cabbage peeks through remnants of a prior crop of leeks and zucchini in a permaculture bed at Projeto Liberta-te in Chão das Pias, Portugal.

Because of this, a growing number of farmers, particularly younger ones, are starting to see themselves as a key part of a global solution. 

“There’s been a really kind of dramatic change in the way that farmers see what agriculture can do,” says Jules Pretty, professor of environment and society at the University of Essex in England. 

But the thing about regenerative practices – farming that rebuilds ecological health even as it harvests – is that they’re nearly impossible to do at a large scale. Industrial agriculture is built to go big. That means long rows of single crops that allow for high-tech automation and big farm equipment, chemical inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that increase yields, and economies of scale that keep prices low. 

Regenerative agriculture, on the other hand, attempts to rebuild ecosystems in a way that integrates the various plants, animals, and microbes that naturally exist in a specific place.  

But while supporters say that healthy ecosystems are far more resilient than monocultures, they’re often not, in the language of modern-day economics, efficient.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Farmer Pipo Vieira shows a green cricket, which is beneficial as pest control in the garden.

The typical argument against small-scale regenerative farming is that while it is good for the environment, it doesn’t actually feed societies fully and replace the calories provided by an agro-industrial sector. And, critics say, food grown this way tends to cost more. 

But that, according to many in the Climate Generation, is the wrong debate.

Inês Costa Pereira is a landscape architect and Portuguese advocate for agroecology, which applies sustainable ecology principles to agriculture while supporting local environments, small farms, and native animals and plants. She sees a new sort of philosophy emerging among the new young farmers. The Climate Generation is not trying to just swap out existing grocery store fare with better, local food, she says. It’s trying to get people to re-imagine the way their lives are connected to land, she says. That means people consuming less of what they don’t need – more clothes, bigger houses, fuel-guzzling cars – so they can focus more on what is essential, such as community, good food, deep connections, and nature. This is not going back to preindustrial living, she says. Many regenerative farmers use technology, from solar power to high-tech greenhouses. But it does require a reorientation of values.

“Cheaper and easier has been a goal for a long time,” she says. “But having less is what we need to do.” 

She and others are quick to note that this doesn’t mean going hungry. It means perhaps living differently, eating locally, and spending more money on food. It means, for young people in cities, starting urban farms, food-waste reduction programs, and other projects intended to make full use of the food resources that exist. And it often means creating community around these shared values – whether it is connecting to the aging, traditional farmers who still hold much agricultural knowledge, or connecting across professions.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Lettuce thrives at Quinta d’Arminho farm, which uses regenerative farming techniques.

In the rural town of Montemor-o-Novo, for instance, a group of young farmers and professionals has formed a cooperative called Minga, which basically means “de-growing.” 

Their idea is to push back on the economic idea that links progress to expansion. Instead, the cooperative connects farmers to craftspeople, and young artists to farmers. And it gives a setting for local producers to sell wares and support each other in a circular economy – an approach of sharing and reusing that values time and connection over money.

Many of the members are in their early 30s.

“We can choose our values, and how to live with them,” says cooperative spokesperson Marília Moura. “The nature model is really important as an inspiration for how we can work together. Nature knows how we can cooperate.”

Similar initiatives have started cropping up across the country. The challenge now, Ms. Moura says, is that so many young people want to join, there is a need to split co-ops into multiple organizations or chapters in order to keep the groups relatively small. These co-ops can include everyone from lawyers and architects to farmers and chefs. The idea is not a vow of poverty, those involved insist – it’s a re-prioritization of when to focus on money, and when to look to other priorities.

“All the time, people are arriving to this movement,” she says. “People’s hearts are opening. They see what is happening to the land; they see what is happening to the climate, the water. It gives us hope that we will do our best to protect life – to show that it’s possible to live healthily and happily and connected and in a respectful way. ... We don’t need so many things.”

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

A new narrative of how to live the best life 

It's natural that young people, confronted by the realities of climate change and the anxiety that often accompanies it, are turning to new narratives about how to best live, says Dr. Pretty, who also directs his university’s Centre for Public and Policy Engagement. He focuses much of his research on the stories people tell to understand their environments – and how they can transform narratives to build hope and resilience. 

“People would call us crazy because we came back from Canada,” recalls Ms. Gabriel. “They said, ‘Oh, you could have made so much money!’ I remember someone saying to me [about our permaculture project], ‘That’s too romantic. You have to do something practical.’” 

She gestures to the water collection system that she and Mr. Vieira have installed to trap rainwater running off their house: “This is super practical.”   

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Rute Gabriel holds her 3-year-old son, Isaac, while picking tomatoes on her regenerative farm. Her dream of returning from Toronto to a simpler life in rural Portugal took off when she was launched when she discovered "permaculture,” a farming philosophy that focuses on reintegrating humans into their habitats in a way that’s mutually beneficial for people, the land, and animals.

Before she began investigating permaculture, Ms. Gabriel had no agricultural background. Mr. Vieira, as a boy, had helped his father, who had a home garden and a few animals. But today, they have created a tapestry of food in the backyard of their home, with avocados and plum trees and leafy greens and herbs. (Her parents, who are retired and travel regularly, invited the couple to move in with them, something Ms. Gabriel and Mr. Vieira see as part of their community-oriented living.) 

Nearby, the tomato plants are ready for harvest. The gooseberry bush is exploding with bright yellow fruit, and their 3-year-old son, Isaac, skips barefoot to investigate a pear tree that flowers next to kale, carrots, lemon balm, and strawberries. A neighbor has dropped off cheese she made from her own cow’s milk, along with a loaf of farmer’s bread – not as any form of barter or trade, just as a form of community care that exists in this part of the country. Ms. Gabriel asks if anyone would like any homemade ginger ale – one of her newer projects. Mr. Vieira gently rocks their baby, Noah, who has fallen asleep in his arms. 

Sure, there are some days he doesn’t feel like working in the garden, or running another permaculture class online, he says. It’s not that everything is easy and perfect all the time. But this way of life, with lower expenses, greater proximity to the food chain, more independence – it all feels right, he says.

“Quality of life can be hand in hand with a positive change when it comes to climate change,” he says. “It used to be ecology versus economics. Now people realize it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of being exploited and exploiting nature, we can live differently.” 

This message has an appeal. In the year since they started their permaculture classes, they have had more than 2,500 students, and they say interest is still growing.

Ms. Silva also notices the attraction people seem to have to her and Mr. Rodrigues’ work. 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Raquel Silva, co-owner of the Quinta d’Arminho farm in rural Portugal, checks her tomato plants in a greenhouse. She has 13,000-plus Instagram followers who follow her photos of the food she grows. Many have asked her about starting their own farm projects in the Portuguese countryside.

When they first moved to the land that would become their farm, she began documenting the land’s transformation on Instagram. She is a designer, after all, so she enjoys visual media. And from selling their studio wares online, she and Mr. Rodrigues had a good idea of how to take photographs to make carrots and kale look beautiful. 

Soon her account began attracting followers – more than 13,500 now – and many have asked her about starting their own farm projects in the Portuguese countryside. 

She’s quick to tell them there’s a lot more to this than pretty Instagram pictures. It’s exhausting running a farm, she says with a laugh. But she tries to be encouraging to those who seem interested in taking a step toward a different way of life. 

So do Ms. Gabriel and Mr. Vieira. 

“There are a lot of young people who want this, but they are trapped into thinking that they need to get a job to have things,” says Mr. Vieira. “But more are realizing that they have choices.”  

The farmer was harvesting apples on a north-facing slope along Israel’s border with Lebanon when he was killed by a guided anti-tank missile fired by fighters of the Shiite militia Hezbollah.

Local residents say Eyal Ozen should not have been in the orchard near Mattat Thursday afternoon. The tiny Israeli community is one of dozens perched on the Israel-Lebanon border that were evacuated to avoid a possible repeat by Hezbollah, in the north, of Hamas’ Oct. 7 ground incursion in the south, which left 1,200 people dead and 240 taken hostage.

Israeli forces targeted the “source of fire” on the Lebanon side with attack helicopters and tank and artillery rounds. For those who live here, cheek-by-jowl with Israel’s northern archfoe Hezbollah, the killing was just the latest episode in a series of escalating daily tit-for-tat exchanges.

“It’s dangerous here,” says Mira Telem, who was on a brief visit back to her village community of 60 families when she felt the impact of the missile that killed Mr. Ozen.

“All the house was shaking; it was close,” Ms. Telem says of the blast. “Every day we hear the bombs. Every day we hear everything.”

Hezbollah reportedly said one of the 11 attacks it conducted Thursday targeted an Israeli barracks in Mattat, where the residential fence is a few hundred yards from Lebanon, and attendant fields go right to the border.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Mira and Yuval Temel, residents of the evacuated Israeli border community of Mattat, sit in their car at the entrance to the village, where a farmer was killed by a Hezbollah missile in a field the day before, Dec. 8, 2023.

The hilltop road that leads to Mattat is especially vulnerable and visible to Lebanon, so two tall concrete barriers have been placed to block a direct view of the community gate. A new red sign in Hebrew warns: “Caution Danger!! You are about to enter a red route that is observable from Lebanon. Please drive on an alternative route!”

Hamas’ attack Oct. 7 resonates strongly here on Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and the most powerful wing of the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States, is renowned to be a much stronger foe. Its capabilities were battle-hardened in Syria’s civil war, and it possesses a missile arsenal estimated at 150,000-strong.

Indeed, the lesson of the Hamas attack for some here is that Hezbollah must also be neutralized as a threat, before tens of thousands of Israelis can safely return to their homes in the evacuation zone. Israeli forces ordered to “destroy” Hamas in Gaza have fought for two months, with a death toll of 18,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

“We say that something has to be done, after [Israeli forces] finish in the south,” says Aviv Telem, a bearded Israeli reserve soldier with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. The son of Mira and Yuval Telem, he was born and raised in Mattat.

“We cannot come back to live here, if nothing happens here in the north,” says Mr. Telem, stepping behind the concrete barrier on the road at the entrance to Mattat, to avoid giving an easy target to Hezbollah. “If nothing happens, we don’t know if in two years [Hezbollah] will do the same here in the north. This is what we are afraid of.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Israeli reservist Aviv Temel stands at the entrance to his evacuated home village of Mattat, with Lebanese territory visible behind him, Dec. 8, 2023. Mr. Temel says residents won't return to their homes without the threat from Hezbollah being addressed.

He notes that United Nations resolutions that codified the cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel, after a devastating 33-day war in 2006, meant that Hezbollah fighters were supposed to keep back from the border.

“It has not happened. We see them on the border. We see them with flags. We see them everywhere,” the reservist says. “Hezbollah is 10 times bigger than Hamas, so we are a lot more afraid about what can happen here. They have a lot more efficient weapons, missiles, more [precise] missiles. ... They can target anything they want.”

That concern has been echoed among the top brass in the Israel Defense Forces, and some Israeli officials have argued that Hezbollah should be targeted simultaneously with Hamas, rather than risk Hezbollah mounting its own offensive.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, visited troops on the northern border over the weekend.

“Both in the south and in the north, we need to return to a different situation, and return both security and a sense of security,” he reportedly told the 91st Division. “The State of Israel has never said war is the first solution to try, but we understand that with the situation here [in the north], it should end in a very, very clear change of situation.”

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been under pressure to resign over Oct. 7, the most lethal day for Israelis since the founding of the Jewish state 75 years ago, also visited troops.

“If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war, then it will, by its own hand, turn Beirut and southern Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis,” he warned.

Over the weekend, Hezbollah continued drone and rocket attacks against IDF and civilian targets, prompting a wave of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon. Four Israeli civilians and six Israeli soldiers have been killed overall on the northern front during the war, while an Agence France-Presse tally counts more than 120 dead in Lebanon – among them 98 Hezbollah members, 16 Palestinian militants, and three journalists.

Maps of Israeli and Hezbollah strikes against each other since Oct. 7 span the entire breadth of the border. Near the eastern end is Metula, at the tip of a finger of land pointing northward and surrounded by Lebanese territory on three sides.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Concrete barriers mark the entrance to the largest town in northern Israel, which is all but empty after two months of escalating daily fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Kiryat Shemona, Israel, Dec. 8, 2023.

Not all have heeded the mandatory evacuation orders, including Arie Almog, who has lived the last 40 of his 74 years in Metula. Israeli soldiers at dusk Friday temporarily prevented him and his partner, Imy George, from entering town – they pointed to their house from the checkpoint – as alarms sounded of another Hezbollah rocket attack.

Indeed, just down the road 15 minutes earlier, a Hezbollah rocket could be heard flying overhead before impact.

“We as the third generation in Israel, for us it is very difficult to accept to leave our houses and villages,” Mr. Almog says after being ushered by soldiers into a concrete shelter. He reckons that 10 people – the soldiers say 50 – remain in Metula, out of a prewar population of 2,000.

“Of course, you don’t want your children to hear the bombs around here,” he says. “You don’t want to feel that maybe [Hezbollah] will attack, and go inside the villages and do what [Hamas] did from the Gaza Strip.”

The older generation is more inclined to stay, which is something that can’t be explained “to a boy like that,” says Mr. Almog, nodding toward a soldier who had just confirmed evacuation orders.

“What we built in this country didn’t come just like that, if for every bomb ... we are going to escape and run away like a chicken,” he says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Arie Almog, a longtime resident of the northern Israeli village of Metula, and his partner, Imy George, stand in a concrete bunker labeled "Unprotected Area" near the entrance to the town during an air raid warning, in Metula, Israel, Dec. 8, 2023.

Back at Mattat, even as Ms. Telem jokes that she and her husband, Yuval, a blacksmith, are “running away” because of the risks – their car is packed – there is a moment of reflection about Lebanese villages right across the border.

“Usually in peaceful days, I always ... tell myself, ‘Why can’t people just live in peace?’” she asks. “Because it’s so close, we could go to visit them [the Lebanese], to stay with them, to sit with them and drink coffee and talk with them. They could come over here.

“What is the matter with them? Or, what is the matter with us? Why do we have to fight all the time?” adds Ms. Telem. “It’s so obvious that we can go and visit the neighbors, as we visit here the neighbors.”

Mr. Telem says he was a young soldier who fought in the Golan Heights in 1973, when Israel was shocked by a surprise attack by Syria and Egypt. Back then, he said, there was not even a fence along this border.

“We were shocked in ’73, and we are shocked now. I hope after 50 years, maybe people try to do it better, because the system is bad for everybody,” says Mr. Telem. “I am not a genius. I have no plan for how to do it better. But I hope that after two unbelievable fights, that something will change.”

Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

Activists attend a protest at the United Nations’ COP28 climate conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 11, 2023.

A paradox has run through the COP28 meeting from start to finish: This is a global summit on addressing climate change, yet it is hosted in an oil nation with an oil baron in the president’s chair. But a meeting filled with contrasts and contradictions is not necessarily a fruitless one.

The precise text of the final communique is still being hammered out in last-minute bargaining. While nonbinding, it will represent a unanimously agreed-upon statement of purpose from the world’s nations, gathered in the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Dubai. 

For now, climate advocates are up in arms over the draft text’s lack of the word “phaseout” in reference to fossil fuels. Yet the draft text does go further than prior summits have gone in their final statements, by mentioning fossil fuels at all. 

The draft text proposed Monday by the UAE to be hammered out by parties calls for “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050, in keeping with the science.”

That’s a sign of how far the goal posts have shifted in the discussion on fossil fuels.

The phaseout of all fossil fuels, once a demand by small island states and climate activists but seen as a nonstarter by many developed nations, has been accepted by many negotiating teams as an urgent, essential step, echoed by the United Nations and even the private sector. 

If anything, some climate activists say the momentum has been turbocharged by global scrutiny on a climate summit held in an oil- and gas-producing country following a year of record high world temperatures and severe climate events. 

The role of fossil fuel lobbyists “has rightfully created a lot of skepticism and scrutiny of the ... process,” says Caroline Brouilette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. “On the other hand, we have never been collectively closer to seeing the phaseout of all fossil fuels included in a COP decision, which would be a historic first in 28 years.” 

Rafiq Maqbool/AP

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber bangs the gavel during a stocktaking plenary session at the COP28 U.N. climate summit, Dec. 11, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Since Day 1 of the conference on Nov. 30, pressure has been building on governments from delegates and publics to secure commitments on reducing fossil fuel use to avoid appearing to have “sold out” to lobbyists. 

“This has resulted in more pressure, more expectations, and more leverage for a fossil fuel phaseout,” says Ms. Brouilette. With the competing pressures here, the result “may very well be a historic inflection point.”

Shifts from China to Latin America

Consensus has grown here in the past two weeks on the need for language calling for a phasing down or phasing out. 

China has softened its stance and is seeking compromise with the United States.

Colombia, one of the 25 largest oil and gas producers, used the U.N.’s Conference of Parties, or COP, to declare it would stop production and threw its support behind a fossil fuels nonproliferation treaty, warning of a planet “omnicide.” 

Brazil, another oil producer, voiced support for a phaseout and is attempting to bridge negotiating gaps between developing and developed countries as of Monday.

But if this meeting’s oil nation locale had helped to stoke ambition, it also laid the groundwork for opposition. 

Momentum was gaining pace so quickly, the OPEC secretary-general issued a letter instructing members to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than emissions” in the conference’s text. 

Peter Dejong/AP

Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva speaks during a news conference at the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai, where Brazil has voiced support for a phaseout of fossil fuels despite being an oil-producing nation.

Saudi Arabia’s delegation, according to a negotiator present in the room, described initial draft language on fossil fuels over the weekend as “traumatizing.” 

More than 2,000 oil lobbyists

The zigs and zags come at a COP where fossil fuel producers have been omnipresent, hosting events promoted by host country UAE that have overshadowed the talks themselves. 

At times, even within the U.N.-designated blue zone, the climate conference resembled an oil and gas trade show.

It has been easy here to bump into an oil and gas executive or lobbyist; some 2,400 lobbyists are attending COP this year, four times the previous record at last year’s COP in Egypt. 

The most controversial oil executive of them all has been Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of Emirati oil firm Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, whom the UAE designated as president of this COP, blurring the lines between fossil fuel companies and climate talks. 

Country pavilions here showed off scale models of carbon-capture plants – seen by some activists as a false promise that continued burning of fossil fuels can be managed responsibly. 

Negotiators were hunkered down late Monday, considering the draft text and trading their own texts as they had throughout the summit. Each careful phrasing can carry large ramifications.

One tug of war is over including a commitment to “phasing out” fossil fuels – a timeline for a worldwide end to the production and utilization of gas and oil – or “phasing down,” a reduction in fossil fuel production with no set timeline. 

One alternative text called for the phasing out of “unabated fossil fuels,” or oil, gas, and coal whose production has not been offset by decarbonization or carbon capture technology. The “unabated” text has gained support from some oil and gas producers and the U.S. 

But climate experts and activists say there is one major problem: There is no one definition of “abated.”

Peter Dejong/AP

John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, gestures as he arrives for a new session of talks at the COP28 U.N. climate summit, Dec. 11, 2023, in Dubai.

Without that, “it will be the Wild West,” says David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, an advocacy group, on the sidelines of COP. “It is opening up an escape hatch for the oil and gas industry to come up with distractions such as carbon capture and storage or onsite offsetting to keep producing oil and gas.” 

“Green” moment for fossil fuels?

Beyond the bargaining, however, oil and gas producers and energy researchers say this year’s COP has been a turning point in the industry’s adoption of climate-sustainable practices such as installing renewable energy and cutting methane emissions. 

It has been a showcase on how oil and gas can be partners and allies in the green transition, not spoilers, they say. 

The UAE and COP28 presidency unveiled several pledges by oil- and gas-producing nations and companies, hailing each as a “breakthrough.”

One such pledge is the so-called Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, launched at the conference last week by the UAE and Saudi Arabia. 

Under the pact, 50 oil and gas companies representing 40% of the world’s oil production pledged to adopt net-zero business practices by 2050, end routine flaring by 2030, limit methane emissions, and invest in renewable energy. 

Yet climate experts say these pledges only address operational emissions and not the carbon created by the burning of oil and gas by consumers – the vast bulk of oil and gas emissions. 

The World Resources Institute said it was “encouraging that some national oil companies have set methane reduction targets for the first time.”

However, it warned in a statement that “the pledge doesn’t cover a drop of the fuel they sell, which accounts for up to 95% of the oil and gas industry’s contribution to the climate crisis. [It] is like a cigarette maker claiming no responsibility for the impact of their product once it leaves the factory door.”

Leaning over the front gate of his modest home in the village of Gjadër, Nikolle Voci is unfazed by the prospect that tens of thousands of migrants might soon arrive in this quiet, rural corner of northern Albania.

“For me, there’s nothing wrong. The migrants will not be staying here; they will just be passing through,” says Mr. Voci, who was himself once a migrant, having lived and worked in Australia for a few years. “Other countries helped Albanians in the past. Now it’s our turn to help.”

He is talking about a deal between the Italian and Albanian governments, outsourcing procedures to sort through some of the tens of thousands of migrants who try to reach Italy from the North African coast each year.

The controversial accord could have broad ramifications; the government in Rome suggests it might offer a model for other European Union countries as they try to clamp down on illegal migration.

Under the agreement, which was signed in November, Italian navy and coast guard vessels intercepting migrants in international waters will take them straight to Albania, where Italy will build two facilities to deal with them.

The first will be in the port of Shëngjin, a popular seaside resort with a long beach lined by a phalanx of tourist hotels, where the migrants will be assessed.

They will then be taken about 15 miles inland to a second, much larger facility, which is to be built on a disused Cold War military airfield just outside Gjadër, where they will await their decisions.

Those whose asylum bids are approved will be brought to Italy and allowed to resettle there or in other EU countries. Those whose applications are turned down will, the theory goes, be repatriated to their home countries.

No migrants will be settled in Albania.

As many as 3,000 migrants will be processed by Italian officials each month, according to the Italian government, which is promising that they will spend no more than 28 days in the new system before a decision is made on their future.

Chris Warde-Jones

The entrance to Gjadër Air Base in Albania. A migrant reception camp, where claims to asylum in Italy will be assessed, is due to open there next summer.

The ruling coalition in Rome, led by hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, says that the facilities will be built and operational by early summer next year.

Repaying past hospitality?

Albanians know what it’s like to leave home and seek a better life abroad. Hundreds of thousands have emigrated since the end of communism in the 1990s and the chaos that ensued.

Many Albanians feel that the accord with Rome gives them a chance to show gratitude to Italy for accepting huge numbers of Albanian migrants over the last 30 years.

“It will be a way for Albania to repay Italy for welcoming and integrating our people,” says Ermal Pacaj, the center-left deputy mayor of the nearby city of Lezhë.

He remains wary, however, and says his administration knew nothing about the migrant accord until the day it was signed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Ms. Meloni.

“Even though many Albanians go abroad to find work, we in Albania are not used to foreigners, so we’re not well prepared for this sort of thing,” he worries. “If it goes according to the plan with Italy, and there is good security, it will not have an impact. But if things go wrong, we’ll have problems.”

The bilateral accord has echoes of Britain’s troubled plans to send migrants to Rwanda in East Africa, an arrangement that has been dogged by legal challenges since it was first announced nearly three years ago.

Italy’s Albania plan has also proved controversial – both in Italy and across the Adriatic Sea. Some critics are calling it “a Balkan Guantanamo,” fraught with legal, ethical, and practical difficulties.  

Chris Warde-Jones

Ermal Pacaj, deputy mayor of Lezhë, is wary of government plans to host camps for migrants headed for Italy.

Others wonder what will be done with failed asylum-seekers whose home countries refuse to take them back. Few governments have repatriation deals with Italy; of the 150,000 migrants who have reached Italy this year, only around 4,000 have been repatriated.

“Do we really think we are going to be able to carry out the procedures of identification and asylum request for each migrant in 28 days when in Italy it takes months?” asked Emma Bonino, a former Italian foreign minister and EU commissioner, in the newspaper La Stampa.

“I think it will be very difficult,” she predicted. “Migrants who have the right to protection will be brought to Italy. And those who don’t have the right but who can’t be repatriated to their country of origin ... will be brought to Italy, too.”

If the migrants were locked up inside the centers, that would raise human rights concerns; if not, they would be tempted to head north toward Croatia, which is a member of the EU.

Sali Berisha, a former prime minister and president of Albania who now leads the center-right opposition, has warned that migrants “could become victims of trafficking.”

The Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organization, is also unhappy about the accord, saying that it adds to “a worrying European trend towards the externalization of asylum responsibilities.”

Italy’s coalition government dismisses those fears, insisting the plan will become a model that other EU countries will want to adopt.

There is “great interest” from other countries in the bloc, insists Matteo Piantedosi, Italy’s interior minister.

The Italian government, which has so far failed to honor the pledges it made when it came to power last year to crack down on illegal migration, says the plan would cost around €200 million a year.

“It will be money well spent,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told parliament last week.

Doubts on the ground

As politicians on both sides of the Adriatic hammer out the practical details of the accord, the pace of life in Gjadër remains bucolic, with farmers driving battered tractors down muddy lanes and a woman in a scarf herding a handful of cows with a stick.

While some locals are sympathetic to the plight of migrants, others are aghast at the prospect of the arrival of tens of thousands of mostly young men from Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.

“People here are not happy,” says Niko Rroku, raising the very same objections that Italians voiced when Albanians sought refuge in their country 30 years ago. “Some people here are scared for their lives. You don’t know who these migrants are.”

Down on the coast, the inhabitants of Shëngjin worry that frequent arrivals of migrants in the small harbor will damage tourism.

“For sure there will be an impact on tourism,” worries Edison Preka, a server in a beachside restaurant. “They should take the migrants to Tirana [the capital] instead. I hope people will protest and that it won’t happen.”

Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

A Palestinian girl has her face painted to celebrate the start of a new school year in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, August 2022.

The crisis in Gaza is stirring college campuses around the globe on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Vietnam War. On Saturday, the conflict struck inside the ivory tower.

Elizabeth Magill stepped down from her post as president of the University of Pennsylvania. Days earlier, she and her counterparts at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had been grilled in a congressional hearing about the limits of acceptable student activism. Her unyielding defense of academic freedom drew withering criticism – even from the White House. Penn’s board chair followed her out the door.

Of primary concern is the relationship between free speech and individual safety. From Berkeley to Tel Aviv, protest rallies for one side or the other have left Jewish and Arab students feeling similarly threatened. Professors, meanwhile, worry the space for unrestrained intellectual debate is narrowing.

Yet beneath the noise, the conflict is also nurturing a counter trend – one that finds harmony not by curtailing freedom of expression but by elevating it through empathy and compassion.

Almost from the outset of the war in Gaza, says Rebecca Russo, senior director of higher education at Interfaith America, “we have heard from campus leaders that in places where strong interfaith relationships existed already among students, staff, and faculty, dialogue has continued and people have been able to show care for each other across divides.” As she told Inside Higher Ed, “the sharing of – and deep listening to – personal stories and experiences is particularly effective when political tensions are high.”

Wartime infringements on free speech are nothing new. Nor has the war in Gaza inflamed public discontent in a vacuum. Universities are still grappling with issues of academic inclusivity stirred by the social justice protests of 2020.

Still, the unique emotional impact of the Israeli-Palestinian issue has made finding a balance between safety and free speech more urgent – especially on campus. University administrators face internal and external pressures to rein in potentially provocative speech from students and professors.

In response to those calls, measures of reconciliation – many rooted in shared religious values – are growing. At Dartmouth, professors from Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt have hosted public conversations about the crisis. The University of California has earmarked $7 million for new initiatives that address issues such as antisemitism and Islamophobia.

“It is not okay to cast civility aside because the moment is too heated,” said Columbia University President Minouche Shafik in a public forum co-hosted by Princeton. “We must cultivate a university culture that pushes back on the forces that seek to divide us. A culture that encourages empathy, not personal attacks on individuals or identities. Learning to speak, and listen with respect, that is a cherished [academic] value.”

Confronted with a moment of raw division, universities may be resetting a foundational democratic right on a higher law common across divided faiths – that free speech, scented with the Golden Rule, heals rather than harms.