Susan Walsh/AP

President Joe Biden waves on the tarmac next to Air Force One at Munich International Airport, June 28, 2022. Mr. Biden departed Germany, where he attended the G-7 summit, for Spain to attend a NATO summit. He put China on the agenda at both meetings.

American leadership in a Europe confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has been a rare triumph in Joe Biden’s presidency.

His stand for the rules-based U.S.-led international order that has reigned since World War II – and for the democratic values underpinning the transatlantic alliance for seven decades – steeled the spine of European allies and reinvigorated the NATO defense alliance.

Now with President Biden in Europe this week – first for a G-7 summit in Germany that ended today, and then a NATO summit in Madrid beginning Wednesday – the question for some is whether the global stage again affords him the opportunity to burnish his leadership skills.

For many, the context is more complicated now compared with the naked challenge Mr. Biden originally faced: the stark unacceptability of Russia’s violation of established international borders and the return of big-power aggression to European soil.

Now Russia’s war of attrition in Ukraine threatens to drag on for years, not months, some experts warn, pulling down Western economies and testing public support for Ukraine’s defense. At the same time, the prospect of China teaming up with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to form an authoritarian front to undercut an alliance of democratic powers makes Mr. Biden’s principled leadership path all the more arduous, some say, even as it expands potential areas of cooperation among the Western allies.

One avenue pursued by the U.S. president diverges from the wartime leadership against Russian aggression and instead involves leading a more robust values-based competition with China in infrastructure development for poorer countries.

“Biden’s task is more difficult now than when the Russians first shocked Europe by invading Ukraine and looking like they were on the verge of taking the whole country,” says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who now specializes in national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Then, for a time, Ukraine looked like it just might defeat Russia – with Western help.

“Now the Ukrainians are no longer making gains but are losing a little here and there, and instead of a one-and-done the war looks like it will be a factor in Europe for a while, hitting not just Russia’s economy but everywhere,” he says.

Abortion, guns, and U.S. leadership

Moreover, Mr. Biden’s political troubles at home and recent Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights and guns are clouding America’s image and raising questions for many international partners over how much faith they can put into U.S. leadership, Mr. Korb says.

“Countries in Europe especially are looking at the problems Biden is having at home and they wonder if it’s going to be Trump all over again in 2024, so they’re questioning America’s consistency,” he says. “Then you have the Roe decision [the Supreme Court reversing an established constitutional right to an abortion] and suddenly the image of America as a democratic leader and a beacon for individual rights has taken a big hit.”

Sven Biscop, director of the Europe in the World Program at Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, emphasizes the growing concerns over the longevity of the U.S. leadership on Ukraine.

“The first thing to be said is that there is a lot of recognition and gratitude around Europe for the leadership role the U.S. is playing in this crisis,” he says. “But while that remains very much the case, it’s also true that people are already worried about 2024. ... Everybody has this nagging little voice that we could soon be back to Trump, or some Trumpist Republican.”

Even the prospect of Republican control of Congress after this fall’s midterm elections has some in Europe on edge, experts say, given that dozens of Republican members of Congress have demonstrated much less enthusiasm for (or even opposition to) supporting Ukraine militarily against Russia.

Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses G-7 leaders via video link during their working session at Elmau Castle in Germany, June 27, 2022.

Still, his week in Europe presents Mr. Biden with opportunities to demonstrate America’s global leadership, diplomatic analysts say, ranging from initiatives to address mounting global food insecurity to a Western powers’ international infrastructure program meant to compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative.

A values-based alternative

G-7 leaders announced the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which aims to generate $600 billion in infrastructure development in low- and medium-income countries by 2027 – $200 billion of which the United States is pledging to mobilize through public-private initiatives.

The program is being touted as an alternative to the Chinese model, which critics say encourages overwhelming indebtedness in some of the world’s poorest countries, lacks transparency, and places Chinese interests above those of the partner country.

The U.S.-led infrastructure plan will be guided by values Mr. Biden seeks to promote internationally, White House officials say, such as labor rights and gender equity. The program will focus on four “pillars” of development, they add: climate resilient infrastructure and global energy security; secure information and communications technology; strengthened public health systems; and projects advancing women’s participation in local economies.

As one senior Biden administration said in previewing the infrastructure plan with journalists last week, the initiative is one key part of a “vision of the world” on display in Germany and Spain that is “grounded in freedom and openness, not coercion, not aggression, not spheres of influence,” and based on “cooperation” and addressing “the challenges posed by China.”

Yet while some international experts say they welcome a Western alternative to the Belt and Road initiative, they also caution that too heavy an emphasis on the new program’s restrictions could send some struggling democracies deeper into China’s arms.

“You cannot overload some of these potential partner countries with political conditionalities in order to participate in the program – going too far with standards of democracy and human rights, for example – because many of the governments will simply say, ‘OK, in that case we’ll stick with the Chinese,’” Dr. Biscop says. “Better to present these projects as an opportunity to work together on improving standards,” he adds.

NATO summit’s firsts

At the NATO summit, U.S. officials are also touting two “firsts” linking the transatlantic Alliance with Asia.

For the first time, NATO’s updated Strategic Concept to be adopted at the summit will refer specifically to China and the challenges it poses to the Alliance. Russia will continue to be recognized as “the most serious and immediate threat” to NATO, the senior administration official said, even as the new strategic concept “will also address the multifaceted and longer-term challenges posed by the PRC [China] to the Euro-Atlantic Security.”

And second, the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea have for the first time been invited to participate in a NATO summit – an initiative White House officials say is intended at least in part as a message to both Moscow and Beijing about the strength of U.S.-led alliances.

Yet Mr. Biden may not find the same enthusiasm in Europe for expanding NATO’s horizons to Asia and taking on China’s vision of global leadership.

For one thing, Europe’s approach to China remains less confrontational than that of the U.S., some analysts note, and favors cooperative steps aimed at heading off a full-fledged China-Russia alliance.

Still others say the era of a hot war on European soil and gathering threats to NATO’s easternmost members is no time to be diverting the Alliance’s laser focus on Russia.

“If the U.S. wants to add China and the Indo-Pacific to the NATO agenda, the Europeans will go along, but that doesn’t mean there will be enthusiasm for it,” says Dr. Biscop.

In the past, debates on NATO’s purpose in a post-Cold War world always concluded that “the answer was to broaden the agenda,” he says – as when President George W. Bush pushed for a “Global NATO” during his second term.

“But the war in Ukraine has reminded us what NATO’s core task is, and that is defense,” he says. “And what we’ve learned again is that NATO is good when it is good at that core task.”

How Ukrainians experience the war with Russia depends very much on their location. In the east, people in the Donbas face daily bombardment and a Russian advance. The country’s west, despite daily air raid sirens and a recent wave of missile strikes, seeks a normal life. On Sunday, June 26, two Monitor reporters spent the day in Lviv, in Ukraine’s far west, and Bakhmut, in the far east, and recorded their observations. These are scenes from a war now split in two.

7:45 a.m., Bakhmut: On the road to the city, two green vans are marked with the number “300” – the code that they’re carrying wounded people. Military vehicles grind along the tarmac, transporting troops and rocket launchers to the northern front lines, where Ukrainian forces have been losing ground.

8:45 a.m., Bakhmut: At the gold-domed Russian Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, believers stand amid ornate icons, and breathe the incense-infused air. A priest, holding a thick Bible and an enamel crucifix, says his congregation is “praying for peace.” He blocks journalists from entering. Like others in the city, the priest thinks they’re a bad omen.

The sound of artillery and rocket exchanges erupt every few seconds outside town, creating a menacing backdrop. Bakhmut’s citizens expect to be Russia’s next priority in the Donbas. The city is already a target.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian soldiers in armored vehicles and with tanks redeploy between front lines, as the Russian offensive advances to take control of the entire Donbas region of Ukraine on June 26, 2022. Russian capture of Severodonetsk last week and pressure on Lysychansk, to the northeast, have raised the stakes in Bakhmut.

9:15 a.m., Lviv: It takes 15 minutes for Svit Kavy (“Coffee World”) to attract its first customer. Lvivians rise late on weekends, and even later during Ukraine’s wartime curfew. Under the cafe’s small awning, facing a rose garden, people enjoy coffee and croissants.

9:30 a.m., Bakhmut: Amid a cluster of metal kiosks, shop owner Serhii spills a sack of dried bread for a dozen noisy pigeons. With three gold-capped teeth and a scar on the bridge of his nose, he says he doesn’t know if shelling affects these “birds of peace.” But his dog Elza hides at the noise.

Elza belonged to Serhii’s son until he evacuated to Europe in late March from Mariupol, a southern city obliterated by weeks of Russian shelling. More than half of Bakhmut’s shops have closed, he says, and business is getting “worse and worse.”

“I am not falling down from my optimism,” he says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian shopkeeper Serhii and his dog Elza, who lived in Mariupol during the first month of the war with Serhii's son, are pictured as the Russian offensive to capture the entire Donbas region advances closer to their industrial city of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on June 26, 2022.

9:30 a.m., Lviv: Golden statues of angels and saints climb the inside pillars of Lviv’s Bernardine church, up to a ceiling fresco of the ascension. “Pray for peace, pray for freedom, pray for Jesus, pray for the army,” the priest chants. “Jesus, have mercy on us,” the congregation sings back.

The call and response continues for several minutes and congregants kneel on pastel-colored pads to soften the stone floor. “God wishes that all of us would have peace,” says the priest.

10:20 a.m., Bakhmut: At a military hospital, tension is high and blood-stained stretchers testify to a nationwide daily death toll of 100 to 200 Ukrainian soldiers.

Grygorii, a rotund uniformed security guard with a gray beard, is nicknamed Hottabych for his resemblance to a Soviet-era children’s film character. “We’re not having too much fun here,” he says.

Then he barks orders to soldiers to park their cars under trees “so they cannot be seen from the sky.”

10:45 a.m., Bakhmut: Across the street, a group of soldiers waits for news of a concussed comrade. Volodymyr Doroshenko, who volunteered for service the day Russia invaded, is among them. His unit first deployed to Irpin, a Kyiv commuter town.

Though Irpin was largely destroyed by Russian artillery, “the intensity of the shelling was nothing like it is here,” he says, the back of his civilian car packed with rocket-propelled grenade rounds and body armor.

Ukrainian troops billet in abandoned buildings on the empty north side of town, pocked with shell craters. “Be very careful,” says a soldier nicknamed Boroda, who stepped out of a van to check press credentials. “It’s not safe.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian army soldier Volodymyr Doroshenko waits outside a military hospital for a comrade concussed by Russian bombardment, as the Russian offensive to capture the entire Donbas region advances closer to the industrial city of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on June 26, 2022.

11:00 a.m., Lviv: The second air raid siren of the day whines as Zinovii stands outside church with his son. Around his black satchel, the father carries a wreath of yellow and blue flowers, believed to bring safety. “When you personally wait for this help from God, he will definitely come and bring peace,” he says. He thinks the people in the Donbas should do the same.

11:20 a.m., Bakhmut: A security guard named Sasha stands at a trolley-bus repair station, down the street from a cratered Soviet factory. “We still have to live somehow, though there is shooting everywhere,” Sasha says. Inside, a mechanic tightens lug nuts on bus wheels. There hasn’t been an air raid siren all day.

11:30 a.m., Lviv: Near a tram stop, a soldier stands guard with a rifle on his back and an AirPod in his ear.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A crater from a Russian missile strike yawns wide as the Russian offensive to capture Ukraine's entire Donbas region advances closer to the industrial city of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on June 26, 2022.

1:25 p.m., Bakhmut: An alarmingly close outgoing artillery round roars into the sky, and everyone at a bus stop jerks back with fear.

“It’s unpleasant, of course,” says Olha Mytnyk, a sumo wrestling instructor waiting for the bus. On her phone, Ms. Mytnyk shows videos of classes she taught to children, to a soundtrack of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.”

“I’ve coped with it. I have learned to live with it,” she says. “But I can’t get used to it.” From her designer bag, a woman in a tight blue dress and mirror sunglasses pulls a sopilka – Ukraine’s traditional woodwind instrument resembling a recorder – and starts playing.

1:30 p.m., Lviv: On his day off this week, Andrii Sydorov waits for his wife’s shift to end at an art gallery. Sitting on a bench under a small tree, he says the two of them fled their home in Zaporizhzhia, in southeast Ukraine, in March when the Russians shelled the city’s nuclear plant.

Their daughter studies in Lviv, and both of them easily found work. “Our lives are almost normal,” says Mr. Sydorov. “We would really love to go back to our home. But obviously we can’t.”

1:50 p.m., Bakhmut: More nearby bursts of outgoing fire and 4-year-old Anton leaps from a park playground and rushes to his mother, Elena.

“Let’s go home! Let’s go home!” he says, tugging at her arm.

At home, the boy tells her “my heart is broken” by the sounds of war. He knows who Russian President Vladimir Putin is, says Elena: “The one who orders Ukraine to be bombed.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Boys and their bikes fill a skate park, as Ukrainians seek to reestablish a degree of normal life, four months after Russian military forces first invaded Ukraine, and despite a recent wave of missile strikes across the country, in the western city of Lviv, Ukraine, on June 19, 2022.

2:45 p.m., Lviv: At a skate park next to the fire station, a dozen or so teenagers ride scooters on metal ramps. Some twist their handlebars, others their footpad. Shirtless, one teenager calls to his friends that he just learned a new trick.

They wait and watch.

Riding up and down the tallest ramp for momentum, he launches into the air and spins the footpad with his hand. He doesn’t land a full 360; neither, laughing, do his friends who try the same move.

3:50 p.m., Bakhmut: For Oksana Shpachenko’s family, four months of war is enough. They board a yellow evacuation van run by the Ukrainian charity Help People. The van has room for 18 but only six are on board – a situation likely to change soon. The war is coming closer to Bakhmut, and Ukrainian military forces are pouring into the area.

In the end, says Ms. Shpachenko, the decision to leave was “quick.”

“Our bags were ready,” she says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

The Ukrainian family of Oksana Shpachenko (center, looking at camera), and two others, board an evacuation van run by the Ukrainian charity Help People, as the Russian offensive to capture the entire Donbas region advances closer to the industrial city of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on June 26, 2022.

7:15 p.m., Lviv: There’s a street carnival on the long boulevard outside the opera house. At one of the stands, a vendor has set up paper targets of Mr. Putin. He sells several shots apiece with a plastic AK-47 BB gun.

Half a mile down at a dog park, Ivan Bolgarov stands next to his small brown-and-black hound, Marka. “I just wanted someone to distract me, someone to care about,” says Mr. Bolgarov, who adopted Marka in March. “When you find yourself having to bury more friends in one month than you did your whole life, you have to have something to balance that.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainians enjoy outdoor cafes, as they seek to reestablish a degree of normal life, four months after Russian military forces first invaded Ukraine, and despite a recent wave of missile strikes across the country, in the western city of Lviv, Ukraine, on June 19, 2022.

9:30 p.m., Lviv: The outdoor tables on Virmenska Street, near the city center, are packed but they won’t be for long. On weekends before the war, people often stayed out until midnight. Now restaurants close by 10 p.m.

Yulia Malish has just finished dinner with two friends. Her day started with the news that a missile had hit an apartment in Kyiv, injuring six people and killing one. “I’ve already adapted to the new reality,” says Ms. Malish. “But on the other hand I was still very emotional.” Waiters pick up chairs behind her and clean tables under strings of colorful Christmas lights.

It’s almost Lviv’s closing time, and Ms. Malish and her friends have to get home before the 11 p.m. curfew.

She has spent the day surfing Instagram, walking her dog, relaxing at home, and going out to eat with friends. More or less, she says, it’s been a pretty typical day.

“War,” says her friend Sonya Vyshnevska before they turn for home, “has become like another type of routine.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko in Bakhmut and Iryna Kovalchuk in Lviv.

When Sinn Féin won 27 seats in Northern Ireland’s May parliamentary elections, it marked a historic turning point. That total gave the Irish republican party the largest number of seats in Stormont, the Northern Irish parliament, the first time a nationalist party has done so in the region’s centurylong history. While the now-second-largest party, the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has put the brakes on the formation of a new government, Northern Ireland is at a turning point.

What does a Sinn Féin-led Stormont mean for the United Kingdom?

For the moment, mostly a big bother.

Under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, power in Northern Ireland must be shared between (mostly Catholic) Irish nationalists and (mostly Protestant) unionists who wish to remain a part of the United Kingdom. Introduced as a means of reconciliation following decades of violence between sectarian groups and British law enforcement, the agreement ensures neither side can wield power over the other.

A drawback is that the Northern Ireland Assembly often collapses when the two sides cannot agree. The DUP dissolved Stormont in February this year in protest over Brexit rules that they believe separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. Northern Ireland trades under European Union rules in order to keep goods moving across the largely invisible border between the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, but the staunchly unionist DUP is opposed to any policy that might distance Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain.

The British government, which also dislikes the current Northern Ireland trade rules, will likely be torn between backing the DUP’s resistance and reconciling the DUP and Sinn Féin in Stormont.

In the longer term, Sinn Féin’s victory brings the prospect of a united Ireland a step closer, adding more uncertainty to the future of the U.K. at a time when Scotland, under the rule of the Scottish National Party, also appears at risk of leaving the union. 

Though Sinn Féin dialed down the rhetoric on uniting Ireland during the election campaign, it has made no secret about its desire for Irish unification. Newly named Northern Irish First Minister Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s vice president, recently stated that she believes the U.K.’s exit from the EU will lead to a referendum on reunification in the near future.

How does the vote affect Ireland?

Sinn Féin is unique in that it is represented on both sides of the Irish border. 

In the Republic of Ireland, it stands as the opposition to the governing centrist coalition. For decades, Sinn Féin has been viewed as a pariah by the mainstream, due to its historic links with the Irish Republican Army. But a surge of younger, urban voters attracted to policies tackling Ireland’s spiking housing prices and cost of living has given new life to the party. It also appealed to a liberal, young base by dropping its former euroskepticism and embracing the EU. 

While a vote on the future of Northern Ireland still remains some way away, Sinn Féin’s victory means the republic must weigh whether it can afford to absorb its northern neighbor into its health care and education system. Northern Ireland consistently has the U.K.’s highest rate of economically inactive people, including those needing long-term care.

Is Northern Irish politics all sectarian?

While Sinn Féin and the DUP took the two largest numbers of seats in May’s election, it was the centrist Alliance Party that arguably made the greatest strides, more than doubling its seats from last time.

The Alliance Party was founded in 1970 in the belief that a new cross-community party was needed to heal deep-seated religious and political divisions in Northern Ireland. Though unionist when founded, the Alliance Party has become neutral on unionism, and now appeals to Catholic voters too.

“It will take further elections to ascertain whether the massive jump in support for the Alliance Party is just a temporary bounce, or whether it represents a real and lasting change in politics in Northern Ireland,” says Elaine Loughlin, deputy editor of the Irish Examiner newspaper. 

In some respects, the growth of a new, centrist political ground is the “start of the normalization of Northern Irish politics,” says Jonathan Powell, formerly chief British government negotiator in Northern Ireland.

To view the south Louisiana coast from 2,000 feet above is to peer at the conflict between nature and humankind. Lush coastal colors – hues of brown, green, and saltwater blue – blend beneath the small-engine plane being used for an environmental tour. An occasional oil sheen glistens between patches of disappearing marshland, leaks from the pipelines buried beneath the shallow seafloor. Here, at the Gulf of Mexico’s door, one can truly appreciate its beauty.  

Humankind’s touch is evident – from the way an engineered Mississippi River has enabled coastal erosion to the presence of oil spills and sea level rise.  

The Bayou State is at a crossroads. The risk posed by storms, like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Ida last year, is increasing due to the rise in atmospheric greenhouse emissions, scientists say. Yet almost a quarter of the state’s gross domestic product and more than 1 in 10 of its workers are connected to the oil and gas industry, according to the American Petroleum Institute. 

All this underscores the significance of a move this past January, when Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that a state task force had approved a climate action plan – the first such action by a state in the South. The goal is to steer a course toward net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. 

“I feel like we could hit it if we want to,” says Kendall Dix, national policy director at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, referring to the 2050 deadline. “We could probably hit it early, if we wanted to, and if there’s the political will.”

That is an open question, given that implementing some of the key measures will hinge on the legislature and future governors in a state that generally leans toward the Republican Party – which isn’t known for climate urgency.

Still, the plan’s announcement suggests a good measure of support, since the task force represented stakeholders from the petrochemical industry to environmental groups to urban planners. To many here, pure economic interests alone call for action on climate change and its effects on the state.

The tug of coastal flood risks

And the plan didn’t just appear out of the blue, says Virginia Burkett, chief scientist for climate and land use change at the U.S. Geological Survey and a member of Louisiana’s Climate Initiatives Task Force. 

Quietly, Louisiana has been adapting to climate change for nearly two decades. That work has been produced through the state’s coastal Trojan horse – a 50-year, $50 billion coastal master plan that acts as a coastal restoration wish list, for which Louisiana lawmakers meet every six years to allocate funds for restoration projects. Legislators convene again in 2023.

“We didn’t call it climate change adaptation, but Louisiana has focused on nature-based coastal protection since the first Coastal Master Plan” in 2007, after Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Burkett says. “Louisiana has been a pioneer in that regard.”  

Xander Peters

A petroleum refinery sits along the Mississippi River's edge, just miles from the Gulf of Mexico near Belle Chasse, Louisiana. Located beside it are some of the communities that are most vulnerable to climate change. A task force convened by Gov. John Bel Edwards has weighed how to reduce fossil fuel emissions in a state heavily involved in oil refining and the petrochemical industry.

But at the same time, the sheer scale of the state’s oil and gas industry continued to set it apart. Nearly two-thirds of the state’s carbon emissions (61%) come from its industrial sector, Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies found last year. The researchers noted that Louisiana’s emissions rates were nearly three times the national average. 

Another way to put it: Louisiana ranks 25th among the states in population, but fifth in emissions. 

That’s where Louisiana’s climate action plan comes into play. The plan’s final form combines 80 policy actions framed around three pillars: an expedited shift to renewable wind and solar energy rather than fossil fuels, running more industrial processes by electric power, and switching from carbon to hydrogen-based fuels for the industrial sector. 

Though the task force’s action so far is notable, it lacks means to enforce follow-through on its long-term vision and goals, says Mark Davis, director of Tulane University’s Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. 

“The plan tells you what to do, but it doesn’t tell you what will work,” Dr. Davis adds. “It doesn’t tell you how much time we have.” 

“There’s a lot of stuff coming at us”

Time is of the essence not just in Louisiana’s coastal communities, but across the entire region. After Hurricanes Laura and Delta struck southwest Louisiana in 2020, the city of Lake Charles saw the nation’s highest out-migration. Small towns across the southern Louisiana coast, where the state’s iconic commercial fishing community is a $1 billion industry, are vulnerable to a similar fate. 

“There’s a multitude of factors” as to why households might leave communities in the low-lying region, Dr. Davis says. “But one is that communities and local employers cannot adjust” to an expanding cost of doing business. Lost time due to natural disasters and their fallout is difficult to make up – and living costs, including flood insurance premiums, will likely keep rising.  

“Even if we got to net-zero tomorrow, there’s a lot of stuff coming at us,” Dr. Davis says. 

Even getting there by 2050 is a tall order in this or any state. 

Mr. Edwards is the South’s only Democratic governor, and he’s in his second and final term due to the state’s term limits. Who succeeds him in a wide-open 2023 campaign – and inherits responsibility for the plan’s climate goals – remains unclear. 

“We know that’s going to have devastating consequences for people,” says Mr. Dix at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, referring to the global stakes of missing targets such as those set for the world in the 2015 Paris Agreement. “But we also know that we have to keep fighting for emissions reductions no matter what, because [holding temperature change to] 3 degrees is better than 4 degrees, 2 degrees is better than 3, and 1.75 is better than 2.” 

Under any circumstances, experts say the state’s economy and society face significant changes.

“It will be a fundamentally different coastal Louisiana in the future,” Dr. Davis says. But goals like a climate action plan could allow “an aspect of it to remain functional and recognizable.” 

Murr Brewster

Grant stands in front of the magnificent fence – with its problematic gate – that he built for the writer in Portland, Oregon.

The story of my new fence begins 15,000 years ago.

The fence builder, Grant, is not that old, but he’s up there for a working carpenter. A friend recommended him. “He’s retired,” she said, “but he doesn’t like to be bored.” So I called him. Would he be interested in building me a fence?

Well, gosh, he would, ordinarily. But he was slowing down. And he had a surgery coming up in a month and really shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous. He was sorry.

A half-hour later he called me back.

“I just wanted you to know, when you’re looking for a fence guy, make sure they use three-quarter-inch boards and not the half-inch boards. And be sure they don’t use a nail gun. You want hand-hammered galvanized nails, or you’ll get rot and staining. And make sure they ...”

He went on for about 20 minutes. As he wound down, he realized he simply couldn’t bear the thought of my getting a poor-quality fence – it wouldn’t be right. He wouldn’t hear of it. Could I wait until he had his surgery and then he’d make me a nice fence?

I could. He showed up soon after. The surgery had been canceled due to the pandemic. Over the course of the next few weeks I began to suspect the procedure may have had more to do with the surgeon’s boat payment than any infirmity on Grant’s part. He pulled out the existing fence and a rotten trellis and hauled them away. He busted up a thick old concrete pad and hauled it away. He tore out shrubs and hauled them away. He yarded in lumber. He dug postholes. 

And the whole time, he was a fountain of cheer. He hummed, he whistled. The man is well past retirement age and has the constitution of a good-natured bison. A splendid new fence with three-quarter-inch boards began to emerge, nail by hand-hammered nail.

The gate, he swore, would never go out of square. It was a massive thing with two sides sandwiching a diagonal brace and might have tipped a scale with a rhino in the other pan. And once he’d hoisted it into place and installed the hardware, it whispered open and shut like a butterfly testing its wings in the sunshine.

It didn’t look cheap, and it wasn’t. But a few months later, the mighty gate showed signs of petulance. It was reluctant to latch. Ultimately, it wouldn’t close at all.

I called Grant.

Of course he’d be right over! He’d see me right. And he did. The gate was so heavy, it tended to pull the post on the hinge side off plumb. He sturdied it up. And we were good – for a few more months.

I called Grant. He was living at the coast now but he’d get around to it as soon as he could. Maybe put in a diagonal brace for the fence section nearest the gate.

I wasn’t in any hurry. The gate isn’t to keep people out. It goes straight into the neighbor’s yard. She always has the best parsley. Also a rosemary bush.

“This is the first gate that’s ever given me a problem,” Grant said. “It’s all these rocks. I’ve never pulled out so many rocks digging a posthole in my life. It makes the post unstable.”

Oh, I knew all about those rocks. All the gardeners on our little rise complain about them. It’s because we’re living on a gigantic gravel bar of cobble scoured off a petite volcano to the east and deposited here during the great ice age floods, when glacial Lake Missoula repeatedly emptied out across Idaho and Washington and past our future house and into the ocean.

Grant strategized. He put in a second post perpendicular to the fence to fortify it. It will probably work. 

But if not, “how many times are you going to let me call you about this?” I queried. “I’m good for life,” he said, with a smile for the ages, and I believe him. 

We’ve got a relationship now. It’s all part of the majesty of time. The mighty floods destined to bedevil a carpenter came 15,000 years ago. This good man doesn’t have that kind of time, but he’s a man of his word, immune to discouragement, and just a little stouter than a fence post.

This might be the final fix. But just in case, I’ve got a drawer in the guest room all cleaned out for him. The rest of my life is not a geologically significant stretch of time, but it’s plenty long enough to enjoy a good fence. And a new friendship.

AP

Afghans receive aid at a camp June 26 after an earthquake in Paktika province, Afghanistan.

When the world responds to a humanitarian crisis in a country under authoritarian rule, it can run the risk that the aid will help the regime. Can that be avoided? It depends on whether there is a mutual recognition that the needs of suffering people come first.

Perhaps nowhere is the demand for aid more urgent than in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban’s takeover last August, an economic emergency has left half the country – including 10 million children, according to the United Nations – stricken by acute hunger. That crisis was compounded by an earthquake last week that left more than 1,000 dead.

Dozens of countries and international humanitarian organizations have pledged food and financial aid in the aftermath, including Germany and the United States. That comes at a time when the Biden administration has already been working with the regime to find a way to release at least some of the $7 billion in frozen Afghan assets for economic relief without those funds being diverted by the Taliban.

The administration’s caution has been based on the Taliban’s history of human rights abuses and broken promises. In the past 10 months, the Taliban have rolled back nearly all rights of women and barred girls from education after the sixth grade. Human rights watchdogs note a catalog of other abuses: extrajudicial executions, attacks on the media, arbitrary detentions, and so on.

Many countries are offering post-quake aid cautiously. Germany pledged aid, “not through the Taliban, but with our partners and agencies ... who can reach people directly on the ground,” said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

A month ago the Taliban would have rejected that offer. In January, the government barred provincial leaders from accepting foreign aid distributions “without coordination” with the national government. Last month the Taliban established a committee to oversee the distribution of all international aid.

Critics claim the Taliban often seize and redistribute foreign humanitarian aid based on patronage. But there are hints that the earthquake may be prompting some humility.

In a rare public appeal last week, Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, called on the international community “to help the Afghan people affected by this great tragedy” and vowed not to interfere in the direct flow of humanitarian aid.

In a country facing what U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called “a matter of moral responsibility, of human decency and compassion, of international solidarity,” Mr. Akhundzada’s appeal may mark an opening.