Rolling Stone USA 04.2021

S E L E N A G O M E Z / ST.
V I N C E N T / P L AY B O I CA RT I / E R I C C H U RC H / K A RO L G
APRIL 2021
ISSUE 1350
SPECIAL REPORT
Fighting
the
Climate
Crisis
Inside Biden’s
Team: Our Last,
Best Hope
Generation
Covid
A Year in Limbo
With the Class
of 2020
John
David
Washington
THE UNSTOPPABLE RISE
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Co ts 32
John David
Washington
Does the
Right Thing
He’s Hollywood
royalty, but he
made sure to take a
long road to fame.
By Jamil Smith
64
Generation
Limbo
A year with
the class of
2020, which
graduated
into Covid-19
— and had to
put adult life
on hold.
By EJ Dickson
40
CLIMATE
CRISIS
A Special Section
With Biden in office, a serious
plan to combat climate change 22
is finally in our sights — but Playboi Carti’s
the clock is ticking, and there Next Persona
is no room for error. “Vampires live forever,”
says the trendsetting
rapper behind one of this
year’s best albums.
PHOTOGRAPH BY Josiah Rundles
The Mix
11 St. Vincent’s
Family Ties
The rock visionary turns
to Seventies sounds to
process her father’s white-
collar prison experience.
BY BRENNA EHRLICH
SPOTLIGHT
16 Reinventing
Karol G
Covid slowed her down,
but the reggaeton star
bounces back.
BY JULYSSA LOPEZ
ARTIST YOU
NEED TO KNOW
18 Arlo Parks’
Mellow Gold
The 20-year-old singer
is making some of
today’s best neo-soul.
BY JEFF IHAZA
RS CHARTS
19 The Resilience
of ‘Now’
Playlists are a dime a
dozen, but Now That’s
What I Call Music!
albums remain popular.
BY EMILY BLAKE
PROFILE
22 Playboi Carti
How he helped shape
modern rap, with an assist
from punk zines, Bach,
and vampire iconography.
BY JEFF IHAZA
Q&A
25 Selena Gomez
Why she’s singing in
Spanish and speaking out.
BY BRITTANY SPANOS
National
Affairs
16
26 The Covid Queen
of South Dakota
Gov. Kristi Noem’s state
has been ravaged by
her Trumpian response
to the pandemic — but
that hasn’t paused her
national ambitions.
Reviews TV
74 Let’s Do the Time
Movies
BY STEPHEN RODRICK
76 A ‘Justice League’
Warp Again of His Own
Music On the Cover
Netflix’s Seventies-set true- “The Zack Snyder cut”
71 Eric Church crime thriller The Serpent is finally here — and it’s
John David Washington,
Makes It a Triple photographed in Los Angeles
is poisoned by the out- a radical four-hour
Departments The Nashville maverick of-sequence storytelling revision of the all-star DC
on February 28th, 2021, by
Dario Calmese.
Correspondence 9 delivers his biggest, trend. Plus: Reviews of superhero flop, originally Grooming by Yvette Shelton at iTalent
RS Recommends 14 boldest statement yet. Invincible, Chad, and more. released in 2017. Company. Styling by Samantha McMillen
The Last Word 82 BY JONATHAN BERNSTEIN BY ALAN SEPINWALL BY K. AUSTIN COLLINS at the Wall Group. T-shirt by AG.
6 | Rolling Stone | April 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY Sebastian Quintero

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8 | Rolling Stone | April 2021

Correspondence + L OV E L E T T E R S & A DV IC E
“Kacey Musgraves When Anti-Vaxxers

is on the cover Meet QAnon
of the new “How the Anti-Vaxxers Got Red-Pilled”
[RS 1349] is a one-stop tour de force
‘Rolling Stone.’ for understanding the misinformation

plague happening in our country.
If you haven’t —Kevin Smith, via Twitter
heard her music Cynicism about institutions and expertise

leads to conspiratorial thinking, whether
yet, this is your you’re into anti-vax or QAnon . . . or both.
Great long read from Tim Dickinson.
cue. Your life will —Andrew Rosenblum, via Twitter
be better for it.” Conspiracy nuts and anti-vaxxers are
—Eric Alper, via Twitter partly the reason we’re still struggling
to get this thing under control. It’s sad
how far as a people we have fallen.
—Nate Dorney, via Facebook
After the Golden Hour
For ROLLING STONE’s third annual “Women Shaping guided mushroom trip? Inquiring minds want to @ericareads
the Future” issue, Kacey Musgraves appeared on know.” Candice Bomb spotted the influence of queer: A new
our cover for the first time. Coming off of her recent a country legend: “Is it me or does she look like Kacey Musgraves
divorce, the country singer opened up to senior a young brunette Dolly Parton right here?” Jaqueline album in
writer Alex Morris about the healing, songwriting, Westman tweeted, “She’s still grounded, even 2021? Hell yes.
and magic-mushroom trips that have gone into with all the BS she’s been through. Still our Kosmic I cannot wait!
reshaping her path forward — and the making of her Kween.” Brandy Cain wrote, “Kacey dropping some
new Greek-tragedy-inspired album set for release absolute gems in this interview. She’s got another
this year [“Rebirth of Kacey Musgraves,” 1349]. classic on her hands.” Others also had their minds
Naturally, our readers had much to say. “This is on the new album. Travis Caballero tweeted, “Can’t
incredible. So well written, and so good to hear wait to hear Kacey Musgraves’ version of Blood on
her perspective on this new chapter,” wrote reader the Tracks.” Some fans are already feeling emotional Artists T cons
Evan Gravelle. “Her spirit is truly something,” Mi-
kayla Jend said. “How and where does one take this
about it. “This one is going to rip me apart,” wrote
Mike Ross. “I might as well accept it.”
& Influences
I grew up listening to Nina Simone,
and she has always been such a huge
influence. So happy to be able to talk
to R OLLING S TONE about her and what
makes her so special to me [Icons &
INSIDE THE STORY Influences, RS 1349].
—Brittany Howard, via Twitter
A Year With Generation Limbo
The Indigo Girls were ahead of their
Despite growing up to believe that a college education would time and deeply important to LBGTQ
help secure a brighter future, that has not proved to be true for exposure; this tribute and personal history
the class of 2020, who graduated into Covid-19 and a recession. about mentorship, friendship, and human
Over the past year, R OLLING S TONE senior writer EJ Dickson character is beautiful and overdue.
spoke with dozens of recent graduates to understand their unique
predicament. “I was most struck by the enduring optimism of the —Daniel Louis Dun, via Twitter
subjects I spoke with,” says Dickson. “They had every right to be
deeply embittered about the cards they were dealt, and by and
large, they really weren’t. They were pissed off (and rightfully so),
CONTACT US
and realistic about their prospects, but they still maintained hope
Letters to ROLLING STONE, 475 Fifth
about their futures. And I think that as we near the end of this
Avenue, New York, NY 10017-0298.
pandemic, but are still very much caught up in its throes, that’s LOCKED DOWN Recent college grad
ALEC CASTILLO
Letters become the property of ROLLING

a valuable lesson for people to take to heart.” Andrew Garcia-Bou at home in New York
STONE and may be edited for publication.
Email: letters@rollingstone.com
Subscriber Services: Call 800-283-1549.
April 2021 | Rolling Stone |9

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS
HAIR BY PAMELA NEAL FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS. MAKEUP BY HINAKO NISHIGUCHI
FOR THE WALL GROUP. STYLED BY AVIGAIL COLLINS FOR FORWARD ARTISTS.
St. Vincent’s
Family Ties
Rock visionary turns to Seventies
sounds to process her father’s
white-collar prison experience
PHOTOGRAPH BY Erik Carter | 11

The Mix
BOOK
Empty Clubs
Need a Hand
AS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC continues, many
venues that were once filled with people
are struggling to remain open. Bring Music
Home — written by former ROLLING STONE
events head Amber Mundinger and Tamara
Deike, with art direction by Kevin W. Condon
Bring Music
— documents the crisis with photographs of
Home
bringmusic more than 200 empty venues across the coun-
home.com try, and more than 375 interviews. A portion
$75 of the profits will go directly to the National In-
dependent Venue Association, which has lob-
bied Congress for much-needed relief for venues. “We wanted
to save something we saw early on as so vital to our culture
and yet so very vulnerable,” Mundinger says. Adds Condon:
“I’m just terrified of watching venues wither, and I truly hope
it doesn’t happen. I hope that this book does something to re-
mind people they can help.” ANGIE MARTOCCIO
KINGS THEATRE, BROOKLYN HEIGHTS THEATER,

The team at the ornately HOUSTON
refurbished theater, says “We had a T-shirt made, and
Mundinger, is led by a group of all proceeds went to staff who
“amazing women [who] support were out of work,” writes events
the Flatbush community fiercely.” manager Adrienne Joseph.
the next near-decade, she visited him in be- FAST FACTS If her 2011 breakthrough, Strange Mercy,
S T. V I N C E N T tween releasing four albums of increasing- reflected the “pain and ambivalence” of her
WAITING ROOM
ly acclaimed art rock as St. Vincent. She per- Clark recalls meet- father’s arrest, as she writes in a comic that
O
NE OF THE last times Annie Clark went formed with Nirvana at the 2014 Rock & Roll ing UFC fighter accompanies the new album, then Daddy’s
to see her father in a Texas prison, a Hall of Fame induction ceremony . . . and was Kamaru Usman, Home is about coming full circle. Zooming in
FROM LEFT: KEVIN W. CONDON; JULIAN BAJSEL
fellow visitor asked her to autograph forced to go to Walmart more than once to whose dad was in to chat about the record, Clark has ditched
the same prison.
a receipt — the only paper they had on hand. buy XXL sweatpants when the prison deemed the super-streamlined aesthetic that accom-
IN HARMONY The
“You can’t bring phones in, so you can’t take her clothing too tight for a visit. She won Best panied the sleek pop of 2017’s Masseduction,
new LP features
a normal selfie. I guess I’m glad that a selfie of Rock Song at the 2019 Grammys . . . while the instead opting for a headscarf and Seven-
backup vocals
me in there doesn’t exist,” Clark, 38, says. “I massive collection of books she brought for from Lynne Fidd- ties-style tinted glasses.
find it very darkly comic. It’s obviously very her dad to read behind bars was confiscat- mont and Kenya “I think that with my last record, I had
sad, but it’s also incredibly funny.” ed and replaced with various editions of the Hathaway — a first gone as far as I could in a certain way with
Clark saw her father taken away by the Bible. Now, two years after her father was fi- for St. Vincent. fly-out-of-the-speakers-and-grab-you-by-the-
U.S. government in May 2010 for what she nally released, she’s making sense of it all on throat kinds of sounds,” she says. Daddy’s
describes as “white-collar nonsense.” Over her seventh studio album, Daddy’s Home. Home feels more human and lived-in, with

THE STONE PONY,
ASBURY PARK, N.J.
“It’s beyond flattering to
have somebody like
that come on board to
help,” Condon says of
photographer Danny Clinch.
BOOTLEG THEATER, L.A.

“You could feel the magic in
the room even with absolutely
no one else around,” producer
Daniel Oakley says of the hip
warehouse venue.
NEIGHBORHOOD
THEATER, CHARLOTTE, N.C.
“The message on the marquee
is something we all feel,” says
photographer Justin Smith.
MAJESTIC THEATRE, SAN ANTONIO

“I remember thinking about the countless concerts that BOWERY ELECTRIC, NEW YORK
have been ongoing for the past 90 years and suddenly “We all grew up down here, going to hardcore matinees,
came to a dead stop,” says photographer Oscar Moreno. drinking 40s on the street,” Jesse Malin, musician and co-owner
“There was this eerie silence throughout the theater — of the downtown venue, writes in the book. “I don’t think I’ve
not your normal silence of an empty venue.” ever met a more New York musician,” Condon says of Malin.
echoes of Bowie, Sly Stone, and other Sev- “We’re in the Party,” which recalls a woozy catch-up with something that was righteous or true or hard
enties artists. That era, she says, was “post- a washed-out star. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this is to hear,” Clark says. “[That song] in particular
FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: DANNY CLINCH; POONEH GHANA;
grimy, sleazy,
flower-child idealism, but it’s pre-disco. It’s it,’ ” she says. “ ‘These sounds are warm, and is a love letter to strong, brilliant female art-
trying-to-
this period of time that I feel like is analogous they’re literal, and they’re evocative.’ ” ists. Each of them survived in an environment
KEVIN W. CONDON; OSCAR MORENO; JUSTIN SMITH
figure-out-
to where we are now. We’re in the grimy, slea- New York is a main character on the record that was in a lot of ways hostile to them.”
where-we- — the mysterious Johnny, a rough-and-tum- Daddy’s Home is an album that’s teeming
zy, trying-to-figure-out-where-we-go-from-
here period.”
go-from-here ble friend whom she’s mentioned on several with life and loss, backup singers and brass
Clark found the album’s sound while work- period,” Clark past albums, makes an appearance as “Bow- sections — which, naturally, leaves Clark
ing with producer Jack Antonoff in New York says of the ery John” — but Clark’s part-time home of L.A. dreaming about how it will all work onstage,
before the pandemic began. “I was walking new sound turns up too. On the psychedelic “The Melt- whenever touring is possible again. “The last
down the hall at Electric Lady Studios with she’s found ing of the Sun,” she muses on women who record and the tours I did were full multi-
Jack,” she recalls, “and I was like, ‘I want to for 2021. have been crushed or otherwise mistreated media assaults,” she says. “[This time], I will
make this down-and-out, downtown kind by the entertainment industry, Joni Mitchell be excited to just play. Just people onstage
of record.’ ” Antonoff then sat down at the and Marilyn Monroe among them. “People playing music and killing it, without all the
studio’s Wurlitzer to record “At the Holiday tried to quiet them when they were saying spectacle.” BRENNA EHRLICH
April 2021 | Rolling Stone | 13

The Mix
RECOMMENDS
3
OUR TOP POP-
CULTURE PICKS OF
2
THE MONTH
ASK
CROZ
Real-life advice
from a guy who’s
seen, done, and
survived just about
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What was it about the

Sixties that made the
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just that I was young and
everything in the world
felt new and magical, or
was there truly something
special about that time?
—Steve, TX
There are periods in

history when art blossoms.
There’s the Renaissance
7
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In 2014, Zauner lost I’m a 17-year-old guitar
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Narrated by Laurie moving mix of country- EXHIBIT Should I pick one thing
JAI LENNARD; WILL HART/NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID MCCLISTER

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The Mix
SPOTLIGHT
Reinventing Karol G
Covid slowed her down, pop acts — Beyoncé’s airtight like, ‘I’m Karol G, the one with
but the Colombian production, Rihanna’s natural the superhit!’ ” she says. “I
delivery, Lady Gaga’s wild need to bring this attitude into
reggaeton star bounces
aesthetics — and tried produc- everything I do from now on!”
back with new sounds ing for the first time. But Covid After recovering, she finished
L
AST MARCH, the Colom- also presented new challenges. an all-new album on which
bian singer Karol G was “I felt like I had lost my mo- she embraces fresh genres
just weeks away from ment,” she says. Then, over the and sounds like never before.
finalizing an album she’d been summer, she and her assistant The first single, “Location,”
working on for months. Then, came down with Covid-19. features her boyfriend, the
sitting at home in Miami one One way she got through it Puerto Rican rapper Anuel AA,
afternoon, she realized some- all was by watching the videos and J Balvin singing over a
thing was missing: “I said, ‘No. friends sent her of quaran- country-inspired riff. “I’m not
I need to start over.’ ” tined people around the world making all these fusions so
When the pandemic hit, singing her 2019 smash “Tusa” that my music reaches a ton
it gave her time to do just from their balconies. Karol was of people,” she says. “I love all
that. Karol, 30, studied what so moved when she saw the types of music. That’s what I
she loved about her favorite first one that she cried. “I was want to express.” JULYSSA LOPEZ
Karol G in Medellín,
Colombia, February
16 | PHOTOGRAPH BY Sebastian Quintero

HAIR BY SIMON ATERHORTÚA;
MAKEUP BY DUVAN FORONDA;
STYLING BY KAREN RAMIREZ
AND DAIKY GAMBOA
The Mix
ARTIST YOU NEED TO KNOW
Arlo Parks’ Mellow Neo-Soul Gold

T
HE 20-YEAR-OLD poet and singer Arlo Parks started releasing music as a teenager, courting blog interviews in between her final
exams. Parks, who was raised in London by Nigerian and Chadian-French parents (her full name is Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle
Marinho), released two EPs in 2019 to critical acclaim. Just before the pandemic hit, she was set to go on her first tour. Instead, she
has been stuck at home, waiting out this nightmare like the rest of us. “It’s given me some time to reflect and get used to spending more
time with myself,” she says. ¶ She used the year to finish her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams. It’s a lush and expansive project with
a patient vulnerability at its core; Parks’ songs about love and regret flutter like memories stamped into your mind. ¶ “I wanted to delve
into the past and the idea of reckoning with difficult things and celebrating the joyful things, to honor the stories that have made me who
I am,” she says. “I took all of my journals that I’ve written over the years and all my folders of poems and worked from those.” JEFF IHAZA
10-SECOND BIO
HOMETOWN
London
SUN IS SHINING Parks
chose her stage name — partly
inspired by Frank Ocean
and Earl Sweatshirt —
after a day outside
with friends.
18 | PHOTOGRAPH BY Serena Brown

CHARTS
THE BIGGEST ARTISTS,
ALBUMS, AND SONGS
OF TODAY
The Quiet Resilience of ‘Now’

Playlists are a dime a NOW, MORE
near the top of the charts, moving as
many as 10,000 units a week even in
dozen, but ‘Now That’s THAN EVER
lean years.
Dua Lipa,
What I Call Music!’ Kesha, and Fans like Gandia, who posts his re-
views of each new Now compilation
compilation albums Britney Spears
(clockwise to YouTube under the name Trevortni
remain popular from top) Desserped, provide an eager and ear-
By EMILY BLAKE nest answer to the question “Who lis-
tens to Now in 2021?” He says that even
I
F DAMIAN GANDIA HAD TO RANK with endless playlists available on
his three favorite installments of streaming services, Now offers some-
the Now That’s What I Call Music! thing unique. “As dumb as it sounds,
series, it’d go: Now 10, Now 64, Now 57. it’s kind of changed my life,” he says.
Probably. “It provided me with a different format
With Now 10, it’s mainly a nostal- for listening to music. It’s a phenome-
gia thing. Even though the 14-year- non that deserves to be recognized.”
old from New Jersey hadn’t been born The smoothly sequenced track lists
when it was released in 2002, the 10th that Gandia admires so much are some-
edition of the long-running pop-hits thing that Jeff Moskow,
compilation — which starts with Brit- Now’s head of A&R and
ney Spears’ “Overprotected” and ends curation, spends a lot
with Nickelback’s “How You Remind of time laboring over.
Me” — still brings back memories of Moskow, who’s been
music he heard as a kid. As for Now 64, with Now since 2000,
which features Luis Fonsi’s “Despa- DJ’d at clubs when he
cito” and Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes,” was younger, and he
Gandia credits the “top-notch” se- tries to bring that same
quencing: “I don’t even think there’s a feeling of taking people
single problem with Now 64,” he says. on a musical journey to
Now That’s What I Call Music! began the series — which is all
in the U.K. in 1983; 15 years later it the more challenging when you’re try-
came to the U.S., where it regularly ing to blend country, hip-hop, and pop
topped the charts. Decades after that, hits into one set.
even as album sales have cratered, In particular, he pays a lot of atten-
Now has held on to a passionate fan tion to the space between tracks. He
base. Both Now 77, the most recent will debate with his engineer over a
installment, and last year’s Now 73 mere quarter of a second, recalling
debuted on the Rolling Stone Top 200 one time when he was trying to create
Albums chart, at Numbers 159 and a “literally seamless blending effect
104, respectively. And if the RS 200 from track to track.”
were based purely on physical sales, “We went back and forth for three
Now albums would regularly debut days,” Moskow says.
‘Now’ Debut-Week Rank (2013-21)

TOKENPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES; NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC!;
ALEXANDRA WYMAN/WIREIMAGE; L. BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES
PHYSICAL ALBUM SALES
YEAR
1
2013
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: IAN GAVAN/GETTY IMAGES;
3
5 2014
RANK ON DEBUT WEEK
7 2015
9 2016
Now 56, with the Weeknd’s “Can’t
11
Feel My Face,” was the Number One 2017
13
album by physical sales when it was Now 65 was a snapshot of 2018
15
released in 2015. pop in 2018, with J Balvin’s “Mi Now 73, with songs by Taylor
17 2019
Gente,” Marshmello’s “Silence,” Swift and Post Malone, debuted
19 2020
and more. It hit the Top Three. at Number 104 on the RS 200 in
21
2020, with over 7,500 units sold. 2021
23
25
VOL. 48
VOL. 52
VOL. 55
VOL. 56
VOL. 59
VOL. 61
VOL. 62
VOL. 63
VOL. 65
VOL. 66
VOL. 67
VOL. 68
VOL. 69
VOL. 71
VOL. 72
VOL. 73
VOL. 74
VOL. 75
VOL. 76
VOL. 77
ALBUM

CHARTS
Top Albums So Far ‘Dangerous’ Liaisons

Just because an artist is canceled
doesn’t mean people stop listening —
The biggest albums of the first two months of the year, from the see the case of country singer Morgan
Weeknd, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Lil Durk, and others Wallen, who has been a mainstay on
the charts even as the music business
UNITS disowned him for a video in which he
Morgan Wallen
uses a racist slur. His streaming num-
1 Dangerous:
The Double Album
1.07M bers stayed high after his songs were
removed from playlists; his digital album
sales, meanwhile, nearly quadrupled in
the two weeks following the video. The
Lil Durk upshot: Wallen’s double LP, Dangerous,
2 The Voice 386K topped the RS 200 for eight straight
weeks, breaking the record for most
consecutive weeks at Number One.
Pop Smoke
Morgan Wallen Sales in 2021
3 Shoot for the Stars
Aim for the Moon
355K (Digital Albums and Songs)
80
Songs
HIGHLIGHT Albums
The Weeknd
4
LIL DURK MAKES
60
308K
After Hours 2/2/21
Video
surfaces
HIS ‘VOICE’ HEARD

40
23.4K
Taylor Swift
WHILE MANY overnight sensations hit

5 Evermore 290K 20
the charts thanks to TikTok trends and

0
viral moments, Lil Durk has taken a very 1/1/21 1/25/21 2/19/21
Ariana Grande
different path to streaming success.
After beginning his career in 2011, the
Chicago MC became a key part of his
6 Positions
287K
hometown’s drill music scene, which Taylor Swift Doubles Up

reshaped the sound of rap music. “It Luke Combs After a massive 2020 that included two
was life-changing,” he says. “Being part
of the culture, changing the culture, 7 What You See
Is What You Get
258K
surprise albums, Taylor Swift kept the
momentum going into 2021 with a slew
of chart milestones. She topped the
changing the lingo. I’m proud to be a
part of that.” Artists 500 chart for a ninth time (a feat
Fast-forward 10 years: Durk’s most outdone only by Drake), smashed the
Juice Wrld
recent album, The Voice, has drawn
nearly 800 million streams, making it 8 Legends Never Die
247K record for most simultaneous albums
on the RS 200 (with eight at once), and
the second-biggest album of the year extended her record for most Top 10
to date. The Voice follows another 2020 songs on the RS 100 (15 to date). Now,
release, Just Cause Y’all Waited 2, which Swift takes two of the Top 10 albums
Taylor Swift
also made it to Number Two on the RS
200; Durk’s other recent chart accom-
9 Folklore
236K of 2021 so far: Evermore pulled in 272
million streams through February, while
plishments include assisting on a pair of Folklore saw 171 million. We’ll know soon
RS 100 hits (Pooh Shiesty’s “Back in whether her rerecording of 2008’s Fear-
Blood” and Drake’s “Laugh Now, Cry Lil Baby less nets her any new achievements.
Later”) and hitting Number Two on our
Artists 500 chart, a new peak.
10 My Turn
226K
Taylor Swift: Top Albums 2021
Durk has seen his share of tragedy (Streams in Millions)
this past year, losing his close friend and
Evermore 272
fellow artist King Von in a November The Kid Laroi
shooting. Through it all, Durk’s music
remained strong; on the deluxe edition
11 F*ck Love
212K Folklore 171
of The Voice, he mixes melodic Bone Lover 108

Thugs-like cadences with his drill roots.
Durk sums up his recipe for all his recent Megan Thee Stallion 1989 90
success this way: “Just having fun. As
long as you are yourself, it doesn’t mat-
12 Good News
212K
Fearless 81
ter what you rap about.” DEWAYNE GAGE

Post Malone
Lil Durk Audio Streams
(In Millions) 13 Hollywood’s
Bleeding
208K Harry Styles Gets Physical
More than a year after its release, Harry
120 Styles’ Fine Line is still going strong.
12/24/20 While the album, Styles’ second solo
The Voice Harry Styles effort, isn’t a streaming giant, there’s
80
5/8/20
Just Cause
Y’all Waited 2
released
116.8M 14 Fine Line 203K one realm that it continues to dominate,
week after week: physical sales. Apart
released from one week in December 2020, Fine
72.1M
Line has been among the Top 20 albums
Dua Lipa by that metric every single week since
15
ARMANDO ESTEVES
40
195K its debut in 2019. When you focus on
Future Nostalgia vinyl sales, it’s even more impressive:
There have been only two weeks since
0 This chart ranks the most popular albums in January and February 2021 by album units, a combination of its release when Fine Line has not been
1/5/18 4/5/19 3/20/20 2/26/21 album sales, song sales, and on-demand audio streams. among the Top 10 albums by LP sales.

The Mix
22 | PHOTOGRAPH BY Josiah Rundles

PROFILE
Hip-Hop’s Future-
Shock Visionary
How Playboi Carti helped shape modern rap, with an
assist from punk zines, Bach, and vampire iconography
By JEFF IHAZA
P
LAYBOI CARTI tells me his a rift on social media, with die-hard part of creating something new. If this enon he’s credited with giving rise to
mood of late can be de- fans immediately embracing the proj- is something that people accept right were here to stay.
scribed as “punk monk.” ect, and others recoiling at its rougher away, how different is it?” He is char- In the time between Die Lit and
He means it sort of holis- edges. The production leans on max- acteristically hush when it comes to Whole Lotta Red, Carti remained noth-
tically. As if devoutly ob- imalist drum patterns, and Carti’s specifics about the expanded version ing short of an enigma. There was no
serving a religious practice, the rapper unique vocal expressionism sews right of Whole Lotta Red. “The deluxe is new music despite a rapidly growing
spends every single day in the stu- into the fabric of this new landscape. part two of a monster album,” he says. audience. Adding to the sense of in-
dio; his current project is the deluxe Standout track “Control” might end “What they can expect from it is some trigue was the fact that unlike most
version, due this spring, of his recent up being the year’s best love song, great music. That’s it.” of his contemporaries, Carti basically
album Whole Lotta Red. Carti says he sounding more like a punk ballad Born Jordan Carter, Carti grew up avoids all social media. “I’ve been like
barely even sleeps, preferring the Zen than a rap track. in South Atlanta, and as a teenager this my whole life,” he says of his aver-
of the creative process. He splits his The arrival of Whole Lotta Red also balanced basketball and an eclectic sion to publicity. “When I do speak, it’s
time between living in Atlanta and fly- marked the arrival of a new Play- sense of creativity. He came up rap- for a reason.”
ing to California to see his son, though boi Carti, now adorned with candy- ping alongside the members of Atlan- Carti, though notoriously mum
he’s plotting a move to New York, eye- red braids and a vampire alter ego ta’s Awful Records collective, who ex- about his personal life, is not immune
ing places on the Lower East Side. “It’s (“Vamp Anthem” goes so far as to posed him to an experimental style to controversy. Following the release of
a city that I can get lost in,” he says. sample Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in of rap production. Carti released his Whole Lotta Red, a firestorm emerged
“Punk Monk” is also the title of one D Minor, BWV 565,” made famous, of first mixtape in 2017, a self-titled proj- on social media after his ex-girlfriend,
of the more memorable cuts from course, by Dracula). There are other ect that featured the viral hit “Magno- the rapper Iggy Azalea, with whom he
Whole Lotta Red, which topped the eccentricities, too. His album art is a lia.” The song featured an infectious has a child, alleged that Carti was fail-
charts upon release in December. Carti reference to Slash magazine, an under- hook — “In New York I milly rock/Hide ing his duties as a father. Carti didn’t
offers devilishly candid assessments of ground punk zine printed in Los Ange- it in my sock” — which would eventu- respond to the allegations, but later
his frustrations with the music indus- les during the Seventies. ally get memed into oblivion, a harbin- posted a picture of himself with his
try, unabashedly naming names. “They Since the release of 2018’s Die Lit, ger for the ways the internet was about son, Onyx, on Twitter. When we talk
tried to turn me into a white boy, but Carti’s impact on the shape and tenor to morph the experience of listening to on the phone, he explains his reluc-
I’m not Lil Dicky,” Carti growls in his of modern rap music has been hard to your favorite artist. A year later, Die Lit tance to share more about his person-
newly minted vocal register — a grizzly ignore. Nowadays, everyone raps with served as a bona fide proof of concept. al life with the world. “I take care of a
squawk that sounds untethered from some version of what’s been dubbed Carti and the mumble-rap phenom- lot of people,” he says. “I got a kid. But
the limitations of human vocal cords. “baby voice” — the high-pitched, ad-lib- with the world, the only thing I want to
Conceptually, the song represents a filled style that surfs on treacly, ethe- show them is the creative process and
formal juxtaposition of vibes, like med- real production — but Carti’s unique “I think people the music. I think people want to see
itating in a mosh pit. It’s an idea central
to the Carti philosophy. The 24-year-
vocal acrobatics remain unmatched.
Despite not releasing anything for
want to see the the normal side of Playboi Carti, but
you can’t normalize me.”
old has long professed punk-rock in- years, he was able to adapt to the lan- normal side The enigma surrounding Carti, he
spirations, but now he’s reconciling guage of a generation online. If you of Playboi Carti,” explains, isn’t intentional but more a
them with something that resembles type Carti’s name into YouTube, you’re product of how he lives life. It’s part of
inner peace. “Some people don’t know greeted with dozens of pages of fan- the Atlanta rapper being a punk monk. Just before our line
how to be alone, but I love it,” Carti ex- uploaded compilations of leaks, snip- says. “But you can’t cuts out, I ask him about the inspiration
GROOMING BY MOLLY MAXWELL
plains. “ ‘Punk Monk’ is just an anthem pets, and remixes. The most exciting behind his new vampire persona, and
of being alone in this game, and the way to listen to Carti, for the past several
normalize me.” his short response could very well sum
people that you got, you can keep them years, has been through the vantage up Carti’s identity as a musician.
right there because that’s all you need.” point of his mostly young and dedi- “Vampires live forever,” he offered
Whole Lotta Red arrived just before cated listeners. nonchalantly. “Vampires is the most
Christmas, sounding like nothing the Now, with the unflinchingly exper- fashionable characters.”
rapper has ever released. It caused imental Whole Lotta Red, Carti hopes
to lay the groundwork for the future.
“That’s my job as of right now. This
sound is something that’s going to be
regular and relevant in the future,”
he says of his new music. “That’s just

The Mix
Rockin’ Roles Will Never Die

THE MASSIVE, Oscar-winning success of Bohemian Rhap- But most of those movies are back on track, with big stars
sody opened the floodgates to a new wave of music biopics — attached. So what should we expect in the near future, and will
some of which were subsequently shut down thanks to Covid. they hit the right notes? DAVID BROWNE AND ANDY GREENE
ARETHA ELVIS WHITNEY

FRANKLIN PRESLEY MADONNA HOUSTON BOB DYLAN
Untitled ‘I Wanna Dance ‘Going Electric’
‘Respect’ ‘Elvis’ With Somebody’
Cast Jennifer Hudson Was Austin Butler (Once Upon Nothing official yet, but British actress Naomi Timothée
Aretha Franklin, Marc a Time in . . . Hollywood) as Florence Pugh W (Little Ackie W (Star Wars: The Chalamet
BAILEY/TWENTIETH CENTURY STUDIOS; ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES; MARKA/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES; REINHARD-ARCHIVE/ULLSTEIN BILD/
Maron as Jerry Wexler, Elvis, Tom Hanks as Col. Women) and Julia Garner Rise of Skywalker) will as Sixties
PATRICK MCMULLAN/GETTY IMAGES; P. LEHMAN/BARCROFT MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID MCGOUGH/DMI/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; ALEX
FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: DREAMWORKS; JACOPO RAULE/GETTY IMAGES; EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP IMAGES; SAMIR HUSSEIN/WIREIMAGE; DAVID CROTTY/
and Mary J. Blige as Dinah Tom Parker, and Yola as (Ozark) are currently top portray the late, troubled Dylan, going
Washington. Sister Rosetta Tharpe. contenders. diva. from folk to rock.
GETTY IMAGES; DAVE HOGAN/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; RON BULL/”TORONTO STAR”/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
Can They Oh, yeah. TBD, but A teenage Pugh Unclear, but it It remains to be seen, but
Sing? Anyone who Butler sang shows range won’t matter: he has sung a bit onscreen
has doubts, and strummed covering “Won- Ackie will be (America’s “Sister Golden
watch a guitar in a derwall” and “Hey Ya” in lip-syncing Hair” in 2016’s Miss
Dreamgirls. 2012 episode YouTube clips; Garner did to Hous- Stevens and a big-band
of the sitcom amazing Britney Spears ton’s vocals standard in Woody Allen‘s
Are You and Gwen Stefani impres- throughout A Rainy Day in New York).
There, sions on The Tonight Show the movie.
Chelsea? in 2020.
Status Filming is complete and Filming halted in early Madonna herself is direct- Filming Project delayed
a trailer is out, but the 2020 when Hanks W test- ing, with Diablo Cody writ- has not yet by Covid-19.
movie’s been bumped to ed positive for Covid-19; ing the screenplay. They begun; it’s
August because of the it’s currently slated for a claim to have 107 pages due out in
pandemic. 2022 release. already done. 2022.
Expected Franklin’s 1971 debut Presley’s The 1984 Video Music Houston’s stadium-rattling Based on the
Queen-Style at the Fillmore West in career-resur- Awards, where she sang version of “The Star-Span- title, how
Live Aid San Francisco, where she recting 1968 “Like a Virgin” in a wedding gled Banner” at the 1991 could it not
Moment won over what she called TV special, dress and writhed Super Bowl has “cinematic be the 1965
“the hippies.” complete with on the floor. climax” written all over it. Newport Folk
the black leather outfit. Festival?
Reason to Be The trailer is stunning, Director Baz Luhrmann Nobody knows Same screenwriter Director James Mangold
Optimistic and nobody is better has a natural affinity with Madonna‘s life (Anthony McCarten) as also made the compelling
suited to take on this role music, as seen in Moulin like Madonna. Bohemian Johnny Cash biopic Walk
than Hudson, who seems Rouge!, the use of hip-hop Rhapsody. the Line. Plus, Dylan is an
to have Aretha’s cocky, in The Great Gatsby, and executive producer here,
“Call me Miss Franklin” the late, lamented birth-of- and he is allowing use of
attitude down cold. rap series The Get Down. his music.
Reason to Be Can any vocalist, no mat- Luhrmann is supposedly Her previous directorial Houston’s estate is Chalamet is the new king
Pessimistic ter how talented, live up taking an unconvention- efforts, like Filth and Wis- producing, which could of winsome, but was Dylan
to the legend of Aretha? al, nonlinear approach dom and W.E., were less result in downplaying her ever so cuddly?
to Presley’s story, which than encouraging. drug and personal issues.
could be tricky.
S
ELENA GOMEZ’S first ask for advice. I love
Spanish-language EP, spending time with them.
Revelación, has been a Do you have any favorite
decade in the making. She roles of theirs?
first teased her fans by writing I love Marty on SNL. I’ve
on Twitter about the idea in seen a bajillion videos. And
2011. Life and a constantly I love Father of the Bride.
expanding career happened, If I can just be a girl — like,
but the dream was never far a major girl — it’s one of
from her mind. “If I’d put my favorite movies.
[this] album out back then, Lately, you’ve been calling
it wouldn’t have had the same out major names in tech like
impact,” she says. The biggest Mark Zuckerberg and Jack
influence on the EP’s sound Dorsey about the spread
is her namesake, the late icon of misinformation around
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez; it Covid-19 and the Capitol
also features production from riot. What made you want to
reggaeton hitmaker Tainy and publish those open letters?
a duet with Rauw Alejandro. I got too upset. I myself
Since 2020’s Rare, Gomez, got off social media about
28, has linked up with Black- three years ago. The way
pink, hosted a cooking show, I post is through my team:
and launched a makeup line I take the photo, I write the
(Rare Beauty). Soon, she’ll caption, I do what I have to
be appearing in her first TV do. But knowing what people
role since her Disney days, are believing based on what
starring alongside Steve Mar- they’re seeing disgusts me.
tin and Martin Short in the It’s not real, and it’s hurtful.
upcoming Hulu comedy I couldn’t sit back and watch
series Only Murders in the that happen. Maybe I would
Building. “I just am following have been scared before,
where my heart leads me,” but there’s nothing you can
she says. “I guess it’ll keep say to me that would hurt my
going until it doesn’t.” feelings. I would rather stick
up for millions of people.
You’ve said that you You’ve accused the
feel like you sing better in big sites of “cashing in from
Spanish, and you’ve been evil” when they run ads
relearning the language. with lies about the election.
How has that been? What motivated you to
I was fluent until I was seven. speak that directly?
I think what I meant is that I
feel like I belong. I feel like I’m
not as judged. Maybe it stems
Q&A The process was difficult.
I just had had enough.
I was terrified to speak up
from years of people saying before. When you’re young
Selena Gomez
I’m not a real artist. Exploring and you’re figuring out what
this side of me has been noth- you stand for . . . I wasn’t
ing short of amazing. It really as vocal before, which I’m
allowed me to take my voice upset about. But also I’m
to a different place. I just felt The pop star on singing in Spanish, laughing with Steve glad I didn’t, because what
very confident when I would if I didn’t have the right
sing. I hope people hear that
Martin, and calling out Facebook for spreading lies information? Once I felt like
hard work and enjoy it. By BRITTANY SPANOS there was just too much
How do you think happening, I wasn’t OK with
people have perceived nected to my music. It means am, which is a little bit of You’ve been filming your it. People being called aliens
you as an artist — and how just as much to me as it does a fool. But there were these new Hulu show with two of or murderers when they’ve
is that different from how for the world’s best singer. silent moments in between the funniest people alive, done nothing but contribute
you’d like to be seen? You have two seasons that were really special and Martin Short and Steve to our society . . . that does
When I was younger, it’s of your HBO Max cooking a little bit more intimate. Martin. How has it been not make any sense.
fair to say that I had no idea show, Selena + Chef, under Have you made any of being back on a TV set? Your message to Face-
what I was talking about. your belt. What’s the best those recipes on your own? Being back on a series feels book’s executives ended
I was building this character, thing you’ve learned from Yes, I have attempted. I’ll be so normal for me. I’m an with the words “Hope to
in a way, while I was singing. the chefs who have given honest: They’re not as good executive producer, so I’ve hear back from you ASAP.”
It’s fun to do something that you virtual cooking lessons when I don’t have direction, been able to be a part of the Have you?
young kids will enjoy. That on the show? but it’s so much fun. As a process of the show. I missed Everything is politically
was my objective. [Later on], Patience. I get really frustrated surprise, they gave me a little being on set. Steve is such correct, so that’s all I’m going
ERICA HERNANDEZ
I didn’t want that narrative with myself. They cut the booklet, and I have all the a sweetheart, and Martin is to say. I’m not going to stop.
anymore. . . . I know I’m not show, of course, in a way that recipes that I’ve tried. So it’s just chaos. It’s a beautiful It’s fine. You’re still going
the best singer, but I do carry shows the chaotic moments. not terrible, but it’s nice to combination. I get to sit with to hear me talk about it, for
stories. I’m emotionally con- It’s me being exactly what I have someone guide you. legends and hear stories and a long time.

The Covid
Queen of
South Dakota
Gov. Kristi Noem’s state has been ravaged by
her Trumpian response to the pandemic — but that
hasn’t paused her national ambitions
BY STEPHEN RODRICK
A
T FIRST, THE ANGEL OF DEATH with the man’s family on the other side
skipped over South Dakota. of a video call. Then tears ran down the
This pleased the Snow Queen. man’s face. He died a few days later.
It was Fourth of July week- But those were isolated cases; some of
end, and Gov. Kristi Noem was hosting the early casualties were immigrant meat-
Donald Trump for fireworks at Mount plant workers and Native Americans, not
Rushmore. Covid-19 had already killed Noem’s base. South Dakota was doing so
122,000 Americans. Still, Noem cleaved well that Noem was the only governor to
closer to Trump’s failed policies than any turn down federal unemployment assis-
other governor. In public, she recited tance. Meanwhile, she spent $5 million
Trump’s talking points: Covid was a Dem- on “South Dakota is open for adventure”
ocratic plot to take over the country, travel ads that, coincidentally, starred
masks were optional, and we’re open for Noem and appeared during the Repub-
business. Superficially, the statements lican National Convention and Tucker
seemed less crazy when delivered in the Carlson’s show.
calm voice of a rancher’s daughter instead Noem likes to play up her ranch roots,
of that of an outdated tangerine con man. often appearing in public clad in a trucker
She even had South Dakota host a clini- cap and jeans, but she wore a sleeveless
cal trial for hydroxychloroquine, the pres- red dress at Rushmore. That day, she pri-
ident’s preferred snake oil. vately presented the president with a
Noem made the bet that the novel bust of Mount Rushmore, with Trump’s
coronavirus would miss her rural state, face added to it. He loved it. Noem and
and so far she had been mostly right. the president became so chummy that
As the holiday approached, South Da- she flew to Washington, D.C., that night
kota had lost only 97 people. Of course, on Air Force One with Trump and his en-
those 97 died horrifically. Early in the cri- tourage, including Corey Lewandowski,
sis, ICU nurse Adam Drake monitored a a new friend. Rumors spread she might
SPORTSWIRE/AP IMAGES
Covid-positive young man at Rapid City’s replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket.
CHRIS ELISE/ICON
Monument Health Hospital. The man (Noem later made another trip to D.C. to
was intubated and allowed no visitors, smooth over things with Pence.)
per Covid protocol. He was heavily se- Sure, she approved the call up of the
dated and remained unresponsive until National Guard on the Lakota Indian pro-
the 27-year-old Drake held up an iPad test of Trump’s visit that resulted in an ac-

PALE RIDER
“The media and
Democrats [are]
using this virus to
promote fear and a
political agenda,”
Noem said.

tivist being charged with four felonies aged South Dakota, and Noem spent 12 fund. If you’re OK with that, then high- back entrance — not all of his medi-
for writing “Land Back” on a police days in October out of state, campaign- tail it to South Dakota, where anecdotal cal colleagues are on board with him
shield. For Noem, that was fake news. ing for Donald Trump. “It’s imperative evidence suggests there are political chatting to a reporter about the state’s
The next week, she rode maskless into we get President Trump back in the refugees arriving weekly from dreaded Covid disaster. It turns out that Pietila
an indoor Sioux Falls rodeo show on a White House,” Noem told the Argus mask-up states like Minnesota. went to high school with Noem near
horse, an American flag in her hand. Leader in late October. In January, she The fact that Noem has emerged Watertown, 150 miles to the north.
“I choose to rely on science and data campaigned in Georgia against two from a public-health disaster smell- “She was considered a good person
and facts,” said Noem, despite disre- Democratic Senate candidates who ing so sweet has baffled some political from a good family,” says Pietila.
garding the actual science and data. she described in an op-ed as “commu- observers. Actually, her moves make Pietila is a pulmonologist, and talks
Then she pushed in all her chips. In nists.” Back home, South Dakota was sense if you know that Noem is run- about the resistance he met when he
August, she urged Americans to ride moving up the charts. Noem’s state ning for president. Sure, she’ll deny spoke before the Yankton School Board
into Sturgis for the annual motorcycle now ranks eighth in deaths per capita, it, but combine the nonstop Fox ap- and public and argued for a local mask
rally. “We hope people come,” Noem with four times as many deaths than pearances, the endless campaigning, protocol. But he and others persisted,
told Fox’s Laura Ingraham. She lam- similarly populated but tightly com- and the presence of Trump whisper- and Yankton now has one of the state’s
basted the left’s negativity. “We’re in pacted San Francisco. It really is quite er Lewandowski and you have all the lowest Covid hospitalization rates.
a good spot.” So the Harleys came and an achievement. ingredients for a 2024 bid. (Unless It hasn’t been easy.
their riders drank beer and shot pool South Dakota has 880,000 citizens Trump runs again. Then, she’d become “How would you like to be a lung
in crowded bars, totaling 366,000. scattered over the country’s 17th larg- a gender-balancing VP candidate.) specialist here?” says Pietila, who
They stood shoulder to shoulder as est state, providing built-in social dis- Noem’s rigged-election/masks-suck/ trained at the Mayo Clinic, where he
Smash Mouth’s singer screamed, “Fuck tancing. In theory, it should have own-the-libs persona meshes perfectly studied pandemics. Pietila is loath
that Covid shit!” a Covid death rate in the bottom 10, with the 2021 Republican Party built to condemn his former classmate by
And then the wave hit. near fellow sparse states like Maine and on the twin pillars of Stop the Steal and name, but he does indirectly.
Wyoming. Instead, there are now more “1/6 was a false-flag operation.” Noem “We have a real problem with ex-
C
ASES IN SOUTH DAKOTA quadru- perts here,” says Pietila. “My prefer-
pled in the weeks after Sturgis. ence would be that our leaders would
(This doesn’t take into account have said, ‘We respect your personal
the untold cases that the bikers spread choice, but have trust in someone you
upon returning to their home states.)
“It didn’t have to be this way,” says one elected. I want you to wear a mask.
Back in Rapid City, Drake, the ICU South Dakota state senator. “Kristi Noem If you can do those things, they will
nurse, watched his hospital fill and add had a choice: Follow Trump’s way or pull benefit more of us than it will harm.’ ”
an ad hoc second ICU unit. “It was like He sighs. “Instead of saying personal
nothing I’d ever seen,” says Drake. “We us all together. She chose Trump.” freedoms, choice, and liberty are more
sat a woman up in a chair because she important than anything else.”
seemed to be doing better, but then she Pietila tells me about the corrosive
threw a clot and she died an hour later.” damage Covid does to the lungs. He
Noem pressed on. She posted on her than 1,900 dead — one in 470 South Da- is Trumpism with a cowgirl face. The suggests that if more state Republicans
government Twitter account a video kotans — and one in eight have tested fact that the media have hammered her had seen the inside of an ICU unit, they
where she crouched in a field wear- positive for Covid, the second-highest for botching South Dakota’s Covid re- might tone down the personal-liberty
ing camouflage and pointed a gun at rate in the country. Noem appeared on sponse does not matter even a little bit. talk. “I’ve never seen imaging studies
a pheasant. She blew it out of the sky Face the Nation in February, and host “The MAGA crowd does not give a of lungs look like that,” says Pietila.
and made a joke. “I am Kristi Noem, Margaret Brennan asked how she could fuck about that,” says former Repub- “Maybe a pathologist has, but I haven’t.
governor of South Dakota,” she said. square her pro-life stance with her lican strategist Tim Miller. “As long The scarring is just unbelievable.”
“This is how we do social distancing in state having the highest Covid death as Noem is making the right people Pietila knows it didn’t have to be this
our state. Less COVID more hunting. rate since July. “Those are questions angry, they’re happy, they don’t care bad in South Dakota.
That’s the plan for the future.” you should be asking every other gov- about failures. She’s got the MAGA “We had advantages,” he says. “We
The actual future held a pandemic ernor in this country,” said Noem. “I’m look.” Miller is a never-Trumper but are sparsely populated, don’t use a lot
disaster. By October 5th, South Da- asking you today,” said Brennan. respects the con. of public transportation, and don’t
kota’s Covid outbreak was raging and “It didn’t have to be this way,” says “Look, she had one of the worst have that many large gatherings.” He
health officials labeled the state one of Reynold Nesiba, a Democratic South responses to coronavirus in the en- smiles a little. “Well, until we did. But
the most dangerous places in the U.S. Dakota state senator. “She had a tire world,” Miller tells me. “And she’s anyone who thought Covid wasn’t
That evening, a Covid-ravaged Trump choice: Follow Trump’s way or pull us wearing that as a positive! She’s going going to find us doesn’t know anything
was released from Walter Reed Hospi- all together and make it about looking to troll and dunk on the wimps that about a novel virus.”
tal after millions of dollars in medical out for one another. She chose Trump.” cared about the fact that people were A few weeks before I arrived, Noem
care. Trump saluted Marine One after Noem declared victory despite the dying. MAGA World loves that.” gave an interview where she praised
it dropped him off at the White House. bodies strewn across her state. There Noem held a fundraiser at Mar-a- her own leadership and said, “I trusted
In Rapid City, one of Drake’s Covid pa- she was on Hannity on February 25th, Lago in March. At the end of it, a spe- the people of this great state to take
tients gasped for air and watched this criticizing Biden’s Covid bill, saying, cial guest emerged, in a dark suit and a personal responsibility.” This was hi-
president on television. “I wish I could “I’ve been saying for months . . . that too-long blue tie. It was Donald Trump. larious because South Dakotans had
trade places with him,” said the man. the media and Democrats were using just exercised their personal responsi-
I
South Dakota’s death toll continued this virus to promote fear and a po- SPEND THREE WEEKS in South Da- bility at the ballot box and approved
to rise. Noem stayed the course. By litical agenda.” The U.S. passed the kota, logging 1,500 miles driv- medicinal and recreational marijuana
December 3rd, more than 1,000 South 500,000-dead mark that week. ing across the state. I first wanted use in a statewide referendum. Alas,
Dakotans had died due to complica- Today, Noem presides over a magi- to understand the conditions on the legalizing weed doesn’t fit into Noem’s
tions from Covid, including 17 residents cal place, a land with maskless rodeos, ground for medical professionals. So 2024 plans. She is fighting the people’s
of the Estelline Nursing Home. No- water parks, and karaoke. The cost? on a January day, I drive two hours will for THC in court. Freedom is, ap-
em’s own grandmother died there on Wallet-wise, the place isn’t that expen- from Sioux Falls to Yankton, a mill parently, just another fungible word.
November 22nd. She tested negative. sive; just bring some cash for steaks town nestled on the Nebraska border. I drive cross-state to Rapid City and
And Noem? She was busy being Ted and a few spins of the roulette wheel. Dr. Michael Pietila sneaks me into have coffee with Dan Warnke, an ICU
Cruz before Ted Cruz. The virus rav- But it will bankrupt your compassion his Yankton medical office through a nurse who works with Adam Drake.

to sit in an interview, to speak in pub-
lic,” Noem told a local paper when she
entered politics. The idyllic life ended
when she was in her early twenties and
her father was killed in a farming acci-
dent. By then, Kristi was already mar-
ried to Byron Noem. She quit college
and, along with her siblings, returned
home to help her mother run the fam-
ily business. She tended to the ranch
and raised three children over the next
15 years. She ran for a seat in South Da-
kota’s part-time Legislature in 2006,
but made her big move in 2010, when
she challenged U.S. Rep. Stephanie
Herseth Sandlin, a conservative Demo-
crat. The Washington Post deconstruct-
ed the contest as Sandlin’s “Mama Griz-
zly Bear” against the next Sarah Palin
and a made-for-Fox star in the making.
Sandlin had voted against Obama-
care, but Noem ran commercials tying
Sandlin’s support for Nancy Pelosi as
a sign of her radicalism.
Sandlin suggested Noem
wasn’t a serious person,
and offered up Noem’s 20
speeding tickets as an adult
PLAGUE IN THE HEARTLAND Above: The 2020 Sturgis bike rally was a likely as evidence. Noem coun-
superspreader event. Right: The virus swept over South Dakota, despite its tered that she knew suffer-
sparse population. Below: Native American activist Tilsen says Noem wants ing, and referred repeat-
to shut down dissent: “She would be happy if we didn’t vote, didn’t speak.”
edly to the onerous estate
taxes her family had to pay
Warnke watched the gov- off after her father’s death
ernor’s self-congratulatory as an example of Washing-
State of the State speech ton’s wickedness. Noem
with dismay. He is a South won by two points.
Dakota native and the exact Noem was added to the
kind of person South Dakota House committee deal-
needs to keep home if it ing with estate-tax issues,
wants to be a prosperous without a vote — so I head out to the and in 2015 took to the floor and spoke
state. He and his wife just Senate gallery to watch today’s pro- about how the federal government
had a baby. He heard the ceedings. There’s one main difference made her family’s situation ever more
governor’s words, thought between the state’s deliberative bod- desperate.
of all the suffering he saw ies. The Senate had at least 11 members “It wasn’t very long after he was
at the hospital, and was come down with Covid in 2020, so now killed that we got a bill in the mail
filled with something that they wear masks. The House doesn’t from the IRS that said we owed them
exists between anger and despair. Augustana University in Sioux Falls. He require masks — despite a representa- money because we had a tragedy hap-
“We used to be a pioneer state that makes a joke. “Maybe the governor has tive dying from Covid complications in pen to our family. . . . I chose to take
helped their neighbors bring in their put a bug in the system.” 2020. The House will have eight cases out a loan, but it took us 10 years to
crops if they were sick,” Warnke tells Nesiba wears a mask inside the maybe- in their ranks by the end of February. pay off that loan to pay the federal gov-
me. We wear masks and sit at oppo- 150-square-foot office that houses him, ernment those death taxes. It is one of
N
site ends of a long table. “We took care Troy Heinert, and Red Dawn Foster, the OT THAT LONG AGO, South Da- the main reasons I got involved in gov-
of one another. It wasn’t about ‘You only three Democrats in the state Sen- kota elected its share of Dem- ernment and politics, because I didn’t
can’t tell me what to do’ and ‘I’ll do ate. Social distancing is pretty much ocrats, including former U.S. understand how bureaucrats and pol-
what I want whether you get sick or out of the question, but then again, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. iticians in Washington, D.C., could
not.’ I don’t know what happened.” He Nesiba and Heinert have already had Like much of rural America, the state make a law that says when a tragedy
shakes his head. “Well, I guess our gov- Covid. Nesiba was likely infected at a has moved away from Democratic pop- hits a family, they somehow are owed
ADAM FONDREN/”RAPID CITY JOURNAL”/AP IMAGES
ernor happened.” Senate budget committee hearing held ulism to the white-grievance populism something from that family business.”
DAWNEE LEBEAU/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES;
FROM TOP: MICHAEL CIAGLO/GETTY IMAGES;
last year, where most of the Repub- of Trump, where government officials The only problem was that her
I
T’S LATE JANUARY IN Pierre, South licans refused to wear masks. “I still are the modern equivalent of Recon- story is, charitably, a tall tale. The IRS
Dakota’s state capital. State Sen. have brain fog, but I’m getting bet- struction carpetbaggers. Noem’s cre- doesn’t send a tax bill after a death; it
Nesiba keeps pushing buttons on ter,” says Nesiba. (The tradition contin- ation myth plays into that. waits for you to file a tax return first.
his laptop, trying to submit a masking ues. He texted me from a recent winter Ron and Corinne Arnold raised Both USA Today and Huffington Post
bill that would bring South Dakota in meeting: “Four legislators are wearing young Kristi and her three siblings on pointed out that while Noem’s family
line with President Biden’s request for masks correctly. Two have noses ex- a ranch outside Watertown. She was did pay roughly $169,000 in estate
a universal masking advisory. “I’m not posed. Nine are not wearing a mask.”) popular, being elected South Dako- taxes over a decade, it was at the hardly
sure why it’s not sending,” says Nesiba, Nesiba gives up on sending the bill ta’s Snow Queen in 1990. Being a Snow onerous rate of four percent interest.
who is also an economics professor at — it eventually died on the Senate floor Queen “gave me my first opportunity In addition, the entire tax could have

been avoided if Arnold had simply up- line thats “We have followed the sci- election. Someone then asks Noem broadcast her message from isolated
dated his will, something he hadn’t ence of the virus and what we know why she won’t release how much it Pierre, Noem built herself a $130,000
done for more than a decade. That about it, the data, and the facts on the costs taxpayers for South Dakota state studio in the basement of the Capitol.
small act would have allowed for a tax- ground.” After that non-answer, she troopers to provide protection on her That first year in office was marked
free transfer. The media also noted that can’t resist getting in a shot. “I know multiple campaign trips. by one comic catastrophe and an im-
during the time Noem’s family was pay- Dr. Birx has expressed a lot of opin- “I don’t talk about security,” says portant connection. Noem’s adminis-
ing off their low-interest debt, they re- ions,” says Noem, with a wry look. It Noem, who has had a $400,000 fence tration contracted a Minnesota ad firm
ceived $3.7 million in farm subsidies. is classic Noem, casting Birx as mealy- built around the governor’s mansion. to come up with a new state anti-drug
Arnold also had left his wife a $1 mil- mouthed rather than a scientist adjust- A minute later she is gone. campaign, and they settled on South
lion insurance policy that easily could ing her analysis as facts changed in a Dakotans repeating the slogan “Meth,
N
have paid off the tax, but a smart ac- fast-moving pandemic. OEM WAS ELECTED the gover- we’re on it.” The television spots cut
countant probably figured carrying “I didn’t necessarily want people nor of South Dakota in 2018 from ranchers to football players all
a loan at four percent was a good deal. shamed if they chose not to, but left with just 51 percent, a low vote saying “Meth, we’re on it.” The whole
Noem alternated between saying that up to individuals to decide,” says total for a Republican in red South Da- country laughed, but the Noem admin-
the law was still a bad law and keeping Noem about mask-wearing. Per usual, kota. Some of it was the strength of istration refused to pull the ads.
her mouth closed when confronted by Noem doesn’t address whether part of her Democratic opponent, Billie Sut- Her Trumpian concede-nothing ap-
Capitol Hill reporters. Mostly she just her job as the state’s chief executive ton, the scion of a famous South Dako- proach to governing has become her
kept walking. Remarkably, Noem has is to nudge her citizens into doing the ta rodeo family. But it was also skepti- hallmark, and South Dakota political
stuck to her story. Her 2018 gubernato- observers trace its roots to a Canadi-
rial campaign website still reads: an meeting. Longtime conservative
“While Kristi was taking college activist-billionaire Foster Friess hosts
classes, her father was killed in a farm- an annual fishing trip off of British Co-
ing accident. . . . As the family was still lumbia that brings together conserva-
suffering from their loss, they were hit tive leaders for a working vacation. In
with the death tax, which impacted al- the summer of 2019, Noem attended,
most every decision they made for a along with ex-Trump campaign man-
decade. It also became one of her moti- ager Corey Lewandowski. They ap-
vations to get involved in politics.” parently became fast friends. Over the
Noem’s estate-tax fib is symbolic of next year, Lewandowski and Noem
her phony less-government-more-free- were spotted conferring at inexplicably
dom talking points. She rarely men- diverse places, including a Louisiana
tions the $1.25 billion in CARES Act fundraiser and a vizsla-breeding busi-
money South Dakota received when ness in Roscoe, South Dakota. Accord-
bragging about her state’s Covid econ- ing to the Associated Press, Lewandow-
omy. This was particularly ironic since ski spoke at one of Noem’s monthly
the Associated Press reported that Cabinet lunches and urged department
businesses connected to her family heads in the 46th most-populous state
members received $600,000 in federal to make their own national television
relief money. (Noem’s aides stressed THE MAGA GOVERNOR Noem was rumored to be a possible replacement for Mike Pence. appearances for Noem. (Noem offi-
At CPAC, she defended Trump and attacked science, saying, “Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot.”
the governor had no personal stake in cials say Lewandowski has no formal
the ventures.) It reminds me of some- role with the governor.)
thing Nesiba said back in Pierre. right thing and protecting one another. cism that Noem actually wanted to do The 47-year-old Lewandowski is an
“One of the things about South Da- I follow up and ask Noem if she re- the job and wasn’t just using the office odd duck even in Trump World. He was
kota is it’s easy to be a rugged individ- grets not centering her Covid response as a stage for Republican culture wars. fired as 2016 campaign manager, but
ualist when you get more money from more around the South Dakota tradi- (She didn’t soothe any minds when on not before he was accused of manhan-
the federal government than you give tion of taking care of their neighbors her first full day in office she held a dling a reporter. (Lewandowski did not
to the federal government.” and less around the nebulous con- prayer service that included a minister respond to requests for comment.) He
cept of freedom. She pauses for a sec- who called for all the demons in Pierre still stayed in the president’s orbit and
A
S PER USUAL with any outlet that ond, looks at me directly with a steely to be vanquished.) became best known for a contentious
isn’t spelled F-O-X, I couldn’t glance, and her eyes say, “I’m not Still, she won, and it wasn’t merely appearance before a congressional
get anyone from Noem’s press going to walk into that trap.” She re- because of the R before her name. committee investigating Trump and
office on the phone, so I dropped in on peats her science-and-data line before “She has a specific South Dakota Russia, where he said he had no obli-
one of the weekly news conferences offering some red meat to the base. charm that fits into how we romanti- gation to tell the media the truth, and
she holds in Pierre when the Legisla- “I think there’s a breaking of our repub- cally see our state,” a longtime Dem- for making an incoherent Fox News ap-
ture is in the session. It lasts only 22 lic when leaders overstep the authority ocratic figure told me. “She’s a true pearance, where the host eventually
minutes, but it gives a pretty good sense that they have, infringing on personal rancher and farmer. She hunts and urged him to drink some coffee.
of the game she is playing. About a rights and responsibilities.” rides a horse well, and has that smile. The Lewandowski link provides the
half-dozen masked reporters wait in the Another reporter asks if, in the wake That is no small thing.” connective tissue that fuses Noem’s
governor’s big conference room. Noem of the January 6th riots, she regrets call- Noem immediately went to work and Trump’s mask policies. Something
enters with some aides, and it is quick- ing the election “rigged.” Instead she establishing her hard-right bona fides often misunderstood about masking in
ly apparent this is the least-favorite offers contradictory non-answers. “I on both the spiritual and logistical South Dakota — and perhaps a reason
part of her day. She forces a smile of a think that we deserve fair and transpar- front. She pushed for a state law re- for the initially low infection rate —
hello, but speaks in clipped sentences ent elections . . . there’s a lot of people quiring that all South Dakota schools is that many of South Dakota’s towns
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
like a long-suffering high school teacher who have doubts about that.” Later she have the words “In God We Trust” and cities invoked their own policies
humoring docile students. It is a few adds, “We had an election, we had a re- prominently displayed, winning praise during the outbreak’s early days. But
days after Dr. Deborah Birx had said in sult, President Biden is the president.” from the religious right. (This year, she when the plague didn’t come immedi-
an interview that Noem’s sanctioned It is a cynical if effective play. No signed legislation preventing transgen- ately, South Dakotans rebelled against
Sturgis rally was “a mistake.” I ask her good has come to Republicans who der girls from participating in women’s their more conscientious political lead-
about it. She begins with her regular have admitted Trump actually lost the high school sports.) In order to better ers. Noem offered no support, and a

masking mandate crumbled in Sioux LION in budget shortfalls and is rec- profit. “We’re one of the poorest coun- populated houses and are a helicop-
Falls when the Republican mayor ommending huge tax increase to make ties in the country and a hundred miles ter ride away from a ventilator. So, the
voted against it. Across the state, in ends meet. REMINDER TO MINNESO- from a major hospital. We’re trying to tribes began taking care of their own.
Rapid City, Common City Council Pres- TANS: South Dakota Means Business.” protect them.” He pours himself a cup “If you test positive in South Dakota,
ident Laura Armstrong created a Face- There was no mention that Minne- of coffee. “You know who was against they just give you a call and don’t con-
book page promoting local businesses sota has a death-per-capita rate half that? Governor Kristi Noem.” tact anyone else,” a contact tracer tells
complying with CDC guidelines as well of South Dakota’s. In January, fellow Tilsen has found himself awash in me on the Standing Rock reservation.
as mask-required businesses for those 2024 GOP hopeful Nikki Haley tweeted Noem angst since she took office in “We couldn’t live with that. Someone
worried about contracting the virus. about a Texas school that allowed poor 2019. In the last week of the 2019 leg- tests positive, we call everyone the pa-
Conservative activists likened her to students to buy essential items without islative session, and without hearings, tient has come into contact with.”
a Nazi and brought pictures of yellow cash. Noem replied in a tweet, “There Noem introduced an anti-“riot boost- It’s not the only way the state and
Stars of David to council meetings. is no such thing as a free lunch.” ing” law that would make it a felony the tribes have operated different-
They threatened her on social media “All of this stuff is straight out of to have aided or abetted a protester ly. Back in Pierre, state Sen. Hein-
and trespassed on her isolated prop- the Lewandowski-Trump playbook,” in any way. The bill was clearly tar- ert tells me that when he tested pos-
erty (multiple times), and a colleague a longtime South Dakota politico tells geted at Native Americans and oth- itive, his tribe, the Rosebud Sioux,
of hers had the lug nuts loosened on a me, lamenting the loss of Great Plains ers protesting the Keystone pipeline brought meals to his home to help him
family car. Noem said nothing. civility. “We haven’t seen anything like that was being revived under Trump. ride out his 14 days of quarantine. He
Beyond Covid, Lewandowski’s in- that here before.” Noem was hoping to avoid the head- points over at Nesiba, his colleague.
fluence can be seen in the adversarial The MAGA posturing could work lines that lit up the nation in 2016 with “They don’t do anything like that for
relationship Noem has created with to Noem’s advantage. “I would never the pipeline protests up north on the South Dakotans.” Indeed, one January
the South Dakota media. She has re- put Corey in charge of complex strat- Standing Rock reservation. “Her whole night I tagged along as a Native Amer-
fused to do an interview with Angela egy,” says Miller, who was hip-checked thing is about shutting us down,” says ican support group delivered meals to
Kennecke, the state’s most prominent by Lewandowski at a 2016 presidential Tilsen. “She’d be happy if we didn’t Covid sufferers living off-reservation in
newscaster, citing her bias. She also Rapid City. The group prides itself on
hired Ian Fury as her press secretary. there not being one Native American
The twentysomething Fury had no Covid-related fatality in the city.
South Dakota experience, but he was a Heinert gives some credit to the In-
graduate of Hillsdale College, a former
“We’re the poorest county in the country, dian Health Services for providing res-
aide to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, and we’re trying to protect our elders,” says ervations with tests and equipment.
worked for the Koch brothers-backed a Native American leader. “You know who “We lived through smallpox, so we
organization Americans for Prosperity, take the pandemic seriously,” he says.
and served as communication director was against that? Governor Kristi Noem.” Heinert snorts when I ask him about
for Congressman Jim Jordan. With the Noem’s masks-optional and “We’re
Noem job, Fury may be the youngest open for business” approach.
GOP apparatchik to black out his hard- “To me, it’s a lack of empathy,”
right bingo card. Both Fury and poli- debate. “But he has his finger on the vote, didn’t speak.” Tilsen and other says Heinert. “If you’re governor you
cy director Maggie Seidel have taken pulse of the Trump superfan. And that tribes joined forces with the ACLU and have to have empathy for others. She
a combative approach to media rela- helps Noem.” challenged Noem’s law. It was quickly doesn’t have it.”
tions. Seidel has circulated to groups Noem and Lewandowski headlined struck down in federal court as uncon- Back on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
of reporters emails ripping another re- their own event on October 9th, 2020. stitutional, with the judge deriding it Tilsen says the disrespect never ends.
porter’s work, and Fury often takes to Trump was still in quarantine after his as so broad “that Martin Luther King Noem skipped the annual State of the
Twitter to eviscerate stories that do not Covid sickness, but that didn’t stop would have been arrested for writing Tribes address, the indigenous commu-
cast a halo around his employer. “They a maskless Noem and Lewandow- ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail.’ ” The nity’s version of the State of the State.
get you both ways,” a reporter told me. ski from speaking to 250 people in a whole exercise cost the South Dakota The pressing event? A maskless tour of
“They give you no access and won’t an- Naples, Florida, VFW Hall. taxpayers about $150,000 in court a Sioux Falls factory. “I don’t know an-
swer your questions when you’re re- “At some point we have to let Amer- fees. (A less draconian version of the other governor who has missed one,”
porting, and then rip you afterward.” icans live,” shouted Lewandowski. bill was passed in 2020.) says Tilsen, who lives on reservation
Noem’s administration has also Noem added, “If someone is con- After the pandemic began, many where unemployment hovers around
turned her Trumpian fire hose at cerned about these events they can South Dakota reservations started put- 70 percent. “It’s just a slap in the face,
both competitors and randos. Eye- stay home.” ting up roadblocks and checkpoints to especially during a pandemic.”
brows arched when Noem hired for- keep visitors away from their vulnera- There is some good news. Tilsen has
I
mer Trump mouthpiece Daniel Bucheli ’M STILL HALF ASLEEP on a deserted ble population. Noem initially threat- previously played a significant part in
as communications director for the state road, so I might not have no- ened to call in the National Guard to helping with a $60 million housing de-
South Dakota Department of Health. ticed I was entering the Pine Ridge end the checkpoints, but backed off velopment a few miles up the road that
His communications skills were on dis- Reservation if an old woman with a after someone told her that the tribes will partially alleviate the reservation’s
play when a Washington state resident clipboard didn’t wave down my car. had autonomy to do what they wanted horrific lack of modern housing. Still,
tweeted that his mom in South Dakota She asks me my name, writes it down, to keep their people safe. “I thought for most of his current efforts are directed
wasn’t getting a vaccine shot because and I am on my way in about a minute. a while she was going to send her po- toward staying out of jail. It goes back
of racism. Bucheli’s Health Department Almost immediately I start seeing lice and we were going to meet them to Trump and Noem. When the gover-
tweeted back, “What evidence do you signs at the end of driveways read- with our police,” says Tilsen. He lives nor announced that Trump would be
have of the above? Your racist and par- ing “Do not visit . . . . elders quarantin- less than 10 minutes from Wounded coming to South Dakota’s Black Hills
tisan hack accusation has ZERO evi- ing.” Just outside of Wounded Knee, I Knee, a community that first saw Amer- and Mount Rushmore for the Fourth
dence b/c it’s simply not true.” No one drive down a twisting dirt road filled ican troops massacre 150 American In- of July, Tilsen moved into action. “It’s
could figure out what the point was. with rambunctious dogs and arrive at dians in 1890, and then, in 1973, laid right after George Floyd. We’re watch-
Recently, Noem’s account needled Nick Tilsen’s place. I ask him about the siege to the town for 71 days in a standing protests and statues coming down,”
neighboring Minnesota for having to signs. “We’re losing elders at an alarm- off about indigenous rights. says Tilsen. “And we’re in the midst of
raise taxes after the Covid lockdown: ing rate, people who speak Lakota flu- Noem’s hands-off approach to Covid a pandemic, where indigenous black
“@GovTimWalz shut down Minneso- ently,” says Tilsen, the CEO of NDN was seen as a death sentence by Native and brown people are dying in dispro-
ta’s economy. Now he’s facing $1.3 BIL- Collective, a Native American-run non- Americans who lived in small, densely portionate levels.” He [Cont. on 78]

IKE ONE of those bul-
lets in Tenet, John David Washington is trav-
eling backward through time. Standing on the 50-
yard line of his old high school football field in Van Nuys,
California, where he hasn’t set foot in 18 years, he starts replay-
ing the game-day ritual. Washington’s alma mater, Campbell Hall, an
Episcopal day school in Studio City, didn’t have its own field, so the team
would bus over here to Birmingham High for battle. “So we get off there,
come to that light, turn left,” he says, pointing beyond the southeast cor-
ner of the stadium to the intersection of Balboa and Victory boulevards.
“That’s when the butterflies and the jitters started, because here we are.”
He points to where the band would stand, where the cheerleaders
would do their thing, and then to the wooden bleachers, third row from
the bottom. There, right in the middle, sat his parents, Pauletta and Den-
zel Washington, every week. They were die-hards, though his mom hated
seeing him get hit. After games, over her home cooking, Dad would sit
J.D. down for a little coaching, dishing out praise — and a few notes. “He
would love when I was free out there and not thinking about stuff,” Wash-
He’s Hollywood ington says. “He would say stuff like, ‘Trust your block. You might have
royalty and now a movie hesitated here or there. You see the hole, you go. Don’t hesitate.’ ”
star in his own right — He takes a deep inhale. “This is crazy being on this field right now,
but he made sure to man,” he says. I can tell he’s smiling beneath his black KN95 mask. “I
take a long, hard road mean, this field represents freedom to me. I’ve bled on this very field. I’ve
worked out a lot of issues through this field.”
to success
How many issues could a handsome, athletic scion of Hollywood royal-
ty have to work out? He was a black kid growing up in America, for start-
By Jamil Smith ers. But beyond that, maybe it’s not so easy to be the son of one of the
Photographs by Dario Calmese world’s greatest actors, whose films your friends can all quote by heart.
Maybe it’s even harder if you sense deep inside that
you’re an artist too, but you’re afraid you won’t
come close to reaching the bar that guy set. Maybe
John David it would make you angry if everyone assumed the

world was yours for the taking, that you’d never
have to earn anything. Maybe that would prompt
Washington you to take a detour away from the arts and into
sports — first as a running back at Division II More-
Does the
house College, then to the lower echelons of the NFL
— where every yard you scrapped for was yours.
Washington, 36, tried all that, and for a while, it
Right Thing worked. But after a torn Achilles tendon laid him
up, he realized football had served its purpose —
the family business was calling, and it was time to
pick up the phone. In 2015, he eased into acting
with the role of mercurial wide receiver Ricky Jer-
ret on Ballers, HBO’s brash football dramedy starring the Rock. Within
three years, he was co-starring in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, based on
the true story of a black cop infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the Seventies.
From there, it was a quick hop to Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi spy behemoth
Tenet, followed by this year’s Malcolm & Marie, a combustible relationship
drama that sees Washington bring the full force of his charisma to bear
in an all-night fight with his girlfriend, played by Zendaya. And when we
3 2
J O H N D A V I D W A S H I N G T O N
speak in February, he’s filming a David O. Russell turn it up.”) His name started appearing in the put a little pressure on myself, like, I have to ball
movie with a murderers’ row of actors including paper. His confidence grew with his success — to keep this family connection going. The better
Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Margot Robbie, and though, ever the dutiful son and big brother, I play, the more connected we can all be.”
Christian Bale, among others. In just a few short it was also tied up with his family’s approval. He dug deeper, ran harder. As he set individ-
years, in other words, John David Washington His parents instilled a work ethic in their kids, ual-game and career records at the school, he
has become a bona fide movie star. As for those a fierce devotion to preparation. These were began to believe the NFL might actually be with-
issues? That part is a little more complicated. things he could showcase on the field. Football in his grasp. At the same time, the injuries piled
“I don’t even know if [people] see me as John was a way for him to do right by up. Broken clavicle. Torn menis-
David yet,” he says later, tiptoeing into a question all of them, but to do it his way, to cus. Concussions. He risked his
about how he handles celebrity. “I’m still ‘Den- have something that was his own. body week after week to show
zel’s son.’ I’m always his son. So it’s like, the day “I just remember how good people his heart.
that they start seeing just me is the day that I can it felt, how proud I would make “When I was playing, I was
maybe better answer that question about celeb- my parents, my family, after the “Playing [football], eyes closed, balls to the wall,
rity. ’Cause I’m still not out of his shadow.” games,” he says. “Even in losses, I I was balls to the man,” Washington says. “I did
was balling, and we would talk for wall. I was doing not care about injury. I welcomed
ROWING UP IN Toluca Lake and then hours about the game, analyzing, the injuries, because I felt like if I
Beverly Hills, the oldest of the four break every single thing down. it like my life could play through it, I’m prov-
Washington children (sister Katia is And knowing they were right depended on it.” ing more to people — to myself
a producer who worked on Malcolm there . . . I’d get out from a hit or — that this isn’t a handout, this
& Marie, Olivia is an actor, and her twin brother, something, and I’d glance some- is for real. I’m not doing this
Malcolm, is a filmmaker), John David showed an times and see them, and just . . . it because it’s recreational. I was
early passion for the arts. He was a movie obses- feels good. It feels like your work doing it like my life depended
sive who, Katia says, could recite the entirety of is rewarded when you make people that care on it.” Later, he’ll describe how breaking a rib
his father’s Civil War drama Glory by the time he about you feel proud.” made him feel like he was doing something right:
was 10 years old. He drew and painted as a kid Proud might be an understatement. The “They didn’t break my rib because I’m Denzel’s
and all through high school, finding it a calm- whole family attended games: Malcolm was a son, they broke my rib because I’m balling on
ing counterbalance to the more physical out- ball boy, Pauletta was the family videographer them, and I’m doing great.”
let of sports. (He was also a prankster who put for a while. Katia says they have a running gag In 2006, after watching the draft for an en-
his early acting instincts to work by imitating his about John David dominating anything he puts tire weekend — his dad parked in front of the TV,
father’s voice and scolding his siblings from an- his mind to. “Watching him excel is something obsessively analyzing the picks in each round
other room in the house.) But as his talents on I’m used to, because he’s just annoyingly great (“My pops shoulda been working for ESPN,
the field developed — in step with his father’s at things,” she says. “We joke about it, but he’s man”), his mom baking “about five cakes” to
fame rocketing into the stratosphere — he leaned great at things because he tries, he pushes him- cook away her nerves — the Washington family
harder into football. self, he doesn’t settle.” learned that the then-St. Louis Rams wanted to
“Acting, I knew I always wanted to do,” Wash- He’s been known to hold the rest of the fam- sign John David as an undrafted free agent. They
ington recalls as we stroll slowly from end zone to ily to those exacting standards. Katia says that all “went berserk.” Though he never made the
end zone. His easygoing manner belies the inten- when they’d play basketball together as kids, 53-man roster, he stayed on the practice squad
sity of what comes next. “But I literally wanted “he would push my buttons, get in my face.” He for two seasons, grinding it out every day. That
to get some aggression out. The growing pains took no pity on her just because she was his lit- was followed by four seasons in the UFL. That
of being a teenager, the stuff I’ve experienced, tle sister. The point wasn’t to bully her, it was is, until the final injury: the torn Achilles tendon
being the son of someone. I could get that out to make her better. “Nobody would believe me that ended his playing days at 28.
here. I wanted to be productive with my anger. now, because he’s the sweetest person on Earth,
And I could use it as part of something positive.” but at the time I thought he was trying to end ACK IN THE Hollywood that John
Because the Campbell Hall program was in its me on the court,” she says with a laugh. “There David Washington had been stu-
infancy, with a team of only 28 kids, Washington were real tears. I’d run away down the street. diously avoiding, casting director
played on both sides of the ball, making tack- [Then he’d be] like, ‘But your jump shot was Sheila Jaffe was going through her
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les as a strong safety and racking up thousands nice, wasn’t it? See?’ ” own kind of pain. She had been searching for
PRODUCTION BY RACHAEL LIEBERMAN. PREVIOUS PAGE: TANK SHIRT BY HANES.
of yards as a running back. With each passing When it came time for college, Washington an entire year to find the right person to play
year the team got better and drew bigger, star- had offers from a few schools but chose the his- an egotistical yet likable wide receiver for the
rier crowds. “We were like the Mighty Ducks,” torically black Morehouse in Atlanta, because HBO drama that would come to be called Ballers.
he says. The Olsen twins were in the stands; NFL he wanted to get out of Dodge. Two thousand She’d auditioned somewhere around a thousand
legend Jim Brown watched John David run for miles away from L.A., he thought he could keep people, actors and former NFL players alike. No
his longest touchdown, a 75-yarder in his final shaking off that cloak of privilege everyone else one fit. But she heard that, yes, “Denzel’s son”
game. Not that Washington really cared about kept draping over him. (Even now, he makes had played a little ball. She placed a call.
that stuff. “The football is pure,” as he puts it. his home far from Hollywood, in Brooklyn.) “I Which is how it came to be that Washington
“The truth is on the field. The story is what hap- wanted out,” he says. “I wanted to be in my cul- hobbled into his first audition on crutches, with
pens on the field.” ture, to be with my people, because I felt like I lots of real-life experience, a little trepidation,
Washington emerged as a leader on the team, had more to prove. I [wanted to] show my com- and no formal training as an actor. He’d told no
someone who wanted the ball with the game munity that I can play ball against those South- one about the opportunity but his mom, whom
on the line. (“This is where things were about to ern dudes, I can play with the best.” His mom he calls “the most consistent person in my life.”
happen,” he says as we cross the 40-yard line. grew up in North Carolina, so he had cousins in John David speaks with reverence about Pau-
“This is where they can turn to me, and I can the area who’d come to games and surprise him letta — her experiences growing up in the segre-
afterward with Bojangles chicken. Once again, gated South, her perspective on the world, and
Senior writer JAMIL SMITH covered the Black John David put their joy and their pride in his especially her talents as a performer. She’s a pi-
Lives Matter movement in the July 2020 issue. hands. “It was like family reunions,” he says. “I’d anist and a singer, a Juilliard alum who’s done
A P R I L 2 0 2 1 3 5 R O L L I N G S T O N E
Broadway, television, and film. He recalls see- when he was getting on-the-job training, he digs ington’s appeal. “John David did an incredible
ing her in a one-woman show when he was a in: “I’m thinking long term. I want to be the best job of carrying the movie,” he says, “because it
boy and being captivated in the same way he that I can be. What did I do in football? I worked rests very firmly on his shoulders and his charis-
was when he watched his dad on the big screen: on my game — strength coach, conditioning, ma as a leading man.”
“I saw this person I saw every day at home turn drilling day in, day out. I need to know how to Washington gives the credit for much of his
into this other person. It was almost like she research the character. I have great instincts, success to those two directors, who “really
wasn’t even a person — she was this radiant en- but I need to marry that with an analytical ap- showed me time after time that I belong.” But
ergy that blasted through my spirit. It gave me proach, to throw out what I don’t need and keep his sister Katia has noticed a deeper driving force
a feeling I’ve been holding onto my whole life.” what’s useful.” as his career has evolved: “The ability to say
What better person to become his new coach. Soon enough the press came to him. And what he wanted is something that he’s definitely
As John David prepared to step into Ricky Jer- then, after a couple of years and a couple of grown into, in a way that I’m super impressed
ret’s cleats, Pauletta ran lines with him. They re- movies (Love Beats Rhymes, Monsters and Men), by. To say, ‘I want to go after this dream of being
hearsed scenes. She drove him to the audition. another very important call. Spike Lee had cast an actor, and I want to do it my way, and I want
And Jaffe found her man. Washington in what was actually his first role: to do the roles that make me feel fulfilled.’ And
“I hadn’t been in Los Angeles in so long,” he At six years old, he was one of the schoolchil- [to] stretch himself, and try things. That’s not
says. “And I stayed around for the healing pro- dren who stands up to shout, “I am Malcolm X!” easy. It’s been really inspiring.”
cess. So I was seeing [my mom] more, and we at the end of the film that would earn his dad a The biggest stretch, in some ways, has been
just bonded over this rebirth of her son, coming third Oscar nomination. Lee always knew that the smallest movie. Malcolm & Marie is an in-
into what I really wanted to do. Maybe she knew wouldn’t be John David’s last time on film. Now, timate, black-and-white film written and shot
that already, but she was there for the birth of more than 20 years later, he was offering him a during the pandemic on a shoestring budget,
this person you see now.” starring role in BlacKkKlansman. with no cast except its two stars. The story pits
As Ballers took off, Washington was still angsty “It was this circle route,” the director says, Washington’s Malcolm, a rising filmmaker strug-
about the family name, adamant that no one as- tossing off a football analogy. “I always [thought] gling to find his voice in Hollywood, against Zen-
sume he was coasting. For a while, he refused to that, sooner or later, he would come back to his daya’s Marie, the girlfriend who helps propel
do press for the show. The scars of his playing love, besides sports. And that is film. But I have him to a professional breakthrough, in a one-
days were fresh in more ways than one: Despite to tell you, because I know how hard it’s been night exhibition of emotional violence. Malcolm
his relentless effort and sacrifice, he’d never been for my son Jackson being the only son of Spike rails about movie critics and the frustrations
able to convince all of the skeptics, even when Lee, if you want to be an actor, and your father is of being black in show business. He cuts Marie
he made it to the league. He still gets animated Denzel Washington? That shit ain’t easy.” down when she accuses him of stealing her life
talking about it today. “I literal- That said, Lee felt he’d already story for his film. He storms off outside in the
ly had situations where [people] seen all he needed to see to know dark to vent his anger physically yet silently —
think I don’t need my scholar- he had the chops. “John David kicking the grass, jousting an invisible sword,
ship because I’m Denzel’s son,” Washington did not ‘audition’ for and swinging a bat that isn’t there. He crouches
he says. “Well, I feel like I earned “I’m not going BlacKkKlansman,” he reminds
me. “All he had to do was say yes
by her in the bathtub, tearfully professing his
the scholarship. I worked hard, I love. Tenet may have had Washington jumping
broke my ribs, I got concussions. to be denied. I or no, and luckily he said yes. from moving cars and scaling buildings, but this
I worked for that contract, even deserve it just like I had complete confidence that is by far his most dynamic role. And for once, it
he could do what needed to be
though I sat on the bench.
“I don’t operate like that any-
the next person. done to make the role successful
seems, he let some of that intense preparation
and perfectionism fall away.
more,” he continues, not entirely I’m working my and the film. I was not hesitant “I really had to get away from my process,”
convincingly, “and some of them ass off for it.” about it. I trust my instincts, and he says. “I had to let Malcolm in. I had to re-
have a point — maybe you’re I was right.” lease myself of all of the actory questions, the
right! But at the time? I’m not The role of Ron Stallworth, a who, what, when, why . . . I had to underprepare.
going to be denied. I deserve it real-life Colorado Springs cop When I stopped thinking about what I was re-
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just like the next person, because who worked with his white searching, that’s when the guy came to me. It’s
I’m working my ass off for it. Just because I’m re- colleagues to penetrate the ranks of the KKK, so weird. I just thought about my personal life,
lated to him doesn’t mean that I’m less deserv- earned Washington Screen Actors Guild and that’s when the truth started coming out.
ing of something, especially when I’m putting in Golden Globe nominations for best actor — and “I’m being vague because I have to,” he contin-
the work.” Even friends, Washington says, would the attention of Christopher Nolan. In their first ues, “but there’s a certain energy that I wanted
sometimes casually suggest, “You don’t have to meeting while he was casting Tenet, Nolan says to capture, an opportunity to carry the spirits
worry about anything,” or, “You’re going to be the actor “felt like a rocket on a launchpad.” He of artists, and not just black artists, feeling like
taken care of,” as if his whole life was predes- was full of energy and ambition, Nolan says, as they’re in a box. This idea of identity, which I’m
tined, would be handed to him stress-free. well as the physicality balanced with deep em- still trying to dispel, that can be very frustrating.
If that’s how some people perceived him in pathy that Nolan knew the lead role, Protago- Just me being related to who I am.” He brings it
his playing days, how would they feel when he nist, would require. And if Washington still had back to the Birmingham High turf: “This inde-
stepped into his parents’ realm? “Honestly, the any doubts about his abilities, Nolan was happy pendence, why we’re standing on this field. This
pressure, that’s what dictated a lot of my behav- to erase them, constantly telling him to trust his field represented a lot of moments that Malcolm
ior,” he says. “This level of greatness [my par- instincts during filming: “It was a long shoot, and was ranting [about].”
ents have] as artists, both of them. So I gotta be he was in every single scene, and had enormous Katia saw the change in her brother on set:
in line. I gotta be in pocket.” pressures in terms of what he had to deliver. It “Watching him act, it was so amazing up close,
He handled it the only way he knows how: was just wonderful to see him discovering all the because of the openness and freedom that the
putting in the work. On breaks from shooting things he could do.” Despite the pandemic spoil- role called for. Seeing it grow and build on it-
Ballers in Miami, he’d fly up to New York to train ing its domestic theatrical release, the movie has self as we were shooting was incredible. It was
with acting coaches such as Rochelle Oliver. grossed more than $360 million internationally watching him be free, and be open, and be an
When I ask him why he’d bother taking classes — success that Nolan attributes directly to Wash- artist. That was new.”
R O L L I N G S T O N E 3 6 A P R I L 2 0 2 1
Washington is the only person writer-director panicking in my decisions with my significant The topic springboards us to a discussion
Sam Levinson had in mind for the role, and the other or a role that I think is going to change about the expansiveness of black identity, and
actor says Levinson gave him so much room to my career.” how the public’s perception of what black peo-
interpret Malcolm that, for the first time, he felt Spirituality is a big part of what grounds him. ple can do and be has broadened, thanks in part
that the character was entirely his. That feeling, His parents are devout Christians who always to the film and television being made today,
in turn, may have gotten him one step closer to stressed the value of prayer. And there was a lit- which finally reflects the breadth and diversity
his ultimate goal with the work: forging an un- eral “come to Jesus” moment back in college that of our experiences. It’s a growing body of work
breakable bond with the audience. “Selfishly, solidified the role of religion in his life. During that Washington feels both called to and excited
I pursue the feeling that I had when I watched his junior year, he made a pact with God to help to be a part of. “We’ve been eccentric, we’ve
my dad in Glory, when I watch Robert De Niro,” propel him to the NFL: a full year with no drink- been a lot of things, but we had to hide it,” he
he says. “That I can make somebody feel hope, ing, no smoking, only clean living. “I wouldn’t says. “Now it’s embraced. Mr. Spike Lee, to me,
joy, pain, connect with the character as if they even listen to rap music, no curse words,” he was one of the first to display our differences,
know them. says. “I was a freaking nun.” He ended up hav- that we’re not just this single black thought,
“Maybe they do know a piece of them,” he ing the worst season of his career. He lost faith this one black way of being. We’re weird, we’re
says, musing on that mysterious alchemy that but came out of that spiritual crisis the following quirky, we’re hilarious, obviously. We’re not all
takes place between actor and character. Just as year, once he adjusted his definition of success, the same. And that’s why I do what I do, too. To
football allowed him to reveal parts of himself he and then, most crucially, handed over control: get to the specifics of why we’re so different. I
couldn’t express with words, so too does acting. “I told God, ‘I’ll never leave you again. That’s my see Donald Glover doing it, LaKeith [Stanfield].
“If they see something they connect with, they’re bad, man. I’ll never leave you again.’ ” Now, it’s celebrated to be different and black.”
seeing pieces of me that I’m discovering when Pauletta, too, has been instrumental in this For now, though, he’s focused on the Russell
I’m doing the thing. They don’t know that they’re transition to someone who can let go, give him- film. While the job has him back on the prepara-
seeing pieces of me, but we’re connected in that self over completely, and share his vulnerabili- tion train, he also says he’s taking more chances
way. . . . I hope that somebody can come up to ties. She keeps him honest, and reminds him all with it. He compares the process to football, how
me someday and say, ‘I saw a piece of you in me the time to “understand your power,” he says. the game slows down as you get more experi-
that was so real, so true, that has never left.’ ” “And that doesn’t mean covering up your in- ence. You see the field better, read the coverage.
securities, so you think you just have to be a I ask how good he thinks he is at this point. At
HERE IS ONE area where Washing- commando all the time. Sometimes it’s about first, he misunderstands the question. “In life,
ton’s growing confidence fades how you listen. Some people think authority is or?” No, no, in the art. “Oh. I was like, ‘That’s
somewhat, at least on film. “Kissing strength and kindness is weakness. [But] you’re a big question. Man, I’m terrible at life. I’m still
scenes, huge challenges for me,” he not giving love to expect it back; you’re giving working on this,’ ” he cracks. “‘How much time
says later, as we sit outside at the Marmalade love because this is how you live.” do you have,’ right?” There are still some things
Cafe in Sherman Oaks. Even with the likes of If God is at the wheel of Washington’s life he’s working through. His sister Olivia has been
Zendaya? “Love scenes? I hate them. I hate ’em, these days, he’s a damn good driver. The ac- encouraging him to paint again — bought him a
I hate ’em, I hate ’em.” We’re surrounded by tor’s next project, the untitled David O. Russell canvas and some tools for Christmas a couple of
couples enjoying their Valentine’s Day brunches movie, has him marveling every day at his co- years back that he has yet to use. “I don’t know
in the restaurant’s back lot. “They make me so stars, soaking up advice from masters like Bale, what I’m running from,” he says.
uncomfortable. Maybe just kissing Rock, “Mr. De Niro.” “This cast is But when it comes to acting, he knows he’s
in public. There’s a gaffer, there’s a bananas, man,” Washington says, good and only getting better: “I’m not even close
cameraman, there’s the video vil- without recognizing that he’s part to maximizing my potential. And it’s taken peo-
lage over there. I don’t know, it’s of why it’s bananas. “It’s crazy. It ple I’ve worked with to help me tap into that
an intimate moment. It’s weird.” “I used to have feels like all-star weekend on that voice or that anger, whatever it is, to be able to
When we start talking about in- set every day.” display it through a character.”
timacy offscreen, Washington un- this desperation He can’t reveal anything about And does he feel he’s changing people’s minds
consciously folds his arms across to prove myself, the plot, or even the period in through the work? “I don’t care if I do,” he says.
his chest. It’s a chilly day for L.A., to prove I’m my which the film is set, which has “I’m not worried about that. It doesn’t fuel me
but he’s got a denim jacket on. I him sporting an old-fashioned Van- anymore.”
don’t think he’s responding to the own man. But at dyke beard both times we meet. Thinking about his methods and looking back
weather. “I’ve had a hard time what cost?” But in probing the era and his over his body of work, I’m reminded of some-
trusting people because of my character, Washington has been thing Katia said about watching John David play
family, so my relationships have exploring bigger questions of race ball at Morehouse: “They separate backs some-
faltered because of that a bit,” in America — and finding himself times into the workhorse and the other guy. But
Washington says. He adds almost both surprised and distressed. he was both. He was the guy running it for the
immediately, “It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m doing “I’m dealing with the spirits of our people dirty two or three yards, and then he was the
an interview.” We look at each other and laugh. and what we’ve gone through in this country,” guy who could break out and have a huge play.”
“I’m still looking, I’m welcoming it all. I’m con- he says. “What being American means, what He can do whatever needs to be done, in other
tent, not forcing anything, just like in the work. being an African American means, and the is- words, be it quiet or loud, subtle or flashy. He’s
OPPOSITE PAGE: SHIRT BY JOHN VARVATOS
I used to have this desperation to prove myself sues are so antiquated. It’s ‘history repeats it- the ultimate team player who’s also a superstar.
to so many people, prove that I’m my own man. self ’ [in] this film, this character. Really, the re- In this new phase of his life, all that youthful
But at what cost? That has subsided.” search was kicking me down a little bit, because angst has finally burned off. And in his own way,
I find this more persuasive than what he said we talked about hearing the same thing over and in the long run, he ended up following his fa-
earlier. “Now, I’m just more mature,” he adds. over again, saying the same things over and over ther’s advice: He trusted the block. He saw the
“If I believe in what I do, which is God, and that again. And this character’s dealing with it head- hole, and he didn’t hesitate.
I’m serving a bigger purpose, and I want Him to on. This stuff I’ve researched I will have for life Now John David Washington is running full
move me and make my decisions, that means I now. I’m going to continue to dig deep into the speed ahead, a crowd rising to its feet, nothing
can’t panic. I have to exemplify that faith by not whys of what was going on in this country.” in front of him but the end zone.
R O L L I N G S T O N E 3 8 A P R I L 2 0 2 1
C L I M AT E C R I S I S
OUR LAST
BEST CHANCE
With Biden in office, a serious plan
to combat climate change is finally in
our sights — but the clock is ticking,
Now, our luck is running out. The industri-
alized nations of the world are dumping 34 bil-
lion tons or so of carbon into the atmosphere
By all indications, President Biden and his
team understand all this. And it’s hard not to
feel that after 30 years of dithering and denial
every year, which is roughly 10 times faster and hypocrisy, the fight to save the climate has
and there is no more room for error
than Mother Nature ever did on her own, even finally begun in earnest. In the 2020 election,
// during past mass extinction events. As a result, nearly 70 percent of Biden’s voters said cli-
global temperatures have risen 1.2 C since we mate change was a top issue for them. Biden
BY JEFF GOODELL began burning coal, and the past seven years has staffed his administration with the cli-
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have been the warmest seven years on record. mate A-team, from Gina McCarthy as domes-
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The Earth’s temperature is rising faster today tic climate czar to John Kerry as international
than at any time since the end of the last ice climate envoy. He has made racial and envi-
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age, 11,300 years ago. We are pushing ourselves ronmental justice a top priority. And perhaps
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HE EARTH’S CLIMATE has al- out of a Goldilocks climate and into something most important of all, he sees the climate cri-
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ways been a work in prog- entirely different — quite literally, a different sis as an opportunity to reinvent the U.S. econ-
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T ress. In the 4.5 billion years world than humans have ever lived in before. omy and create millions of new jobs. “I think
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the planet has been spin- How hot will the summers get in India and Pa- in Obama’s mind, it was always about tackling
ning around the sun, ice kistan, and how will tens of thousands of deaths the climate challenge, not making the climate
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ages have come and gone, from extreme heat impact the stability of the challenge the central element of your economic
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interrupted by epochs of region (both nations have nuclear weapons)? policy,” says John Podesta, a Democratic power
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intense heat. The highest mountain range in How close is the West Antarctic ice sheet to col- broker and special adviser to President Obama
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Texas was once an underwater reef. Camels lapse, and what does the risk of five or six feet who played a key role in negotiating the Paris
E
wandered in evergreen forests in the Arctic. of sea-level rise mean for people living in mo- Agreement. “Biden’s team is different. It is re-
Then a few million years later, 400 feet of ice bile homes on the Gulf Coast? The truth is, no ally the core of their economic strategy to make
formed over what is now New York City. But one knows for sure. We are in uncharted ter- transformation of the energy systems the driv-
amid this geologic mayhem, humans have got- rain. “We’re now in a world where the past is er of innovation, growth, and job creation, jus-
ten lucky. For the past 10,000 years, virtually no longer a good guide to the future,” said Jesse tice and equity.”
the entire stretch of human civilization, people Jenkins, an assistant professor of engineering at Of course, there have been hopeful moments
have lived in what scientists call “a Goldilocks Princeton University. “We have to get much bet- before: the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997,
climate” — not too hot, not too cold, just right. ter at preparing for the unexpected.” when the nations of the world first came to-
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0
gether to limit CO2 emissions; the success of Al ist of the U.S. auto industry, has pledged to go Steffen, “speed is everything.” Every molecule
Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth in all-electric by 2035. of carbon we dump into the atmosphere is an-
2006; the election of Obama in 2008 (“This was Globally, the signs of change are equally in- other molecule of carbon that will warm the cli-
the moment when the rise of the oceans began spiring. Eight of the 10 largest economies have mate for centuries to come, and in subtle and
to slow and our planet began to heal,” Obama pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. not-so-subtle ways, reshape the world we live
said in his speech accepting the Democratic China, by far the world’s largest carbon pol- in. The changes we are making are not revers-
presidential nomination that year); the Paris luter in terms of raw tonnage (on a per capi- ible. If we magically stopped all carbon pollu-
Agreement in 2015, when China finally engaged ta basis, the U.S. and several other countries tion tomorrow, the Earth’s temperature would
in climate talks. But all of these moments, in the pollute far more), has promised to go net zero level off, but warm seas would continue melt-
end, led to nothing. If you look at the only met- by 2060. Some 400 companies, including Mi- ing the ice sheets and seas would keep rising for
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ric that really matters — a graph of the percent- crosoft, Unilever, Facebook, Ford, Nestlé, and decades, if not centuries (last time carbon levels
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age of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere — it Pepsi, have committed to reduce carbon pol- were as high as they are today, sea levels were
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has been on a long, steady upward climb. More lution consistent with the United Nations’ 1.5 70 feet higher). Ocean acidification, caused by
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CO2 equals more heat. To put it bluntly, all our C target, which scientists have determined is high CO2 levels, is already dissolving coral reefs
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scientific knowledge, all the political speeches, the threshold of dangerous climate change. Big and is having a major impact on the ocean food
all the activism and protest marches have done Money is also waking up to the risks and ben- chain. Even after emissions stop, it will take the
2
zero to stop the accumulation of CO2 in the at- efits of climate action. In his annual letter to ocean thousands of years to recover.
0
mosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. investors, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, Cutting carbon fast would slow these chang-
which manages $7.8 trillion in assets, chal- es and reduce the risk of other climate catastro-
2
But hope rises again. The economic winds

are lifting Biden’s sails: The cost of wind and lenged companies “to disclose a plan for how phes. But despite the world’s newfound ambi-
1
solar power has plummeted by 90 percent or their business model will be compatible with a tion, political leaders are not moving anywhere
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY/NASA
so over the past decade, and in many parts net-zero economy.” In her confirmation hear- near fast enough. Even the goal of holding fu-
of the world it’s the cheapest way to gener- ing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called cli- ture warming to 2 C, which is a centerpiece of
ate electricity. Meanwhile, fossil-fuel dinosaurs mate change “an existential threat” and prom- the Paris Agreement and considered the outer
are tottering: Big Coal is collapsing in real time ised to create a team to examine the risks and limits of a Goldilocks climate for much of the
and may disappear from American life in the integrate them into financial policymaking. planet, is nearly out of reach. As a recent paper
next decade or so. ExxonMobil lost $22 billion Still, these are only baby steps in a very long in Nature pointed out: “On current trends, the
last year and in August was delisted from the journey. And the clock is ticking. “When it probability of staying below 2 C of warming
S&P 500. GM, long the staunch fossil-fuel loyal- comes to the climate crisis,” says futurist Alex is only five percent.” If all countries meet the
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1
commitment they made in the 2015 Paris Agree- adviser tells me, “If you are going to pump bil- iel Kammen, remain skeptical: “If low-cost, re-
ment and continue to reduce emissions at the lions of dollars into the economy, why not use liable, entirely safe nuclear can prove itself out,
same rate after 2030, the paper argued, the those dollars to help us transition away from this is wonderful. . . . But there’s a lot of big ifs.”
probability of remaining below 2 C of warming fossil fuels?” This is one of the central ideas be- More important, the fight for a stable cli-
rises to 26 percent (“As if a 26 percent chance hind Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill he’s mate is increasingly inseparable from a fight
was good,” Swedish climate wunderkind Greta pushing out this spring. The bill is likely to in- for justice and equity. Catherine Coleman Flow-
Thunberg pointed out in a tweet). clude a wide variety of climate-related initia- ers, who was on a task force that helped shape
The great danger is not climate denial. The tives, shaped around the twin pillars of Biden- Biden’s climate policy during his campaign,
great danger is climate delay. Instead of pushing era policy: clean-energy jobs and climate justice. grew up and works in Lowndes County, Ala-
for changes tomorrow, world leaders and CEOs Already the pushback is fierce, especially bama. “I see a lot of poverty here,” Flowers
like to make virtuous-sounding statements in states that have benefited from the fracking says. “And I see a lot of people who suffer from
about what they will do in 2050. And then in boom. “The climate fight going forward is really the impacts of climate change — whether it is
2050, they will make virtuous-sounding state- about natural gas,” says Leah Stokes, author of heat, or disease, or poor sanitation and pollut-
ments about what they will do in 2070. Climate Short Circuiting Policy, an analysis of how speed drinking water. You can’t separate one from
scientist Zeke Hausfather calls this the “empty cial interests have derailed clean-energy policy the other. They put sewage lagoons next to the
radicalism” of long-term goals. for 30 years. Shortly after Biden issued his first houses of poor people, not rich people. They
What’s needed is action now. As climate round of executive orders aimed at the climate put oil pipelines through poor neighborhoods,
envoy John Kerry put it at the World Sustainable crisis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott held a press con- not rich ones.”
Development Summit in February: “We have ference in the middle of the gas fields “to make Internationally, rich nations of the world
to now phase out coal five times faster than clear that Texas is going to protect the oil-and- pledged to “mobilize” $100 billion by 2020
we have been. We have to increase tree cover gas industry from any type of hostile attack through the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund to help
five times faster than we have been. We have to launched from Washington, D.C.” In Florida, developing nations adapt to climate change.
ramp up renewable energy six times faster than two bills were introduced that would preempt But only about $10 billion materialized. The
we are. We have to transition to [electric vehi- local governments from implementing plans to U.S. was among the worst actors: Of the $3 bil-
cles] 22 times faster.” lower carbon pollution. In California and New lion President Obama promised, he funded
As an example of the seriousness of Biden’s York, residents are fighting transmission lines only $1 billion before Trump canceled further
near-term ambition, he has proposed transi- for offshore wind farms. payments (Biden has promised to make good
tioning to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, on the commitment, and then some).
which means goodbye natural-gas plants, good- Whatever happens with Biden’s climate and
bye coal plants, and hello electric cars and bat- energy initiatives, we’re living in a new world
tery storage. It’s an astonishingly ambitious now. The faster we cut carbon, the more man-
proposal, one that would require a remaking “We’re now in a world where the ageable the changes will be. But change is com-
of the digital backbone of America at a breaking. The biggest fights of the future are less like-
past is no longer a good guide to the
neck speed. It will create hundreds of thou- ly to be about natural gas and nuclear power
sands of jobs, but if Biden is serious about get- future,” said one expert. “We have than about sea walls and migration policies.
ting it done, it will require retooling permitting to get much better at preparing “Adaptation is not sexy,” says Alice Hill, who
laws and the environmental-review process that for the unexpected.” was an adviser to the Obama administration.
often stalls big infrastructure projects. “But it is inevitable.” As climate impacts esca-
Demanding action now will also require shut- late, dangerous techno-fixes, such as solar geo-
ting down the international financing schemes engineering, which involves spraying particles
that support fossil fuels. China, Japan, and None of this is surprising. And the fight into the stratosphere to reflect away sunlight
South Korea all claim to be doing their part in will only get bigger and more ruthless as the and cool the planet, will likely become more
making carbon reductions at home, while at the clean-energy transition accelerates. Fossil fuels tempting and more divisive, perhaps further di-
same time they are financing 70,000 megawatts are emblematic of a culture, a way of life, a po- luting the will to quickly cut carbon pollution.
of coal power in places like Bangladesh, Viet- litical hierarchy, and an empire of wealth that For more than 30 years now, scientists and
nam, and Indonesia. In addition, state-run oil will not go quietly into the night. politicians have been aware that our hellbent
companies in places like China, Indonesia, and consumption of fossil fuels could push us out
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Saudi Arabia are on course to spend more than VEN AMONG CLIMATE activists and of the Goldilocks zone and force humans to live
$400 billion over the next decade to expand oil progressives, there is wide disagree- in a world we have never inhabited before. As
infrastructure and exploration. ment about the best path forward. Biden’s push for climate action gets real, we
The goal of net-zero emissions is also prob- In Pennsylvania, Rep. Conor Lamb, a will learn a lot about how serious human beings
lematic. “Net zero” is not the same thing as Democrat who supports Biden’s climate goals, are about living on this planet, and how far the
zero. It means that carbon pollution is either sees natural gas as indispensable. “You can’t powerful and privileged are willing to go to re-
eliminated or offset by other processes that return off natural gas in our society, at least in duce the suffering of the poor and vulnerable.
move carbon from the atmosphere, such as the Northeast of the United States at this time,” If political leaders don’t take the climate crisis
forests or machines that capture CO2. Some of Lamb tells me. “You just can’t do it.” Lamb ad- seriously now, with all they know, with all they
these offsets and technologies are more legit vocates investments in expensive and unprov- have been through already, will they ever? “Cli-
than others, opening the door to scams that en technology like carbon capture that could mate advocates keep saying, ‘This is it, this is it,
claim to eliminate more carbon than they do. extend the life of fossil fuels. Then there are the this is it,’ ” warns Podesta. “But this really is it.
In a way, the economic chaos caused by the eternal battles over nuclear power as a source If we don’t amp up and accelerate the energy
pandemic has created a historic opportunity for of clean energy, which Lamb also supports. transformation in this decade, we’re goners —
the Biden administration. As one White House Others, like UC Berkeley energy professor Dan- really goners.”
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2
HEN JOHN KERRY was a kid,
his mother took him for
W
walks in the Massachusetts
woods, where they often
stopped and stood among
the trees. “Just listen,” she
told her son.
Whatever he heard, it stuck with him. Kerry,
who is 77, has been on the front lines of the
war for a habitable planet since the first Earth
Day in 1970, when he was just back from Viet-
nam, carrying shrapnel in his leg and a Silver
Star for bravery in combat. Over the past 30
years, Kerry has been a central player in virtu-
ally every climate conference and U.N. climate
meeting (he first got to know his wife, Teresa,
at the Rio Summit in 1992). He has talked about
the climate crisis when it would have been polit-
ically astute to keep his mouth shut. He backed
cap-and-trade legislation to limit carbon pollu-
tion when other politicians were running for
cover. As President Obama’s secretary of state,
he spent months brokering a complex deal with
China that cleared the way for the 2015 Paris cli-
mate agreement, in which 150 countries agreed
to limit carbon pollution. It was a hopeful mo-
ment. I was in Paris when the gavel fell, and I
saw the exhausted smile on Kerry’s face when it
was over. Maybe there was hope after all.
Then Trump happened. He immediately
pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and
encouraged the maximum consumption of fos-
sil fuels. When asked about Trump’s leadership,
Kerry pulled no punches. Trump is an “igno-
rant boor,” he told ROLLING STONE last year.
“He is narcissistic to the point of distraction,
easily manipulatable, and completely untrust-
worthy.” On climate, Kerry described Trump
as “a one-man lying wrecking crew, walking
around destroying relationships, years of ef-
WILL AMERICA FINALLY

fort, and people’s belief in science and in Amer-
ican values.”
But now Trump is gone and Kerry is again
a commanding officer in the climate war. A
few weeks after the election, President Biden
offered him the job of international climate
envoy, a newly created post that makes Kerry
LEAD ON CLIMATE?
part of Biden’s Cabinet as well as gives him a
seat on the National Security Council. Kerry’s
prominence and power within the administra-
tion is a sign of just how seriously Biden takes
the climate crisis. Kerry’s mission: Restore
American leadership in international climate
policy and push for greater ambition in the next
round of U.N. climate talks, which will be held
in Glasgow later this year. Nobody knows what’s
at stake better than Kerry. If we fail, he said in a
John Kerry understands the urgency of the moment better
than anyone — and now has more power than ever to act speech to the U.N. Security Council a few days
after we talked for this interview, the nations of
// BY JEFF GOODELL PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP KEITH the world will be “marching forward in what is
almost tantamount to a mutual suicide pact.”
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3
You were secretary of state and on your mation. It’s like the Industrial Revolution, they The Biden plan [includes] converting 500,000
way back from a trip to Antarctica when all seized it and rode the wave. That’s part of school buses to electric. Those are jobs. So in
Trump was elected in 2016. At the time, the the challenge we have today, and this is what’s my judgment, this thing is going to gain mo-
Paris Agreement had just been ratified and going to happen: New technologies are going mentum, and the competition globally will have
was gaining momentum. Then for four years to come out, carbon storage, battery storage, a big impact on the allocation of capital.
under Trump, everything went backward. electric vehicles. This is the future. And Donald Speaking of allocation of capital, com-
What does it feel like to return to the climate Trump was an aberration, he was a hiccup in pared with 2015, when you were working to-
fight now? the digestive system of history. I’m telling you, ward Paris, how has Covid shaped the con-
Well, I think we’ve been given a grace moment he couldn’t undo this if he tried. No one could. versation about climate? Obviously it’s been
where we have an opportunity to make up for I agree with the larger technological rev- a big economic blow to many nations.
four terribly lost years, destructive years, that olution; it’s happening. I think the real ques- I think people are beginning to realize that
had no basis in science, no basis in fact. And tion is speed. How fast does it all happen? Covid and climate are integrally linked. Climate
that, unfortunately, unleashed among reluctant The track we’re on, even if everyone fulfills will augment potential for more pandemics. Cli-
nations a permissiveness that expanded beyond the commitments they made in the Paris mate changes the cycle of nature, and when
just the United States’ absence. We have an op- Agreement, we’re still not going to get below that cycle changes, certain diseases can spread
portunity here to try to make up for lost time 2 C, much less 1.5 C. more easily. So I think the pandemic has woken
and we have a huge obligation to do so, because When you say we’re not going to get below 2 C, people up to the fragility of life itself, and the
the consequences of the climate crisis are be- there is still evidence that if the right decisions interconnectedness of nations in ways that just
coming more clear by the day. were made and people moved fast enough you underscore we’re all in this together.
Everywhere in the world we’re seeing the could keep 1.5 alive, and that’s certainly one of One of the things that international prog-
impact on communities. In 2020 alone, we the goals of Glasgow. But it’s not guaranteed. I ress is really dependent on is China. I was
spent over $100 billion just recovering from agree with you. On the current pace, the cur- in China with you in 2015. I know how hard
natural disasters. A couple of years before that, rent track, that’s not happening. you worked to build that relationship. I know
we spent several-hundred billion on Hurri- So what tools do you have to increase how fragile and complicated that relation-
canes Maria and Harvey and Irma. 2020 had a leverage, to increase ambition to get stuff ship was, and how much that meant to the
record-breaking 30 named storms, and setting going now, as opposed to, say, a decade success of the Paris Agreement. How would
another record, 12 of them made landfall in the from now? you describe the relationship with China
United States. We saw a positively ruthless wild- now? Trump spent a lot of time trashing Chi-
fire season in 2020. California’s experience was na, and there are a lot of issues, from the
twice as severe as the previous record-breaking Uyghurs to the South China Sea.
season for land area burned, and we had four Well, I think we just have to deal with reali-
mega fires, at one point, raging in Oregon all at “This is the future. And Donald ty. The reality is there are some tough issues
the same time. between the United States and the rest of the
Trump was an aberration, a hiccup
You run the list of these things and common world, and China. Everybody knows what
sense says, “Listen to the scientists, look at the in the digestive system of history. [those issues] are. Some of them have been en-
facts. Evaluate them.” The imperative for us I’m telling you, he couldn’t undo during for a long period of time, whether it’s
to get back in to help lead toward a successful this if he tried. No one could.” Taiwan or Hong Kong, or the violence with the
Glasgow meeting could not be higher, and that’s Uyghurs and Tibet. And particularly on the eco-
why the president has decided to make climate nomic front and cyber front, there is conflict,
such a critical focus in his administration. and that has to be worked through. But on cli-
How do you restore trust in American Example, power of example. I think the United mate, I think the Chinese understand, and I
leadership? How do you convince other na- States has to take the steps. President Biden think we understand, that climate’s not going to
tions that we mean what we’re going to say has a very ambitious Build Back Better infra- wait. It’s not going to wait [for] the Chinese, or
and we’re not going to reverse it again after structure initiative. I think that job possibilities the Americans, or the Russians. This is an issue
the next election? will push us in that direction. I think that there on which we have to collaborate.
I believe personally and very deeply that eco- was very fast growth in the renewable sector, This is like Reagan going to Reykjavik and
nomics are going to take this over, and that if prior to Trump, so pulling the rug out from meeting with Gorbachev, where we had the
we do our work over the course of these next under it, and Covid, of course, has hit it hard. 40,000 or 50,000 warheads facing each other;
years with the rest of the world, no individual But we will get out of Covid and move on, and and despite Reagan’s view of the “Evil Empire”
politician will be able to undo the reality, the I think there will be very significant growth in and despite the realities of our differences, we
new reality, that will be defined by the steps we these sectors. I’m talking all the time to inno- made progress. We came up with the START
take. If China, and India, and the United States vators and investors who are moving in a very Treaty, we moved in the other direction, and
of America, and Europe, and Russia, and all different direction now, in terms of where they now instead of 50,000, we have 1,500. The
these countries join together and they decide put their money and where they think they can world is safer, I think, for it. Same thing needs
that we must reduce our emissions, we must make money. to happen here. You take a step and hopefully
invest in new technologies, we have to put tril- With President Biden’s infrastructure bill, that step can allow you to take other steps. But
lions on the line over the course of these next there’s going to be a huge number of new my portfolio is, by virtue of the president’s
years, there will be such an economic shift in jobs created that are good union, blue-collar, decision, to offer genuine, significant leader-
nations that no biased demagogue is going to well-paying jobs. Whether it’s in heavy equip- ship on this issue, to work this issue and not
be able to undo that in any nation whatsoever, ment or construction, in all kinds of differ- get caught up in the others, and not get side-
because the marketplace will have made such a ent endeavors, as we build out America’s grid, tracked, and hope that by virtue of doing that
commitment and moved so far in its transfor- as we build charging stations in the country. we open other possibilities.
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4
now, already, to begin to build a consensus for
how we should approach this.
I am also working very hard right now on
a major approach to finance, and finance will
be a topic during our summit in April. Because
without finance — and I’m talking about well
more than the $100 billion, which is really a
transitional fund to help less-developed nations
afford certain technologies they can’t get today.
But we need to do much more than that. The
U.N. finance report tallies up, literally, trillions
of dollars per year of gap in the finance neces-
sary to, overall, deal with the challenge of the
climate crisis. And so I’m talking with various
people around the world, and the World Bank,
the IMF, the private sector, to see what we can
do to accelerate a focus of investment, because
without trillions of dollars over the next 10, 15,
20 years, this is not going to get done.
You’ve been involved in this climate fight
for a long time. There have been lots of piv-
otal moments — or what, at the time, felt like
pivotal moments. How does this moment
feel to you?
More compelling. More urgent. And perhaps
more understandable by more people in more
places. I sense that many more countries, many
You and I traveled to the Norfolk [Virginia] Leading the Charge Kerry on his Antarctica trip in more leaders, many more private-sector en-
naval base together a few years ago and talked November 2016, where he learned Trump was elected tities are seized of the issue than previous-
about the national security implications of ly, and if we can help organize that and mar-
climate change. I know this is a big concern shal the energies in the right direction, we can
for you. What can you do to bring your col- get something important done. For instance,
leagues and other nations along in under- warms. In Alaska, you’ve got U.S. military facil- joint-venturing and cooperation on particular
standing the urgency of this? ities at risk because the permafrost on which technology tracks. There may be ways here to
Well, the president asked me to serve as a mem- those facilities are built is thawing. You have accelerate the transformation, which is what we
ber of the National Security Council because he places that have warmer climates, where there have to do. The urgency has to be acted on. I
knows that climate change is not just an environ- are days when it’s just too damn hot for troops view our role as helping to accelerate the efforts
mental issue; it’s an economic issue, it’s a public- to train with live ammunition or to get in the toward Glasgow, which, I believe, is the last
health issue, and, yes, it’s a national-security kind of training they were in previously. It just best hope for the world to set a road map that
issue. And the Pentagon for a long time has changes everything. is transparent, and accountable, to get to net
called climate change “a threat multiplier,” be- Let’s talk about climate justice, which is zero by 2050 or earlier. And I emphasize the
cause that’s what the impacts of climate change always a complicated issue. The U.S. is still, word “earlier,” to try to keep alive the prospect
do. They make so many of the other threats and what, $2 billion behind in the Green Climate of holding the warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
A
challenges we face harder to confront. When Fund from what President Obama commit- That’s the challenge, and it has to be real.
P
you have whole regions that are experiencing ted to? There can be no faking it, no glossing over. In
R
food-production interruption, or you have re- Correct. Paris we had the privilege of countries com-
I
gions where the water isn’t flowing the way it How does the U.S. make up that gap, and ing together because we hadn’t done this pre-
L
used to, or it’s so hot that you feel like you’ve what does the U.S. do to help developing na- viously. China had been in opposition to what
got to move to another place in order to exist, tions adapt to the climate crisis? we were doing in Copenhagen, and Copenha-
2
that can breed conflict. It breeds the movement We have an obligation to take the leadership gen failed in 2009 because we were divided.
0
of mass numbers of people, which places pres- role in helping to make sure that the Green Cli- So that’s why I went to China in 2013 and ne-
gotiated with President Xi. We forged a part-
2
sure in other nations. We saw this in Europe mate Fund is fully funded and to make sure
with the movement of people from Syria, from we’re doing our part. I have made a recom- nership. We have to go further than that this
1
Turkey, out into Europe. It changed the politics mendation to the president as to what I think time — it has to be a broader partnership — but
of Europe profoundly. we ought to do here, and we’ll have to wait for it’s doable. And if we do that, I think we could
Military installations are also at risk, that’s a presidential decision as to how we’re going have the greatest global economic transforma-
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
why we went to Norfolk, as you recall. The U.S. to do it. But there’s no question that we’ve got tion that the world has ever gone through, and
has spent billions already repairing damage to to step up and get other nations to step up. one that would benefit all people with cleaner
Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and the Tyn- It’s an insult to everybody that the developed air, better health, less cancer, less asthma, and
dall Air Force Base in Florida in the wake of world, which made this commitment in Paris greater security. It is doable. The question is
these extreme weather moments, and those for $100 billion, has never really ponied up whether or not we have the willpower to make
storms are only growing stronger as the planet the full amount. We’re working very hard right the decisions that will make it happen.
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5
ting a revamped, eco-centric approach to trans-

portation in gear, it was a big one. Biden and a
virtual Secretary Pete sat down with a biparti-
san group of senators to discuss a new — and
hopefully very green — infrastructure bill. Pass-
ing one under Trump became a joke (remem-
ber “Infrastructure Week”?), but with coastal
highways collapsing and power grids failing,
there’s no time to laugh. Republicans have said
they’ll work with Democrats, but there’s plenty
of reason to be wary that they’ll agree to fund
some of the climate-focused initiatives Demo-
crats want to include in the bill. “It’s so import-
ant that we actually get it done,” Buttigieg says,
“and not allow infrastructure to continue to be
something that people will roll their eyes at.”
There’s no reason transportation, currently
the largest source of greenhouse-gas pollution
in the nation, has to be such a liability in the
fight against climate change. Buttigieg is con-
fident in both the administration’s ability to
come to terms with conservatives and in his
department’s ability to reimagine how America
moves itself around.
A big part of taking on climate change for

the DOT is going to come down to passing
an infrastructure bill. How do you make this
a bipartisan issue again, especially consid-
ering some of the climate-related measures
you’re going to want to include in it?
It’s an abundantly bipartisan issue among the
American people. That much is clear. The chal-
lenge is to make sure that bipartisan support is
actually reflected here in Washington. So how
do we do it? I think it’s making sure that we are
responsive to all the different needs and inter-
KING OF THE ROAD

ests at the table, from our biggest cities to a lot
of rural areas, that have not always been made
to feel like infrastructure has a lot to offer them.
It means understanding the relationship be-
tween what you might call hard infrastructure,
like roads and rails, and digital infrastructure, a
very important part of how we address under-
served areas that have been cut off from the
kind of broadband access they need.
The other thing we’ve got to do is be relent-
lessly focused on job creation here, because
what we’re also talking about when we’re
talking about infrastructure is the economic
Pete Buttigieg’s quest ETE BUTTIGIEG, the man now responsible for man- strength of the United States, and that should be
to flip the script on aging the means by which Americans travel trillions a bipartisan priority, especially if we’re consid-
P
infrastructure reform of miles per year, can’t leave his house. Just days ering, frankly, our slipping competitiveness with
and turn the Department after he was confirmed as secretary of transporta- regard to a lot of countries that have not hesi-
of Transportation green tion, a member of his security detail tested positive tated to make big infrastructure investments.
for Covid-19, forcing the newly minted Cabinet mem- What are some of the short-term things
// ber to start turning the wheels on his agenda from the DOT can do right now, without Congress,
quarantine. “We’re trying to practice what we preach, right?” he says of to take on climate change? I know you al-
BY RYAN BORT
the decision to stay home. He’s trying his best to hide his exasperation. ready announced $180 million in grants, in-
PHOTOGRAPH BY A little frustration is understandable. The Covid scare meant Buttigieg cluding allotments for zero- and low-emis-
LYNDON FRENCH had to attend his first Oval Office meeting via flatscreen, and as far as get- sion bus lines. What’s the next step?
4
6
Going forward, with any discretionary infra- GM has pledged to stop producing
structure grants, you’re going to see an atten- gas-powered vehicles by 2035. What kind
tion to climate impacts and an attention to ra- of role can the DOT play in pressuring auto-
cial and economic impacts that maybe hasn’t
always been there in the past but is absolutely THE FUTURE OF makers to cut emissions and go electric?
I think DOT should be an engine within the
going to be there going forward. Some of it’s
just what we try to promote in terms of work ELECTRIC VEHICLES administration of supporting market-making —
for example, the overall electrification of the
that communities are already doing. This is why Industry and government are finally on the same federal fleet. Most of those vehicles are not
things like [walkable and bikeable] “complete page about where the auto industry is headed — owned by DOT, but we could be facilitating
streets” are so important. If they can encourage and for us it means cleaner air and healthier lives some of that work, and that creates more and
some of that mode-shifting that recognizes that more of a market for EVs, writ large. There are
not every trip needs to be in a single-occupant things you can do to change the fundamental
vehicle, that has a climate impact. The way we economics of this, and that’s what the $7,500
team up with [Housing and Urban Develop- tax credit [for electric vehicles] is all about. But
ment] on transit-oriented development [which CARS AND TRUCKS are responsible for a
as costs continue falling to where they’re really
emphasizes access to public transportation] whopping 20 percent of the U.S.’s warming at parity with internal-combustion cars, which
may involve legislation, but a lot of it doesn’t emissions, but that could be changing drasti- I think is pretty close at hand, then the big-
have to. Then, internally, we’re going to try to cally in the coming years. The much-heralded, gest obstacle stops being price and starts being
set the right example just in terms of our own long-delayed future of the electric car is finally coming range anxiety. That’s something where I think
into view. The next two decades will see more than 320
fleet. It may be a small piece of the bigger puz- there’s absolutely a federal role. This is the im-
million electric vehicles hit the roads, according to the
zle, but it’s a chance to lead by example. research firm Wood Mackenzie, with annual sales reach-
portance of the president’s goal of half a mil-
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine put out a budget ing 45 million by 2040. lion EV charging stations around the country.
proposal that cuts Ohio’s public transporta- In January, GM announced it would phase out A unique aspect to your new role is the
tion fund by 90 percent, which is a reminder combustion engines in its consumer cars and trucks amount of name recognition you have and
that a lot of these key decisions are going to by 2035. Ford followed suit in February, announcing the amount of attention that stands to bring
it would sell only electric vehicles by 2030 in Europe.
be made on state and local levels. How can to a department that doesn’t typically get a
That continent’s biggest automaker, Volkswagen, has
the DOT affect change there, especially con- staked a $90 billion bet on electrifying its vehicles, and
lot of it. To what extent is taking advantage
sidering some of the budgetary constraints plans to produce more than 20 million electric cars this of this part of your thinking?
resulting from the pandemic? decade. Volvo plans to sell only electric vehicles by There’s nothing I love more than bringing at-
We want to work with any state or local or tribal 2030, with its chief technologist insisting, “There is no tention to an unglamorous topic that deserves
or territorial authority that’s seeking to do the long-term future for cars with an internal combustion more attention. Even as mayor, I was an evange-
engine.” Even Toyota, which has long pushed hybrid
right thing. This is not about pressure. This is list for smart sewer technology because it was,
vehicles, announced in February that it will launch a pair
about resources. Let me also say that one thing of all-electric cars for 2022.
in my view, really exciting. So I’m relishing the
I’ve noticed here in Washington is that people The barriers for consumers are continuing to drop as opportunity to do that with a lot of things in
say “state and local” like it’s one word. To me, well. Electric vehicles are no longer just playthings for transportation, some of them well understood
even though all the attention around here is on the wealthy. There are nearly a dozen EVs on the U.S. and already considered fairly sexy in the policy
the relationship between the federal govern- market already that are priced below $40,000, which world, some of them pretty obscure.
are even cheaper after a $7,500 federal tax rebate.
ment and the states, I think the most interest- What are some of these more “obscure,”
Charging times are also dropping — with some models
ing relationships in federalism are between cit- needing just 15 minutes for 200 miles’ worth of juice
unsexy elements of transportation policy
ies and towns and everybody else. If you’ve got — and ranges are increasing, with the top EVs traveling you’d like to use your position to shine a
a community that’s out trying to do the right more than 350 miles per charge. light on?
thing, maybe they don’t feel like they have a The models are also growing more varied, from sport The intimate connection of unsexy transpor-
friend in their own state capitol. They’re going cars to subcompacts, with a slate of electric pickup tation decisions to some of the most import-
trucks, including a Ford F-150, set to hit the market in the ant issues of our moment around climate and
to have a friend in Washington.
next few years. The research firm AutoPacific projects
Cars and trucks are the biggest green- justice are huge. I can’t think of maybe a less-
American consumers will have 100 EV models to choose
house-gas emitters in the country. President from by 2030. And the infrastructure to charge them sexy phrase for some people than “land use.”
Obama called for a five percent increase in is following suit: Shell just announced plans to create a But when I’m thinking about automated vehi-
efficiency year over year. President Trump global network of 500,000 stations — up from 60,000 cles and the challenges that presents, it’s not
knocked that down to 1.5 percent. How do today — by 2025. TIM DICKINSON just the safety and the operational questions of
you plan to approach fuel-efficiency stan- the vehicle; it’s what happens in a world where
dards? Is reverting to Obama’s requirement we don’t need nearly as many surface park-
going far enough? ing lots because most people experience cars
I can tell you that we’re going to be looking as a service rather than as a possession. For
for more, not less, climate ambition. The real any mayor who has agonized over how to get a
balance is how much do we concentrate on compelling job-creating development deal done
the tailpipe issue versus supporting the devel- because you couldn’t find room for parking,
opment of EVs [electric vehicles] across the that’s fascinating. Tantalizing even. Not every-
FORD MOTOR COMPANY
board? Government has a tendency to focus one feels that fingertips-tingling about zoning
on limiting or proscribing what we don’t want. and land use. But to me, those are the stakes
Sometimes you’ve got to do that, that’s what just as much as being in a slick, hypermodern
regulation is about. But it’s just as important to pod shuttling you around the metropolis of the
support what we do want. future.
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7
GINA MCCARTHYIS BACK IN CHARGE

The former EPA head is now Biden’s
domestic climate czar, on a mission
Some of the ones early out of the gate are going
to be methane. There was a rule [under Obama]
that required methane to be captured from
to harness the federal government’s
leaks in the oil-and-gas sector. We’re going to
might to stop climate change
revisit that, reestablishing that rule.
// We’ve already told people that 2035 is the
time window for cleaning up the power sector.
BY ANDY KROLL And so we’re having conversations with the util-
ity sector, and that’s going to involve not just
standard-setting but also making sure that we
look at transmission bottlenecks or other op-
portunities to make that transition to clean en-
INA MCCARTHY logged on ergy, which the utilities are not arguing about.
to Zoom one day in early They’re just looking for help to see how they
G
February and saw a crowd can make that [2035] window work.
of Cabinet secretaries and And the third is we’re looking at the auto sec-
other agency chiefs staring tor. We’re going to start talking to car manu-
back at her, a Brady Bunch facturers about how quickly we can get to zero
of senior bureaucrats. It [emissions] in the car fleet.
was the first meeting of the Biden administra- The president’s executive orders try to
tion’s National Climate Task Force, a team of meet the needs of coal communities. But of
nearly two dozen top officials from across the course, there’s skepticism. Why should they
government in charge of jump-starting Biden’s think and feel differently about the Biden
“whole-of-government” climate agenda. administration’s pledges to reinvent those
To lead it, Biden turned to McCarthy, a communities and get people to work?
66-year-old New Englander (with the chewy The opportunity that we have here is to under-
Boston accent to prove it) who knows a thing or stand that coal is not competitive. It is not win-
two about how to wield executive power in the ning in the clean-energy future. We know what
fight against climate change. As the head of the The administration’s goal is for 40 per- we have to do to address climate change. So
EPA under President Obama, she led the cre- cent of the benefits of climate policies to go there’s an opportunity that the president’s try-
ation of the Clean Power Plan, the first national to disadvantaged communities. How will the ing to capture, to say, “That doesn’t mean you
emissions limits for power plants, and a slew of public be able to know that progress is being can’t have a productive and economically vi-
other environmental actions. made on that? able community.” And so we’ve identified op-
Now, McCarthy is one of Biden’s two top lieu- One of the things that President Biden called for portunities for that — for the transition of skills
tenants, along with former Secretary of State was a White House Environmental Justice Advi- that are useful in coal mining and in coal-based
John Kerry, leading what climate experts de- sory Council. The reason to have that is really utilities, in the oil-and-gas sector — that we hope
scribe as the most ambitious climate-policy twofold. One, this is going to have scorecards. will be able to get some resources through legis-
agenda of any president in history. We’re actually going to look at what every sin- lation and other means.
gle agency is doing or not doing and provide So it’s not about deciding today that their
the public with all kinds of information. And jobs don’t matter. It’s about recognizing that
How is Biden’s “whole-of-government” part of this task force is really about early en- that transition is happening; it’s going to con- SARAH BLESENER/”THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX
approach different from Obama’s approach? gagement. We’re not here to tell environmen- tinue to happen. If you look at the renewable
President Obama pulled together a plan, but tal-justice communities what they ought to numbers back in 2020, we had a huge increase
that plan had discrete tasks. It did not bring it want. We are here to say, “Forty percent of the in both solar and wind. And most of that in-
all together under one task force with one over- investments we’re making on clean energy are crease was in states that have Republican sen-
whelming theme, which is to use every tool at going to be used to benefit your communities. ators. This is about recognizing where the fu-
your disposal in every agency and to start think- How can we make sure they’re providing the ture is and how we capture it again. We have
ing about climate change in every decision you benefits that you want?” to advance manufacturing. We have to be the
make. President Biden is all about using climate In regard to Trump’s assault on environ- clean-energy country if we want to compete
change not to address just the planetary prob- mental protections, which of his rollbacks against China and get those jobs here instead of
lem, but really to use it as a way to rebuild the are you most concerned about, and how elsewhere. You’re not going to build that on the
economy. hard are they going to be to undo? technologies of the past.
4
8
sonville sent 28.5 million gallons of waste into a
tributary of the New River. After years of raising
the alarm about the industry’s reckless prac-
tices, environmental groups filed a civil rights
complaint in 2014 on behalf of the black, His-
panic, and Native American communities near
those farms, asking the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency to “protect communities of color
from the injustice of being forced to live and
work near inadequately regulated industrial
pollution sources.”
The Republican Party that controlled North
Carolina’s government offered no help in the
fight. Then, in 2016, Democrat Roy Cooper won
the governorship. He named as his top environ-
mental regulator a young policy expert named
Michael Regan.
Regan’s appointment was cause for optimism
among environmental activists. He was a for-
mer EPA employee who pledged to rebuild the
state’s Department of Environmental Quality
after years of funding cuts, industry-friendly
policies, and the sidelining of its scientists. He
was also a black man from eastern North Caro-
Regan at North
lina who knew about the daily indignities of liv-
Carolina’s Lake
Crabtree in
ing close to industrial hog farms. His agency had
February “a special obligation to the underserved and
underrepresented,” he said. Quoting a Civil War
commander, he vowed to advocate for those
communities: “Let’s fight them till hell freezes
over, and then we’ll fight them on the ice.”
Five years later, he faces a far larger battle.
HOW MICHAEL REGAN

Chosen by President Joe Biden to lead the EPA,
Regan, 44, takes over an agency that perhaps
more than any other suffered under the Trump
administration’s assault on science, incestuous
relationship with industry, and undermining of
career public servants. The Trump cronies who
ran the EPA cuddled up to coal and oil compa-
PLANS TO FIX THE EPA

nies, helped gut more than 100 regulations,
and tarnished the agency with one cartoon-
ishly corrupt scandal after another. (Remem-
ber Scott Pruitt’s secret phone booth?) Almost
700 scientists left the agency in the first three
years of Trump’s presidency, and only half of
those vacancies were filled, according to The
Washington Post.
Regan, who will be the first black man to run
the EPA, tells ROLLING STONE that rebuilding
the agency is his first priority. “We have world-
The 44-year-old must NE BY ONE, the witnesses described the stench, a renowned experts at EPA,” he says. “We should
rancid odor that befouled the air and ruined your be listening to them, and we will.” With the
restore a depleted agency
O
clothes, made you close your windows in the sum- Biden administration vowing to use every bit
while implementing the
mer and run from your car into church on Sundays of executive power to tackle climate change, a
most ambitious climate
lest you bring that smell into God’s house. They revitalized EPA will be at the center of its am-
agenda in history
talked about undrinkable tap water and swarms of bitious targets to reduce emissions. “I will be
// yellow flies. The cause of this pestilence, they said, laser-focused on methane,” Regan says of the
were the hog farms, sprawling industrial operations that disposed of vast potent greenhouse gas released in natural-gas
BY ANDY KROLL amounts of pig shit by sinking it in lagoons or spraying it across fields. To operations. He lists environmental justice and
live near one of these farms was to live in an environmental nightmare. water quality as his other priorities, but guiding
PHOTOGRAPH BY
North Carolina is home to some 2,000 swine farms and nearly 10 mil- his approach on all of these ambitions is the be-
JEREMY M. LANGE
lion hogs. In 1995, the bursting of a hog-farm lagoon in the town of Jack- lief that what’s good for the planet can also be
4
9
good for workers and for business — a convic- decision not to regulate greenhouse gases as air says. “We brought communities to the table.
tion Biden shares. “All of those priorities that I pollutants under the Clean Air Act, left Regan We brought everyone to the table, and we had
just laid out will be good for people, the planet, frustrated and conflicted. “It was tough because robust conversations and dialogues about what
and profit,” Regan says. His personal philoso- the work at EPA was very important,” he says. the agency can and cannot do, what the law
phy is one “of trying to meet people where they “The choice was, as an individual, where do I allows, and what the science promotes.” He
are, understand everyone’s challenges, wheth- think I can make the biggest change?” adds, “People did not always like the decision,
er it’s an individual or a company, and then In 2008, he went to the Environmental De- obviously. But most of the time, our decision
think through, ‘How do you get to the solution fense Fund, where he worked to retire coal has been respected over the past four years be-
in a way that can possibly work?’ ” plants in North Carolina and urge big utilities cause they were involved in the process.”
Every good politician knows to say this. But like Duke Energy to offer their customers more This collaborative approach garnered him
judging from his tenure as North Carolina’s top renewable-energy options. In the run-up to the results and admirers. He helped broker the
environmental official, Regan means it. For bet- 2016 election, a friend told him to check out largest coal-waste settlement in U.S. history, in
ter, and sometimes for worse. then-Attorney General Cooper’s bid for gover- which Duke Energy will absorb $1.1 billion in
nor of North Carolina. Cooper’s pledge to fight costs to clean up coal-ash pits. He faced blow-
R
EGAN’S environmental education climate change by driving economic growth back in 2018 when DEQ approved a water per-
began in the woods and rivers out- through clean energy clicked with Regan, and mit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would
side his hometown of Goldsboro, in when Cooper won, Regan put his name forward have transported natural gas along the Eastern
eastern North Carolina, population for a policy job. Instead, Cooper picked him to Seaboard (it has since been scrapped); but en-
40,000. On weekends, he fished and hunted run the state’s top environmental regulator, the vironmentalists cheered when DEQ rejected
with his dad and grandfather. “It was all about Department of Environmental Quality. a more recent permit for a similar pipeline,
getting out before the break of day and seeing called MVP Southgate, citing the “unnecessary
J
who’s going to catch the first fish and the big- UST AS he will at the EPA, Regan inher- risks to our environment.” Since his nomina-
gest fish,” he remembers. ited a beleaguered agency and a port- tion, a coalition ranging from the Sierra Club
Regan’s grandfather didn’t have more than folio of crises at the DEQ. Right before to business leaders and Republican politicians
a formal sixth-grade education. But when they he started, the EPA had sent a 23-page has endorsed him. At his confirmation hear-
walked in the woods together, his granddad “letter of concern” to Regan’s predecessor. ing, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, a life-
rattled off the names of the trees they passed, After a lengthy investigation into the complaint long Republican, praised Regan as someone
holding court about the plants and animals na- whose relationship with “rural communities”
tive to the region. “You look up to your father, had been “constructive and not adversarial.”
but your grandfather’s just that next level, like That style has also earned him critics. The
that’s dad’s dad,” Regan says. Yet there were battle over hog waste went to remediation and
times when a respiratory condition that flared “We’re not going to regulate our led to a 2018 settlement hailed by one lead-
up on low-air-quality days forced Regan to stay ing activist as “groundbreaking.” But lawyers
way out of this,” Regan says. “It
indoors. If the walks with his grandfather nur- for Big Ag and the pork industry challenged
tured a love of the outdoors, those days stuck really is: ‘How do we look at this in the deal and gutted some of the air- and water-
inside sparked a curiosity about the connection a more holistic way?’ You can find quality protections in the updated swine per-
between nature and pollution. win-win opportunities.” mit. Environmental activists and lawyers say
After studying environmental science at they wish Regan had used more of his executive
North Carolina A&T, the country’s largest his- authority to force the hog industry to end the
torically black university, Regan leveraged an lagoon and spray-field system. Instead, they say,
EPA internship into a slot in the agency’s two- brought by communities that alleged racial dis- he saw himself as more of a mediator, which ig-
year management-training program in Wash- crimination due to the hog-farm pollution, the nored the power imbalance between the multi-
ington, D.C. On the second or third day, he EPA said it had “deep concern about the possi- billion-dollar hog industry and the affected res-
says, he wanted to thank then-EPA chief Carol bility that African Americans, Latinos, and Na- idents. “It’s not an equal playing field,” says
Browner for supporting the program. So Regan, tive Americans have been subjected to discrim- Elizabeth Haddix, an attorney for the Lawyers’
a lowly trainee oblivious to the concept of “con- ination as the result of NC DEQ’s operation of Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, which
trolled correspondence,” sent Browner, his the Swine Waste General Permit program.” represented the citizens in the hog-waste case.
boss’s boss’s boss, an email. It was caught by Regan’s approach to the hog-waste crisis, “The industry controls everything here.”
a senior staffer who, in Regan’s recollection, and his stewardship of DEQ writ large, give a Regan says he fought for the toughest possi-
“thanked me for my enthusiasm but asked me glimpse of his strategy and style. First, he re- ble restrictions while staying within the letter of
to refrain from emailing the administrator.” stored scientists’ rightful place in advising him the law, adding that he was disappointed by the
He spent the next decade at the EPA, span- on what actions to take. He launched the state’s court’s ruling. Battles like these, he says, only
ning the last two years of the Clinton presi- first environmental justice and equity advisory solidified his belief that forging consensus was
dency and most of George W. Bush’s adminis- board, which gave environmental activists a essential to enacting environmental policies
tration. His time there introduced him “to the direct line to Regan himself. And he set out with staying power. That a top-down approach
connection of policy, politics, and regulation,” to hear from all the parties with a stake in the wasn’t the best way to make the changes the cli-
he says. “To look at where we wanted to be as swine industry’s waste practices, holding hear- mate crisis demands. “We’re not going to reg-
an agency on the policy issues and navigate the ings in affected communities as he decided ulate our way out of this,” he says. “It really is:
politics of the day, to navigate selling that vi- what action he could and should take. ‘How do we look at it in a holistic way?’ There
sion to Congress and to the White House.” But Regan tells me this hear-all-sides attitude is are multiple ways to do things, and you can
the Bush-era EPA’s lackluster investment in en- essential to the job of an environmental reg- find win-win opportunities. And typically those
vironmental justice, as well as its controversial ulator. “We brought industry to the table,” he opportunities or solutions last the longest.”
5
0
NEW TECH TO TACKLE THE CRISIS
Climate change can make us feel hopeless, but
new technology can help the world kick the carbon
habit. We already have market-ready solutions like
solar, wind, and hydropower, and here are seven
advances on the horizon that could make modern
living more sustainable in the years ahead
// BY TIM DICKINSON
TIDAL GREEN LOW-METHANE FLOATING ELECTRIC TREE HYDROGEN

ENERGY CEMENT COWS SOLAR PLANES CORRIDORS SHIPS
The Tidal currents —

a huge, largely
The world uses four
gigatons of cement
Methane is 85
times more
Large solar
installations are
Airplanes contrib-
ute about two per-
Sunbaked
pavement and
Maritime
shipping emissions
Challenge untapped source of
energy for coastal
in construction
annually. But it’s
heat-trapping than
CO2, and grazing
hard to site in
densely popu-
cent of the world’s
carbon emissions,
cement can create
“urban heat islands”
contribute 2.5
percent of global
communities — a hidden carbon animals create a lated countries and battery-weight that exacerbate CO2, and big
have been hard to villain, requiring third of emissions. with costly land challenges have the extremes of ships burn tons of
harness because limestone to be While cow farts get or rugged terrain. limited the devel- climate change, low-quality “bunker
the turbulent ocean heated to more all the jokes, 95 Solar also produces opment of electric turning heat waves fuel” that can foul
waters can batter than 2,700 degrees percent of methane intermittent power planes. Pound for more deadly the air of port
and damage the in a chemical leakage actually that must be pound, jet fuel and increasing communities with
underwater reaction that also comes out the front supplemented produces about 14 energy demands toxic particulates.
equipment. releases enormous end, in belches. by other energy times more energy for air conditioning.
quantities of CO2. sources. than a battery.
The In February,
Sustainable
Solidia has
developed a
U.K.-based Zelp
has invented a
Floating solar
installations on
E-planes are
moving closer
Tropical
Medellín,
A partnership of
Scandinavian
Tech Marine
launched the
cement that can
be fired at lower
halter that rests
loosely over a
hydroelectric dams
exploit unused
to takeoff. Last
June, a modified
Colombia, has
planted more than
nations is building a
large ferry powered
world’s first floating temperatures, cow’s nostrils, aquatic surface Cessna with room 350,000 trees by hydrogen fuel
tidal-energy cutting emissions monitors methane adjacent to hydro- for nine flew for and shrubs since cells, which create
platform in Canada, by a third. Its exhaust, and zaps power that can nearly 30 minutes 2016 to create 30 energy from hydro-
a barge with six concrete is then it with a catalyst, create energy in over Washington shaded “green gen gas and release
submersible cured using CO2 creating water and the dark. A new state. In October, corridors” that have only water. The
turbines that can gas, locking the less-harmful CO2. floating solar plant a hybrid electric reduced urban hydrogen itself will
pivot with the pollutant in the The device can in South Korea plane cruised temperatures by be green, sourced
tidal flow, creating rock, creating lower bovine will be the world’s for two hours and more than three from splitting water
steady power. carbon reductions emissions by half. largest, at 41 MW. 30 minutes degrees. molecules with
of 70 percent. over California. wind energy.
The Deployed in the If it were a In the U.S. alone, The Korean plant Half of all flights With similar The ferry will
FROM LEFT: SUSTAINABLE MARINE ENERGY; SOLIDIA;
Bay of Fundy country, cement there are more than will provide power are less than 500 strategies under- connect Oslo and
Potential in Nova Scotia, would rank third in 90 million head of for 60,000 people, miles, creating way from Mexico Copenhagen by
ZELP; EGAT; MAGNIX; © ACI MEDELLÍN; DFDS
famous for its high emissions — eight cattle. Wearable but with more than a sweet spot City to Paris, 2027 and avoid
tides, the initial percent of global technology can 150,000 square for e-planes. U.K. greening cities is 64,000 tons of
project will power CO2. If adopted help ranchers track miles of man-made budget airliner one of the cheapest CO2 annually. The
3,000 homes. If across the industry, and claim their reservoirs globally, EasyJet plans climate-mitigation U.S. Department of
tidal energy emerg- Solidia says, its reduced emissions, floating solar has to commercialize strategies, and Energy underscores
es as a reliable, technology while also giving a “potential on a e-plane travel the foliage offers vast potential for
scalable technolo- could lower annual them valuable data terawatt scale,” on routes like ancillary benefits, hydrogen on the
gy, it could provide CO2 pollution by on the health of according to the London-to- from reducing high seas, calling it
more than five 1.5 gigatons, and their herds. World Bank. Amsterdam air pollution suitable to power
percent of global save 3 trillion liters by 2030. to creating “most vessels in the
energy needs. of water. wildlife habitats. world’s fleet.”
WILL DEMOCRATS GET

IT RIGHT THIS TIME?
If Congress has any hope of
addressing the climate crisis,
it’ll have to learn from its
Reid gathered his top lieutenants for a private
meeting. Democrats had 59 Senate seats and
had already passed a major climate bill through
the Midwest; superstorms pounding the coast
with alarming frequency. And while tempera-
tures keep climbing, the United States keeps
abysmal failure in 2010 the House. But Reid had tough news: He’d con- pumping climate-cooking greenhouse gases
ferred with the White House, and they’d decid- into the atmosphere.
// ed they were moving on from climate. Environ- After the bill collapsed, the coalition that
mental groups and climate-friendly Democrats had backed it became a circular firing squad,
BY PATRICK REIS
protested, but the truth was that Reid wasn’t as congressional, White House, industry, and
ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL STOLLE killing the Senate bill so much as euthanizing it: environmental partners blamed one another
R
After a promising beginning, the climate push — most notably in a 2010 New Yorker story in
O
had been falling apart for months, and even which Senate staffers ripped Obama for not
the bill’s supporters weren’t calling for a vote doing more. But beyond arguing that someone
L
ARBARA BOXER WAS IN because they knew they didn’t have the all- else was to blame, the dissecting produced lit-
L
Greenland in July 2007, important 60 votes to pass it. tle in the way of consensus as to how a popular
I
B watching chunks of ice A decade later, many of the people who president, bolstered by big majorities in Con-
N
slide off glaciers into the ris- worked on the bill remain haunted by its fail- gress, failed to deliver on a major campaign
G
ing ocean. She had brought ure. “If [the climate bill] had become law, we promise. The question is newly relevant, with
Republican senators there would now be talking about the final phases of Democrats back in control of government for
S
with her, hoping a first-per- what we have to do before 2030 to complete the first time in a decade and again hoping to
T
son confrontation with climate change would our journey toward net-zero greenhouse-gas address climate change — though this time with
O
persuade them to take action. And as the newly emissions,” says Sen. Ed Markey, who was in the a far smaller margin for error.
N
calved icebergs flowed past, the then-senator House in 2009 and co-authored its Waxman- Hoping to understand what went wrong and
E
thought her colleagues might be persuaded Markey climate bill. “We would have created how this crop of Democrats could get it right,
to vote yes on legislation to transform the U.S. millions of new jobs. The solar and wind and ROLLING STONE interviewed more than two
from one of the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas all-electric-vehicle revolution would have al- dozen current and former administration offi-
polluters into a leader in addressing the crisis. ready taken hold.” cials, lawmakers, staffers, and environmental
“This was a moment in time,” Boxer tells ROLL- Instead, the past decade has seen dystopian leaders who were at the heart of Obama’s cli-
ING STONE, “where I thought, ‘We’re going to climate fiction become reality: California fam- mate push. With a decade’s worth of distance
do it. It’s going to work.’ ” ilies driving through blackened skies as they from the failure, conversations with the officials
She was wrong. She’d find out for sure on July flee a burning paradise; “once in a thousand reveal a different and more holistic picture of
22nd, 2010, when Senate Majority Leader Harry years” floods becoming near-annual events in what went wrong in 2009-10.
5
2
5
3
There were outside hurdles (the Great Re- was claiming climate change was a new-world- Greenpeace withdrew its support in May, saying
cession, Obamacare, the BP oil spill), and there order hoax — but seven Republican senators the bill did too little to cut emissions and gave
were certainly bad actors (ahem, Sen. Lindsey voted for a plan to cap greenhouse-gas emis- too much in subsidies for “clean coal” power
Graham) and officials who failed to rise to the sions that summer, and John McCain won the plants — but most green groups lived with the
moment (Obama staffers Rahm Emanuel and GOP primary while laying out a climate-change changes in the hopes of winning over a large
David Axelrod were, per multiple sources, in- platform that looked similar to the one touted block of centrist Blue Dog Democrats.
different at best to the climate push). But those by Obama. The eve of the climate vote in the House co-
were all deck chairs on the Titanic: The effort The business world was experiencing a sim- incided with the annual Congressional picnic.
was ultimately doomed by a major misread- ilar shift. There were companies fighting any While lawmakers gathered on the White House
ing of the changing politics of the moment, and and all attempts to unfuck the planet, but some lawn, Obama met with swing voters on the cli-
particularly by an outdated assessment of who corporate CEOs had — with varying degrees mate bill in the Oval Office, asking them what
really held the power in the Republican Party. of sincerity — come to the table. That senti- it would take to get to “yes.” It was the type of
Democrats spent most of their energy court- ment produced the U.S. Climate Action Part- schmoozing Obama loathed, and a senior White
ing corporate CEOs, believing that if they signed nership (CAP), a coalition of industry and envi- House official says some of the meetings drift-
on, Republicans would be sure to follow. But ronmental groups that aimed to build a climate ed into the absurd: Brought to the Oval Office to
the GOP was rapidly mutating into a toxic golem plan everyone could live with. They settled on discuss a bill aimed at addressing a global crisis,
of Tea Party extremism, Mitch McConnell-style a system called “cap and trade,” which would one lawmaker spent the bulk of his time trying
cynicism, and megadonor money. “The ground require polluters to obtain permits for their to get Obama to autograph various items (the
shifted underneath, and it was no longer the greenhouse-gas emissions and then “cap” the representative got the autographs but voted no
case by the spring of 2010 that simply having total number of permits available in order to re- on the bill anyway, the official says).
leading business voices supporting a bill was duce emissions overall. Polluters would also be In the end, the bill squeaked by, 219 to 212.
enough to get Republicans on board,” says the allowed to sell unused permits (that’s where the Despite the business-friendly framework and
Environmental Defense Fund’s Nathaniel Keo- “trade” comes in) to emitters that hadn’t found the perks added for fossil fuels, Republicans
hane. And amid the focus on corporate board- a way to reduce their own pollution, effectively voted against it 168 to 8, and 44 Democrats
rooms and industry concessions, the climate creating a carbon market. Some environmental jumped ship as well. It should have been a red
effort’s architects neglected to build the grass- groups harbored doubts about cap and trade, flag that perhaps the corporate-led strategy was
roots support they’d desperately need when but it was a political winner: The Obama and missing its mark, but still, it was a victory, and
the Tea Party attacks began. when Democrats left for their August recess,
In criticizing the Obama-era effort, Markey the climate plan was still on schedule.
adds the caveat that a lot of what’s obvious now Then all hell broke loose. Democrats found
wasn’t then. “You live life forwards, but you un- themselves under siege at town halls from a
derstand it backwards,” he says. Sometimes, ”The Obama administration rising Tea Party movement that raged about
however, you get a second chance. Democrats Obamacare and, to a lesser extent, cap and
desperately wanted bipartisan
are now making even bigger promises on cli- trade — calling it a “cap and tax” government
mate, but the same forces that strangled the last support for everything,” says takeover of the energy sector that would leave
climate push are coming for this one, including Markey. “But that’s like waiting American families paying sky-high electric bills
a Republican Party that has only gotten more for Godot. It never shows up.” for power that only worked when the wind
extreme. And with zero margin for error in blew and the sun shined.
Congress, Democrats need to learn from their Those were nonsense arguments about a
past mistakes if they’re going to avoid a fail- market-based bill that aimed to gradually phase
ure the planet cannot afford. “The one thing McCain campaigns both endorsed it, each tout- out fossil fuels (too gradually, according to
that’s clear,” says David Doniger of the Natural ing it as a pragmatic, market-based solution. many climate scientists) and subsidize renew-
Resources Defense Council, “is how we’re just After Obama trounced McCain and Demo- able energy, but Democrats failed to effectively
desperately running out of time — how deep crats won huge majorities in Congress, U.S. CAP counter the Tea Party messaging, says Tom Per-
into overtime we are.” members planned to take their big ideas to Cap- riello, a Virginia Democrat who lost his House
itol Hill. The thinking was that if everyone from seat in 2010 after voting yes on cap and trade.
N
EWT GINGRICH SAT on a love seat the CEO of BP to the head of the Natural Re- “We didn’t tell an integrated story that con-
with Nancy Pelosi in the spring of sources Defense Council could agree on cap nected the stimulus, the health care bill, and
2008. Filming a commercial for Al and trade, Congress couldn’t possibly say no. climate change as being about rebuilding the
Gore’s climate campaign, the duo That theory was to be first tested in the American dream, making the American dream
looked into each other’s eyes and agreed on the House, where Markey and Rep. Henry Waxman real and affordable again,” Perriello says. “It
urgent need for action on climate change. It’s introduced a cap-and-trade bill in the spring of seemed like just three large gigantic votes, all
unthinkable today — and indeed by the time he 2009, a measure that also included a renew- with big price tags, all of which the Republicans
was running for president in 2011, Gingrich was able-energy standard and billions in subsidies were able to suggest were going to cost people
claiming, implausibly, that his real purpose was for creating “green jobs.” The White House at the kitchen table.”
to make a point that “we shouldn’t be afraid to hoped the measure would pass in a landslide. Meanwhile, fossil-fuel backers like the
debate the left, even on the environment.” Cabinet secretaries were given lists of wavering Koch brothers were feeding Tea Partiers their
But his canoodling with Pelosi is a remind- House members to persuade, and Waxman and climate-change talking points and pouring
er that in the run-up to Obama’s election, there Markey spent months working with moderate money into an anti-cap-and-trade campaign.
were some saner climate voices on the rise in Democrats to make the bill more amenable to Exactly where that cash was coming from was
the Republican Party. There was still a formi- the coal industry and agriculture. Environmen- difficult to track, and today, people involved in
dable wacko wing — Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe tal groups weren’t wild about the concessions — the effort suspect that some companies were
5
4
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sional equivalent of an album-release party:

April 26th. The plan was for the trio to stand
united on Capitol Hill and unveil their own ver-
sion of a cap-and-trade bill that could get the 60
votes needed to overcome an inevitable Mitch
McConnell-backed filibuster.
Except it never happened. Within two days,
it all fell apart. The high-water mark of the en-
tire congressional effort might have been April
23rd, when Kerry triumphantly announced cor-
porate support for the bill: Three major oil com-
panies and the nation’s leading utility lobby
group were on board, and the American Petro-
leum Institute had generously agreed to hold
off on running attack ads. Kerry had to agree to
a host of pro-industry provisions — including a
delay for when the emissions caps would take
effect — but he finally had the corporate support
Democrats were counting on for GOP votes.
Graham abandoned the climate effort the
next day. His official reason was that Reid had
killed the bill’s chances by promising to take
up immigration reform — and he was still furi-
ous that a White House source had anonymous-
ly (and largely falsely) told Fox News that Gra-
ham was trying to get a gas tax included in the
participating in cap-and-trade bill negotiations With Friends Like These Graham, Lieberman, and Kerry bill. But others, then and now, doubted those
while also funding efforts to sink it. (from left) led the “tripartisan” effort to find votes in the excuses. “We gained momentum until a major
“This was when that political game was Senate, but it fell apart after Graham bailed. coal enterprise unleashed a major assault on
changing,” says Perriello. In an earlier era, law- Lindsey Graham in his home state,” Kerry tells
makers could survive by bringing stakehold- ROLLING STONE. “That’s when things got hard-
ers in their districts together and cutting a deal er.” (Graham’s office did not respond to a re-
that everyone could live with. But dark money Despite all that, in the spring of 2010, it quest for comment.)
changed that calculus. “Rather than say, ‘You looked like the Senate might pass a climate bill Kerry and Lieberman continued scrambling
know what, this isn’t everything that we like, of its own. The most promising effort came to find the bill its 60 votes. They released a
but this is a fair way to go forward,’ these [in- from “the three amigos” — Democrat John measure in May, but no Republicans signed on.
dustry] groups got everything they wanted Kerry, Independent Joe Lieberman, and Re- Graham didn’t even support it, saying that it
from the bill — a much-watered-down thing that publican Lindsey Graham, a “tripartisan” trio put too many restrictions on offshore drilling —
upset the environmentalists for good reason — who vowed to bring left, right, and center to- at a moment when the Deepwater Horizon spill
and then they still went out and spent unlim- gether on a climate bill. Graham wasn’t the cli- was gushing 200 million-plus gallons of oil into
ited amounts of money [to attack it], because mate movement’s first choice for a GOP part- the Gulf of Mexico.
they could do it initially through dark money ner. That probably would have been McCain. Environmental groups “kept leaking word
while looking like they were playing ball.” But the wounds from his 2008 campaign were to the press that the numbers for this bill were
Another flaw in the pro-corporate strategy too fresh. McCain “completely ices us out,” says going up when the numbers were going down,”
was that it turned off some would-be grassroots Carol Browner, Obama’s climate and energy says Jim Manley, Reid’s communications direc-
supporters. Rhetoric about “carbon markets” czar. “I have these very painful meetings with tor at the time. “Privately, members were rais-
and “emissions trading” went over poorly with McCain about climate change, and he’s just so ing doubts to Reid.” By late July, Reid told law-
large parts of the Democratic base who’d found angry about what happened in the election.” makers he was moving on. The bill would never
themselves on the wrong end of the “free mar- McCain was frustrated that environmental- get a vote. “There was official public happy talk
ket” for generations. And so legions of cap-and- ists had attacked his record during his contest that day” about coming back to climate soon,
SCOTT J. FERRELL/”CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY”/GETTY IMAGES

trade critics overwhelmed supporters at town with Obama, after he’d been a leading Repub- says Darren Goode, the longtime congressional
halls. When Perriello tried to explain his climate lican on climate change for years. Then, that reporter who broke the news of Reid’s climate
vote at one August town hall, he was unable to spring, any chance of him joining the climate decision. “But pretty much everyone knew that
be heard over the chants of “drill, drill, drill.” effort vanished when he was faced with a Tea that had been [Democrats’] only real chance.”
For the next six months, as the Tea Party Party primary challenger. So instead of McCain,
I
raged, the two parties were locked in a death the climate team got his understudy. “Graham S THERE ANY hope now? Can Joe Biden’s
struggle over health care, causing a delay that called me literally out of the blue,” says Brown- Democrats do with 50 Senate votes
was a disaster for the climate. “The chance of er. “I answer my phone one day, and it’s Lind- — one of which belongs to West Virginia’s
passing both health care and climate change re- sey Graham: ‘I’m going to be your best friend, Joe Manchin, who once ran an ad of him-
ally was contingent on getting health care done Carol, because I’m there on climate change.’ ” self shooting a bullet through the cap-and-trade
in the fall of 2009,” says Phil Schiliro, Obama’s After months of planning, negotiations, and bill — what they couldn’t when they had far larg-
director of legislative affairs. delays, they finally set a date for the congres- er majorities under Obama? [Cont. on 79]
5
6
HOW THE
SARDINES Small open-water fish like sardines, herring, and anchovies are among the most “climate
friendly” fish to catch, requiring by far the least amount of boat fuel to gather. But rising ocean
temperatures are deadly to sardine larvae, and the species depends on plankton for food, which
is becoming scarcer in some parts of the world due to increasingly variable wind patterns. An 87 percent collapse of sardine
fisheries in the Southern Caribbean over the course of a decade was attributed largely to climate change, with overfishing
contributing as well. At the same time, research suggests sardine populations in the Pacific Ocean will travel north to cooler
waters over the next 60 years, reducing stock in current California fishing ports by 20 to 50 percent.
CLIMATE CRISIS WHEAT Accounting for 20 percent of all calo-

ries consumed by people — and 100
percent of all comfort food — wheat is
threatened by drought and rising carbon-dioxide levels.
Researchers project that even if we stop global tempera-
WILL CHANGE
tures from rising 2 C, the wheat-growing areas affected by
drought will double in the next 20 to 50 years. Rising CO2
levels may offset some of that by fueling photosynthesis
and increasing yield, but a recent study suggested rising
CO2 will also strip significant amounts of nutrients from Cranberries
wheat and other plants like barley, potatoes, and rice.
Indigenous
peoples in
the Northeast
WHAT WE EAT
have used this
winter-hardy crop
in their foods
and medicines
for thousands
of years. In
Massachusetts,
which produces
about a quarter
of the country’s
cranberry crop,
the industry is
now worth $1 bil-
FROM TOP: LAUREN KING/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES; RICHARD COOMBS/EYEEM/

lion and employs
// BY HANNAH MURPHY AND ANDREA MARKS 7,000 farmers.
The plants, many
ROM THE Georgia peach to Colombian coffee, of which are
the food we eat is an entrenched part of American more than 100
F culture. But thanks to rising temperatures and
CO2 levels, climate change is expected to trans-
years old, grow
in ancient bogs GETTY IMAGES; BRIAN HAGIWARA/GETTY IMAGES
form the future of food. that fall prey to

Extreme weather and pests are already wiping out crops while erratic rainfall
acidifying oceans are disrupting fisheries. The key is learning and drought. And
how to adapt. “It’s a race between innovation and the impacts in heat waves,
of climate,” says Keith Wiebe of the International Food Policy cranberries can
Research Institute. It will require breeding new strains of staple suffer from a
foods and moving farmland north into cooler climes. “Napa condition called
Valley pretty much ends up in Canada not too long from now,” “scald,” where the
says Lisa Goddard, a climate scientist at Columbia University. fruit cooks on the
And the outcome is far from certain as the weather becomes vine because it
more unpredictable. “The entire history of agriculture is based can’t cool itself.
on experience with relatively stable temperatures,” Wiebe says.
“And we’re going to move beyond that in the next decades.”
ALMONDS California grows about 80 percent of the world’s almonds. “That crop takes a
ridiculously lot of water to grow,” says Goddard, director of Columbia University’s
International Research Institute for Climate and Society. “As California’s facing water
shortages, this is going to be a problem.” In addition to rainfall, California farmers rely on snowmelt from the
Sierra Nevada mountains flowing into the state’s irrigation canals. As less snow accumulates and melts earlier
because of climate change, thirsty crops like almonds are likely to be especially affected by the late-season
water shortage. Researchers are studying whether the almond industry could eventually shift north into Oregon
and Washington, which by 2050 may be warm enough to support the crop.
Coffee
Higher tem-
peratures, more
PEACHES In winter, when hardy fruit trees
like peaches and cherries are
dormant, they need to expe-
intense rain, and rience a certain number of “chilling hours” — where
persistent humid- temperatures remain between freezing and 45 degrees
ity have made — for the fruit to reliably form. A study found that be-
coffee plantations tween 1950 and 2000, yearly chilling hours decreased
hospitable hosts by as much as 30 percent in some parts of California.
for the “coffee But there is hope: In 2020, the USDA released three new
leaf rust” fungus. peach varieties bred to survive shorter, warmer winters.
From 2012 to
2017, coffee rust
forced almost 2
million farmers
off their land. One
study estimates
SCALLOPS
that because of Baby shellfish like oysters and scallops start build-
global warming, ing their shells when they’re somewhere between
we could lose 50 the size of a speck of dust and a lentil, filtering
percent of the calcium and carbonate from ocean waters to construct their protective
land suitable to layers. But as the oceans’ acidity increases due to the rising CO2 levels, the
grow coffee by number of carbonate ions in the water declines. Unable to build their shells,
2050. the shellfish die or grow more slowly, making them more vulnerable to pred-
ators. One report estimated that with scallops, ocean acidification could
reduce the population by as much as 50 percent in just a few decades.
Wine
Wine grapes require
hyperspecific climates
CORN
FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: TIM UR/ADOBE STOCK; FLOORTJE/GETTY IMAGES; YVDAVID/ADOBE STOCK; TETRA IMAGES/GETTY
Corn is the most vital crop in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin to produce wines
America, and it’s the largest grown in the United States. with sugar, acid, and
Chickpeas
But healthy crops can be taken out in one fell swoop by tannins balanced
an ill-timed drought. And like most of the damage wrought by climate exactly right. Drought,
IMAGES; OLGAKOT20/ADOBE STOCK; IVAYLO IVANOV/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES; ANDREW UNANGST/GETTY IMAGES
Chickpeas are
a key source of change, the impacts will be uneven. “If the price of corn doubled, most of floods, hail, fires, and
protein for some us would hardly notice it,” says Wiebe. “But for poor people in developing unpredictable rains
20 percent of the countries — they spend half or more of their total expenditures on food. So and freezes threaten
world, but due to an increase in those basic staples has a big impact.” to decimate yields. In
many centuries 2020, smoke damage
of domestication, from the worst wildfire
they are vulner- season in modern
able to drought California history ruined 13 percent of the state’s
and disease. wine-grape crop. A recent study predicted that
Researchers have if global temperatures rise by 2 C, suitable wine-
collected seeds grape regions could shrink by as much as 56
and DNA from the percent by the end of the century.
legume’s heartier,
wild counter-
parts, hoping to
breed a plant that Rice
can better weath-
er the coming Rice production is fundamental to global food
changes. security: It’s a staple for more than half the
world’s population. Researchers are isolating
breeds that are drought- and flood-tolerant.
But the biggest enemy may be rising sea levels.
In Bangladesh, coastal flooding is literally salting
the earth, making it impossible to cultivate the
rice fields. According to one study, 200,000
coastal farmers will likely be forced out by rising
tides in the next 120 years.
5
9
Activist William
Morris in California
in February
A MATTER OF FAITH
Young evangelicals are
waking up to the threat
of climate change — and
working to bring their
church along with them
//
BY ALEX MORRIS
PHOTOGRAPH BY
ROZETTE RAGO
FEW YEARS BACK, William When it came to the climate crisis, he realized, especially once he got to middle school and
Morris came to realize just his own flock were still living in darkness. Per- the labs and experiments had proven to him
A
how he could be a light haps, with God’s grace, he could help bring that rather than being “trickery,” what he was
unto the world. Before this them to the light. learning was undeniably true. Such a realiza-
precise moment in time, Growing up in a conservative evangelical tion didn’t cause a crisis of faith per se, but it
his visions of a missionary Baptist church, Morris, 25, had been the benefi- did lead to a mental bifurcation, a sense that
life had involved foreign ciary of proper conservative evangelical indoc- God and science could coexist, but in two sep-
climes, distant shores, desecrated wastelands trination: “You know, evolution is a made-up arate realms, largely divorced from each other.
in desperate need of redemption. Then he had political thing, and climate isn’t really chang- In college, where he majored in environmen-
looked around at his native L.A. At the church ing,” he says. “LGBTQ people are sinful. All tal science, Morris found that he was often in a
he’d grown up attending. At the faith commu- these different checking off of all those boxes, group of one — the only science major in class
nity he’d always considered to be his home. basically.” Yet he’d gravitated toward science, who openly identified as Christian and the only
person in church who was a science major. evidence has piled up to the contrary, expect- Change. “Evangelical elites who were politically
Then one day, sitting in on a congregational ing evangelical youth to ignore or deny this ex- active came under pressure from their Republi-
meeting on mission work, he heard one of the istential threat to their futures has, for some, can colleagues because if too many evangelicals
speakers talking about environmental missions. proved a bridge too far. It’s one thing to be in- became convinced that they needed to vote on
“I was like, ‘What the heck is that?’ ” Morris tells structed to consider natural selection a “theo- the issue of climate change, then that reduces
me. “It was the first time I heard someone who ry,” it’s another entirely to be asked to ignore their ability to get out the vote on the Republi-
was Christian explicitly doing environmental your species’ own destruction of itself. can side by focusing on abortion, religious lib-
stuff. I went up to him right after and was like, The schism between the conservative Chris- erty, and sexual morality.”
‘Hey, we need to talk.’ ” tian church and the hard facts of science prob- Naturally, the culture wars came to the res-
That conversation eventually led Morris to ably dates back to our colonial origins, to the cue, helping to cast environmentalism as un-
spend a month doing volunteer work with a Puritan ideological divide between what is spir- abashed secularism. “It was like, ‘Oh, environ-
Christian conservation organization in Kenya, itual and what is physical, between what is holy mentalists are just saying this in order to attack
cataloging rare bird species, mapping man- and what is of this Earth. But its modern in- Christianity. Just like evolutionists are trying to
grove forests, and collecting data on coral reefs. carnation can be traced directly to the Scopes deny origins, now environmentalists are trying
His meals and his free time were shared with “monkey trial” of 1925, in which three-time to deny that God is in control,’ ” Veldman says.
other Christian environmentalists and scien- presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan That schism between faith and science was a
tists, most of whom were Kenyan and notably won a conviction against John Scopes for teach- comfortable, well-worn path, and once a theo-
did not share his evangelical American hang- ing evolution at a Tennessee public school. The logical element was introduced into climate
ups. He marveled at how their faith was not case got national attention, and its verdict pro- skepticism, the framework was set for disinfor-
only integrated into their environmental pur- voked backlash, bringing ridicule to the faction mation to do the rest. “You had the same pages
suits but was in fact integral to them. of American Protestantism that had previously out of the playbook and the same tactics and
“That’s where I really felt a sense of purpose seen itself as the unquestioned moral bedrock the same funding of the broader climate-denial
for the first time,” he says. “That dichotomy fi- of the nation, and providing the seeds of what machine — and sometimes even the same um-
nally went away of science versus faith. It was would grow into the culture wars. brella organizations that were doing the bid-
just a huge sigh of relief feeling almost, like, vin- It wasn’t always clear, however, that envi- ding of ExxonMobil — get involved in this,” says
dicated. I was like, ‘See, I knew it. I’m not crazy. ronmentalism would become a culture-war Katharine Wilkinson, author of Between God
I’m not the only one who cares about all of issue. In 1967, an essay by Lynn White Jr. titled & Green. “It was like, ‘Ostensibly we’re debat-
these things.’ It was this very holistic view that ing about science, ostensibly we’re debating
I never had gotten anywhere else. And I had to about theology,’ but actually that’s not at all
go all the way to Kenya to get it.” what was happening. It just injected toxicity
Morris also began to see this holistic view all into the space.”
over scripture: in Genesis, where the mandate “This is my sacrament,” says From the inside, the issue is still often spun
to have dominion over creation did not seem as theological. But as awareness of the cli-
one organizer. “The environment
to imply callous exploitation but rather a call mate crisis has grown, young evangelicals who
to wise stewardship, and throughout the Gos- is one of the most powerful tools, grew up singing, “He’s got the whole world in
pels, where Jesus didn’t assuage people’s suf- if not the most powerful tool his hands,” have started to question whether
fering with promises of the afterlife but actu- of connecting with the creator.” God’s sovereignty absolves them of responsi-
ally tended to their physical needs in the here bility. They are also wrestling with the moral-
and now. So, Morris pondered, wouldn’t loving ity of ignoring a problem that is clearly tied to
one’s neighbor mean protecting their habitat? the greed and the suffering of others. “I think
Making sure they could grow food, have clean “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” that there’s so much that the church in Amer-
air and water, not be subjected to forced migra- swept a small but notable contingent of evan- ica can learn from Christians in other coun-
tion or the “threat multiplier” that he knew cli- gelicals into the environmental cause. By the tries who are having the experience of dealing
mate change to be? mid-1990s, the Evangelical Environmental Net- with climate change on the front lines,” says
In integrating his faith with his environmen- work was fighting back against the Republican Cameron Kritikos, 26, a student at Yale Divini-
talism, Morris came to have a new understand- gutting of the Endangered Species Act, which ty school who also works with the Climate Wit-
ing of what that faith entailed, one that he actu- some Christians viewed as essential to preserv- ness Project within the Office of Social Justice
ally felt was deeper and more authentic. Before ing wildlife that had been saved in Noah’s ark. of the Christian Reformed Church, an office
the world could be healed by the church, he By the early 2000s, the EEN was growing con- that he says is not universally supported by
reasoned, maybe the church needed healing cerned about the climate — so concerned that in the denomination. “There is a decent chunk of
through its engagement with the world. He 2006 it developed a campaign called the Evan- folks who say that, you know, science is fund-
would go home and preach the message of en- gelical Climate Initiative, tasked with persuaded by George Soros, who send us prayers say-
vironmentalism. ing evangelical leaders to sign a declaration that ing, ‘Thank God for fossil fuels,’ ” he says. “But
it was imperative to halt climate change. Many Christians in other countries are living the ex-
I
N AMERICA, WHITE, evangelical Protes- did, including famous pastors like Rick Warren perience of displacement and not being able to
tants remain uniquely skeptical of cli- and Joel Hunter. “And so what happened, ba- grow their crops. I often hear from others who
mate change. According to a 2019 study sically, was the Evangelical Climate Initiative are doing development work, ‘Y’all in the U.S.
by the Public Religion Research Insti- was so successful that it kind of freaked peo- are the only Christians who are having conver-
tute, only 33 percent of that faith group believe ple out,” says Robin Globus Veldman, a profes- sations about whether climate change exists.’ ”
that climate change is the result of human activ- sor of religious studies at Texas A&M and au- Such conversations are no doubt part of the
ity, and 37 percent do not believe that climate thor of The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why reason that as many as two-thirds of young
change is happening at all. But as undeniable Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate American Protestants who attended church
6
1
regularly in high school stop attending in col- Certainly, this helps. When it comes to
lege, creating a category known as “exvangeli- church outreach, YECA members will often try
cals.” Others are trying to change the evangeli- to befriend younger people — who need far less
cal narrative from within and finding fellowship convincing that environmentalism is a matter
in an organization called Young Evangelicals for of both urgency and faith — and then move up
Climate Action (YECA) — the only one thus far the chain of command to older, more resistant
to thread that particular needle — which, since church leadership to advocate for a sermon se-
its founding in 2012, has seen its numbers swell ries, a bible study, an institutional acknowledg-
as climate projections have gotten increasingly ment of what they carefully refer to not as “cli-
dire. In 2014, when the organization launched mate action” but as “creation care.” They use
its Fellows Program on college campuses, scripture, not data or science (which they say
there were only four fellows in three states; can be “triggering”), to make their points. They
now there are 28 fellows on 18 campuses in 12 refer to “stewardship” and “discipleship” and
states. Thousands have signed the YECA call- “redemption” of the natural world. They talk
to-action pledge, and more than 25,000 young about their fears of having children, of the im-
people have performed at least one of its “ac- possibility of living out the command to “be
tions,” from starting an environmentalism club fruitful and multiply” in a world threatened by
at their school to launching a recycling cam- climate change. Sometimes they get through.
paign at their church to advocating for legisla- Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes there is con-
tion with their elected officials. The organiza- siderable pushback, the charge that they’ve
tion now has a footprint in almost every state, been brainwashed by liberals or are engaging in
but what’s changed in addition to its reach is false teaching or are clearly choosing the wrong
the attitudes it encounters. issue on which to devote their time.
“Nine years ago when YECA began, our con- “I hear that one all the time,” says Van Don-
versations on Christian college campuses had selaar. “I mean, the Republican Party did a re-
to start all the way back at why working on this ally good job branding themselves as the party
didn’t mean we were atheists or communists, that doesn’t kill babies. And that’s very power-
why it was OK for Christians to ask the kinds of ful rhetoric. So in conversations, we often talk
questions we were asking, why climate change about, ‘OK, what does it mean to be actually
didn’t need to be immediately dismissed as a pro-life? What does it mean to look for policies
liberal lie,” says Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, who was that don’t want to harm mothers, that don’t
YECA’s national organizer until taking a posi- want to harm immigrants, that don’t want to
tion with EEN, its parent organization, earli- support the death penalty? What does it look
er this year. “That’s where we started our con- like to actually support mothers who have chil-
versations. The challenge was giving young dren? What does it mean to be more holistical-
Christians a permission to engage in this at all ly “pro-life”?’ When I reach out to strangers and
and to question the assumptions they had been they say, ‘But what about unborn babies?’ I say,
handed that this wasn’t a problem to be con- ‘Well, what about alive people in Bangladesh?’ ”
cerned about. And now when we go to college The most hurtful pushback, however, can be
campuses, we don’t have to make the case for the kind that impugns their motivations, that
why climate change is a problem or that it’s views their climate action as a lack of faith in
happening or what our faith calls us to in re- Creation Care Top: YECA fellow Elsa Barron planting a God’s sovereignty and control over creation. To
FROM TOP: SHELENE BAIYEE/COURTESY OF ELSA BARRON; KYLE MEYAARD-SCHAAP/YECA

sponse to that. Young Christians get all of that. mango tree in Uganda, 2020. Above: YECA activists at the young climate activists, this doesn’t seem rea-
What they want to be told is that they have the People’s Climate March in 2017. sonable — God gives us brains to understand in-
agency to do something about it.” formation and free will to act on it — but they
And while working to do something about know it runs so deep in their faith community
it, young evangelicals are not surprised to con- as to almost be taken for granted. So deep as
front confusion on all sides. “People are like, head-scratching, secular environmental groups to absolve inaction. So deep as to make action
‘Wait, young evangelicals? Those exist, first of were thrilled to see them emerge, recogniz- look, to some, like heresy.
all?’ ” says Jenna Van Donselaar, 25, a field orga- ing their potential to infiltrate a group that And this is particularly hard to take, they
nizer for YECA, with a laugh. “ ‘Climate action? was mostly impervious to outsiders and that say, because climate action is something they
And then all together? Whaaaaat?’ ” While text wielded a dramatically disproportionate share do not in spite of their faith, but as a practice
banking on YECA’s behalf before the 2020 elec- of political power. White evangelical Protes- of it. “We drove from Michigan to D.C. as an act
tion, she was more bemused than disturbed by tants may make up only 17 percent of the pop- of faith,” says Kritikos of the car pool he and
the amount of ire that came her way — and her ulation, according to a 2017 study by the Pub- other Christian activists shared to join the sit-in
inability to pinpoint from which side it might lic Religion Research Institute, but the GOP is in Nancy Pelosi’s office in support of the Green
come. “Half the responses were ‘F you.’ I’m 35 percent evangelical (and 73 percent white New Deal. The night before, his nonviolent-pro-
like, ‘Do you hate that I’m an evangelical? Do Christian). “Usually [environmental groups] test training had taken place in a church. “They
you hate that I’m [fighting] climate change? Do will meet me and be excited,” Van Donselaar prepared us for the process of being arrested
you hate that I’m just texting you in general?’ ” says. “Like, ‘Oh, we can use you. You can speak and said, ‘If you’re a religious person, we invite
What all of the young evangelicals I spoke the language of people who we haven’t really you to use this time while you’re in jail to think
with agreed on was that, despite some initial been able to reach.’ ” about this movement and how it is a part of a
6
2
ing her. But she does think that the community
bears a responsibility to examine how they are
indoctrinating their youth and also to ask them-
selves: “Is this battle against science and what is
being taught in schools at the heart of our com-
munity, or is our battle to stand up for the vul-
nerable, to care for creation, and to be a com-
munity of love?”
Barron eventually worked her way out of her
crisis by clinging to the latter. She also came to
realize that the intricacies of nature and how it
functioned could inspire her faith — not detract
from it — and provoke a feeling of awe that is
connected to her perception of God. This led to
her climate activism. And her climate activism
led her to realize just what an opportunity was
being wasted by the evangelical denial of cli-
mate change. “This is a really intense communi-
ty of people,” she says. “There are incredible op-
portunities to mobilize people who have grown
up in an evangelical community where people
get so fired up about the issues they care about.”
And actually, it’s not so difficult to envision
creation care as one of those issues. At its core,
growing movement worldwide.” Which is exact- Pro-Life Agenda “When I reach out to strangers and they Christianity is a sacrificial religion, calling on
ly what Kritikos did when he was arrested the say, ‘What about unborn babies?’ I say, ‘What about alive adherents to deny the pleasures of the flesh
following day — and continues to do. “I pray for people in Bangladesh?’ ” says Jenna Van Donselaar. and cling to a belief in the unseen. At its core,
repentance for the way that myself and others climate action requires sacrifice, giving up cer-
have contributed to the harm of creation. I pray tain conveniences for a higher cause, even if
for folks to take their most fundamental beliefs the outcome isn’t ensured or immediate. Many
— that God loves them and loves the world — to “I was trained to defend the literal nature of the of the young Christian climate activists I talk-
go and act boldly.” Bible and very much taught that if one of the ed with pray for their churches to harness their
“This is my sacrament,” says Sarah Herring, dominoes falls, the whole thing is going to fall.” power in this way, rather than repudiate it.
23, another YECA field organizer. “The envi- Then, during her freshman year of college, Many want their churches to see their climate
ronment is one of the most powerful tools, if she did an experiment analyzing the genetic action — their veganism and composting and
not the most powerful tool of connecting with similarity of cellular proteins, which illustrated phone banking and bike riding — as precisely
the creator. That’s why I’m so passionate about to her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how those how they are exercising the very moral com-
my activism.” Says Meyaard-Schaap, “We’re proteins were evolutionarily related. “That was pass they learned at church.
doing this not because we’re environmentalists, a really big moment for me of being like, ‘This is “That’s what I tell older church leaders,”
not because we’re Democrats or Republicans. clearly established science, and to deny it is not Morris says. “ ‘Young people learn to care at
We’re doing this because we’re Christians, be- a fruitful way to interact in the world and bridge church. You gave them the reasons to care, but
cause we’re trying to follow Jesus and we think the gap between faith and reason.’ ” then you didn’t support them or encourage
this is part of what that means.” Yet trying to bridge that gap challenged her them or give them outlets for that care — or you
sense of identity. When one of her classes as- told them what they cared about was wrong.’ ”
F
INDING THAT CONNECTION between signed Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ second encyc- At the end of the day, though, it’s that caring
faith and climate activism can be a lical — which calls for “swift and unified action” that keeps them coming back to the church. It’s
painful process. The climate crisis is a against climate change, and has no qualms that caring that makes them think that environ-
source of deep anxiety for most any- about accepting the findings of science — she mental action could restore not just the planet
one who has a passing understanding of its po- was struck by the text’s freedom from liter- from without, but the church from within. “I
tential impact, but for many young evangeli- alism. “Talking to my Catholic friends, I was could very easily move on from that part of my
cal activists, it also means confronting the fact shocked to learn that evolution didn’t conflict upbringing and say, ‘Y’all deal with it. You’ve
that they were misinformed by people and in- with their faith beliefs. People were just like, sunk yourselves. Figure it out — or don’t, what-
stitutions they loved and trusted. “I was sort of ‘OK, yeah, we always knew that it didn’t mean ever,’ ” Van Donselaar says. “But I think I feel
known as the Creation Girl,” says Elsa Barron, we couldn’t have our faith,’ and moved on. obligated to not abandon my upbringing. I want
21, a YECA fellow and senior at University of Meanwhile, I am in the trenches of this spiritual to honor those really good parts of growing up
Notre Dame. “I was outspoken about it. I was and intellectual battle over what is true. It was in the church and growing up with people who
like, ‘Oh, what I’m learning in school is dan- really a moment of crisis about something that really deeply care about each other, about God,
gerous, and I have to combat it.’ ” She begged didn’t need to be so intense, and I had really about creation, even if that looks differently
her parents to drive her to conferences on cre- been led astray by many people in that sense.” than how I express it. To essentially call them to
ationism, where she stocked up on books on Barron doesn’t necessarily blame the peo- be better and say, ‘I’m the next generation. You
the topic. She started intensely studying biolo- ple in her church for this because she thinks taught me to love God. You taught me to care
gy as a way to prove that evolution wasn’t true. that they truly believed what they were teach- about justice. Let’s do it.’ ”
6
PHOTOGRAPH BY KANNETHA BROWN 3
G E N E R AT I O N
LIMBO
A year with the class of 2020,
which graduated into Covid-19
and a deep recession — and
had to put adult life on hold
BY EJ DICKSON
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEC CASTILLO
LO C K E D D OW N
Andrew Garcia-Bou at his
parents’ home in Westchester
County, New York, photographed
through the window due to a
recent Covid-19 diagnosis
65
ROLLING STONE
G E N E R AT I O N L I M B O
A
CCORDING TO MOST
standards, Harkirat Anand
did everything right. He
went to one of the best
schools in the country,
Washington University
in St. Louis. He focused
on STEM fields, double-
majoring in economics
and math. And when he finished his internship with
a major telecommunications firm during his junior
year, the company offered him a part-time position,
all but guaranteeing him a full-time job the sum-
mer after he graduated. He worked diligently his se-
nior year, forgoing hallmark experiences — 3 a.m.
diner runs, dingy basement parties, regrettable hook-
ups — in pursuit of a brighter future. “I thought it
was a worthwhile trade-off, quite honestly,” he says.
“I thought, ‘If this amounts to something, I’m OK
making that sacrifice.’ ”
Then Covid-19 hit, and he heard nothing from the
telecommunications firm for a month. “They totally
ghosted me,” he says. When staffers finally got back
in touch around April, they informed him that be-
cause of the pandemic, they were no longer filling
the position. With nothing to do and nowhere to
go except back home, with nearly 10 other family
members, Anand, 22, fell into a deep depression. He
gained weight and would stay in his room for days.
“I became very reclusive and fell into despair for a
while,” he says. “That all but paralyzed me.”
Anand is a member of the undergraduate class of
2020, one of the most star-crossed generations in re-
cent history: born just a few years before 9/11, coming
of age during the Great Recession, and leaving col-
lege during a global pandemic and an unprecedented
attack on American democracy, with unemployment
rates skyrocketing. They now face the seemingly in-
surmountable task of establishing careers and adult ON THE SIDELINES
lives during a time when being an adult feels pretty Since the pandemic began, Lexi Torrence, who majored in journalism,
much impossible for everyone. has had to contend with a shrinking news industry, health problems,
From the very start of the pandemic, when classes and a family glued to Fox News. “I feel helpless,” she says.
were canceled and students kicked off campus, the P H OTO G R A P H BY N I C K T H O M S E N
class of 2020’s segue into the real world has been
shaky at best. “When you leave college, [it’s] like,
‘What was the purpose of that? What did I take away In an effort to understand their fears, concerns, cording to Konkel, is that there simply aren’t enough
from it?’ ” says Andrew Garcia-Bou, 23, a recent grad- and frustrations, over the past year ROLLING STONE jobs out there for recent graduates. As of Septem-
uate of Bates College in Maine. has spoken with dozens of recent college graduates ber 2020, Indeed.com postings for banking and mar-
When I first began speaking to Garcia-Bou, he was from all over the country and with varying racial and keting, fields that traditionally attract recent college
living at his parents’ house in Westchester County, economic backgrounds, following up with a select graduates, are down 30 and 38 percent, respective-
New York, hundreds of miles away from his girl- few struggling to carve out a place in a stubbornly rely. Even internships, a standard method for young
friend in Vermont; though he was unfailingly affable sistant job market. “The fact that this crisis is continu- adults to enter their chosen industry, are down by 25
and decorous, it didn’t take long for his frustration ing to drag on and people are staying unemployed for percent — despite clicks for internship postings being
at being deprived of his anticipated post-grad expe- longer doesn’t paint a good picture” for recent gradu- up 28 percent compared with 2019.
rience — an apartment in the city, a stable job, start- ates, says AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist for the With so few jobs available and so many gradu-
ing to pay off more than $50,000 worth of student job-listings website Indeed.com. Garcia-Bou puts it ates looking for work, the climate is fiercely compet-
loans — to bubble over. “Like, yes, I gained an edu- differently: For recent grads, “it just sucks.” itive. “I’d find an entry-level position and I’d see on
cation,” he says. “But so much of it is the general so- Generally speaking, the unemployment rate has LinkedIn ‘2,000 people applied in 18 hours,’ ” says
cial experiences and developing friendships and rela- been slowly but steadily declining since its peak last Justin Grauer, a University of Miami graduate. “And I
tionships.” He got a job in June, but continues to live April, after the initial shock of lockdown. But the job wouldn’t even apply because the chances of me get-
at home, while his girlfriend has since moved to Bos- market has far from reverted to its pre-pandemic ting an interview, let alone a job, are slim to none.”
ton; in early 2021, he was diagnosed with Covid-19. state, particularly for people between the ages of 16 “It’s just heartbreaking,” says Payton Pampinto,
and 24: As of January 2021, the youth unemployment 23, of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. “I feel like I’m trying
Senior writer EJ DICKSON profiled Yamiche Alcindor rate is 11.3 percent, still significantly above the 8.5 so hard. But employers will just ghost you. It’s like
in March’s “Women Shaping the Future” issue. percent rate a year earlier. Part of the problem, ac- they don’t care.”

G E N E R AT I O N L I M B O
T
HE OBSTACLES facing recent college gradu- she says. “It’s difficult to have all this knowledge and pushing back the start date — first by a few weeks,
ates during the pandemic don’t just affect all this drive to work, and not be able to.” then by a few months. So she moved back home to
them in the short term. Prior research on Gayle’s readiness for the workforce was apparent live with her stepmom and dad, expecting it to be
graduates during recessions indicates that even in our early Zoom interviews, where she was re- temporary. Six months into the pandemic, she got a
the effects of un- or under-employment for recent lentlessly professional, wearing office-ready button- call telling her she should start looking for other jobs.
grads may linger eight to 10 years after graduation, downs and always referring to me as “ma’am.” It was “It’s been terrible, really,” she said in September
says Stephanie Aaronson, VP and director of the eco- hard to understand why any prospective employ- of post-grad life. “You get your hopes up so much to
nomic studies program at the Brookings Institution. er would not want to hire her for virtually any role. start your own life. Now I’m just stuck at home see-
If jobs in their chosen field aren’t available, many It didn’t take long for Gayle to get back on track ing only my stepmom and my dad every single day.
will take positions in other fields, which research has — Geico hired her in May — but many college stu- And it’s just so tiring, even though I don’t have much
shown can have a long-term impact on their ability to dents who had job offers rescinded weren’t so lucky. going on. I literally just sit in bed and message peo-
gain a foothold in their desired industry. This has led to them feeling as if the ground beneath ple on LinkedIn.”
“Your first job isn’t usually your best job, but it’s their feet had suddenly given way — leaving them In February, Pampinto moved into an apartment
the way you make connections and learn what it stranded, with their lives abruptly put on hold. When in Atlanta with a roommate who lost her job during
means to be in the labor force. It’s the thing that pro- she left the University of Alabama with a degree in the pandemic, using money she’d saved up working
vides the springboard to your future success,” Aaron- marketing, Pampinto, the graduate from Muscle at a bridal boutique and selling clothes on sites like
son explains. “The concern is that it just could take Shoals, was expecting to move to Palm Springs, Cal- Depop and Poshmark. When we last spoke in Febru-
longer, and the evidence shows that if you graduate ifornia, to take a job as an events coordinator at an ary, she was applying for nanny jobs and a position
into a recession, it takes longer to settle in and move upscale hotel. After she graduated, the hotel kept at SoulCycle. But she had given up hope on working
up the career ladder.” in the events space, for which she had spent
To make matters worse, it is those who are nearly four years in college studying to get
already at a disadvantage — black, indigenous, her degree.
people of color, and low-income recent grad- “I’m just scared,” she told me. “I don’t
uates — who will likely be hardest hit. Previ- know how long this is gonna last and if things
ous data has found that black college gradu- will ever go back to the same in the events in-
ates are twice as likely as their white peers dustry. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do what I
to be unemployed, a trend that will likely be originally planned to do.”
exacerbated by the pandemic. “I try not to
A
think ahead too much just because it’s kind LL OF THIS UNCERTAINTY is tak-
of scary to wonder what anything looks like ing a toll on young people’s men-
even a month from now, just the way this tal health. In the U.S., nearly 75
year has been going,” Larisha Paul, a black percent of people between 18 and
NYU graduate and aspiring music writer who 24 are reporting at least one adverse mental-
is unemployed and owes $14,000 in student health condition, including depression and
loans, told me in September. Currently, her anxiety — more than twice the number of Gen
only source of income is blogging for a music Xers and baby boomers reporting such symp-
website for a few hundred dollars a month. “I toms, according to CDC data. Crisis-outreach
just turned 22, and I’m already feeling very inquiries are also spiking. Taylor Mewhiney,
old,” she says. 22, is a recent college graduate and a vol-
Because employers were by and large not unteer for a suicide-prevention hotline. She
hiring for entry-level jobs last summer, there’s says she’s seen an influx of calls from peo-
also been an increase in unpaid internship ple her age. “They’re very drained,” she says.
opportunities and companies asking for free- “They’re not used to having no structure, no
lance projects on spec, which automatically schedule, and a lot of people are teetering on
serves as a barrier for low-income students, the edge of ending their own lives.”
according to Dana Hamdan, an associate dean Lexi Torrence, 22, is a soft-spoken Univer-
and executive director of the Career Devel- sity of South Carolina graduate who majored
opment Center at Oberlin College. “Students in journalism. Immediately after graduating,
who don’t have these financial challenges are she moved into her boyfriend’s one-bedroom
the ones securing these unpaid opportuni- apartment in Savannah, Georgia, and spent
ties and in the long term are benefiting more,” months fruitlessly hunting for editing and so-
she says. cial media jobs. In August, after experiencing
The end result is a sizable cohort of young mysterious stomach pains, she had to have
people stranded at home, bored and alien- gallbladder surgery, but complications from
ated, with a multitude of qualifications and the procedure forced her to go on bed rest,
nothing to do with them. “We have all the de- temporarily pausing her job search.
grees, all the knowledge, and we just cannot Torrence has also had to deal with the
land a job,” says Dean-Anna Gayle, 25, a Flor- stress of having family members who are
ida International University graduate. Last glued to Fox News and who, at the start of
April, when I first started talking to Gayle, she the lockdowns, regularly diminished the se-
was unemployed and living in Miami with her riousness of Covid-19, a common narrative
RONMEL TABORA
mother, a disabled veteran, and sister, after R E A DY FO R R E A L L I F E among recent graduates in the pandemic’s
Geico revoked a job offer; she was applying Dean-Anna Gayle’s job at Geico was put on hold when the early days. “I feel helpless. I feel like I can’t
to 10 jobs a day. “We’re ready to work. We Covid-19 pandemic hit. “It’s difficult to have all this drive do anything, physically or with my family and
want to work. That’s why we go to college,” to work and not be able to,” she says. with the world and life,” she said last spring.

interview prep — haven’t changed in decades. “These
services only cater to the needs of affluent students
who are already immersed in a thick supportive
network and have completed an internship or two,”
says Hamdan. “We need to offer programming that
allows all students — and in particular less-affluent
students — help.”
IN THE FIRST FEW months of the pandemic, in lieu

of being able to find more traditional jobs, Ham-
dan says, many college students started volunteer-
ing and embarking in activism in order to give them-
selves a sense of purpose. Many became deeply
involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and
the protests against the killings of George Floyd and
Breonna Taylor last summer. In the early months of
the pandemic, some focused
on making PPE.
A NEW NORMAL
For Anand, the WashU
“I feel like I’m trying graduate, the killing of Floyd
so hard,” says Payton
was a turning point. In the
Pampinto. “But
employers will just ghost absence of a paying job, he
you.” Pampinto is living decided to assume an activist
in Atlanta, paying rent role, doing pro-bono college
with her savings, as consulting and tutoring indi-
she searches for work. viduals in marginalized com-
P H OTO G R A P H BY munities. “There is some-
ARI SKIN
thing to be said about how
institutional issues play into
a world where everyone is forced to sit and ponder
these experiences without the distractions of the
real world,” he says. “It gives our generation clarity
to evaluate the situation and present solutions that
are proactive.”
He started reevaluating what he could do with
his off time and began exercising, losing 60 pounds.
He also grew closer with his family, particularly his
mother. “One day she just showed up at my door and
grilled me on what was going on, and I broke down
in her arms. I kinda cried and told her I was really
in the shitter. She just sat there and listened,” he
says. “She didn’t give me any advice, like she usually
does, she just let me vent. She told me that my anxi-
ety won’t disappear tomorrow and it’ll probably fol-
low me around, but ‘Let’s work on getting you to a
place where you feel better and can move forward.’ ”
Unlike many of the people I spoke to for this story,
“I’m the kind of person who likes to take charge and ticularly career-services departments. Graduates Anand has distinct memories of the post-9/11 eco-
do stuff, and I feel like I can’t right now. I can’t make (especially at large schools) often expressed their system; as a Sikh American, he and his family faced
my family wear a mask or wash their hands. I feel frustration with the paucity of resources available to discrimination in the wake of the attacks. For this
like I’m teaching a class of toddlers that doesn’t want them the second they graduated, as well as the use- reason, he feels he has a fairly unique view of what
to listen.” (She says they have since come around lessness of services like career-counseling depart- it’s like for a generation to be shaped by a single cata-
on being vaccinated and they also accept that Biden ments. They felt that college was, in general, a rip-off, clysmic event. “I’m very aware that if one thing goes
legitimately won the election.) and they may very well be right: The average student- awry, things could fall apart,” he told me in February.
Torrence’s life, she says, has been “derailed” by loan debt for the class of 2018, two years ahead of the “They’re very precarious as they stand.”
the pandemic. She is now freelancing for her home- class of 2020, was $29,200, according to the Institute In January, however, Anand started a position at
town paper, getting $20 per article. “All the control for College Access and Success. AlphaSights, an information-services company, in
and all the plans I had for 2020 and 2021 fell through, “For graduates, there’s really no assistance. For New York City. He has an apartment near Hudson
and I had no way of stopping it,” she says. “I can’t current students, yes, but not for graduates,” says Yards, though he plans to move back home to save
stop myself from being sick. I can’t stop the pan- Gayle, the Florida International University graduate. money and help with his family’s mortgage. But a
demic. It’s just frustrating. I feel like I am more help- “It’s basically like, ‘Here’s a job on Indeed,’ ‘Here’s a full-time job in New York had been his destination all
less than I’ve been since I was a kid.” webinar.’ And that’s basically about it.” along. It just took him a little longer to get there. “Ev-
Such feelings of helplessness and malaise have Even those whose job is to help these individuals eryone ultimately adjusts,” he says. “The fizz ulti-
contributed to recent graduates’ general sense of don’t find this an unfair perception, noting that their mately settles. Sure, this might be a new normal. But
disillusionment toward their own alma maters, par- offered services — things like résumé writing and I don’t think we’re cosmically fucked.”

R I N G O S TA R R
ZO O M I N
Zoom In was recorded at Ringo Starr’s home studio from April-October 2020.
The 5 new songs “Here’s To The Nights,” “Zoom In Zoom Out,”
“Teach Me To Tango,” “Waiting for the Tide to Turn,”
and “Not Enough Love In The World”
include contributions from Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh, Ben Harper,
Dave Grohl, Sheryl Crow, Chris Stapleton, Steve Lukather, Jenny Lewis,
Lenny Kravitz, Corinne Bailey Rae, Eric Burton, Yola, FINNEAS,
Benmont Tench, Robbie Krieger, Sam Hollander, Bruce Sugar & more.
OUT NOW
AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING & DOWNLOAD + CD, VINYL & CASETTE
Music
ERIC CHURCH
MAKES IT A
TRIPLE
The Nashville
maverick delivers
his biggest, boldest
statement
By JONATH AN
BER NSTEIN
Eric Church
Heart & Soul
EMI
E
RIC CHURCH might
look like a tough-guy
outlaw who plays by
his own rules, but his real
gift has been for bending the
rules to his will. No recent
country artist has maneu-
vered the Nashville system
as successfully, remaining
dedicated to the power of
down-the-center hitmaking
even as he’s helped expand
the parameters of the genre
to include everything from
soft-rock balladry (2009’s
“Carolina”) to U2-Metallica
arena grandeur (2014’s The
Outsiders) to Wilco-referenc-
ing classic rock (2015’s Mr.
Misunderstood).
Church’s latest project is
his most ambitious: a 24-song
triple album released over
the course of a week in three
segments. Heart,
ILLUSTRATION BY
Tony Rodriguez
Reviews Music
ERIC CHURCH
&, and Soul further refine the melodic, mid-
GRETA’S GRAND ILLUSION
tempo storytelling Church excels at, offering a The classic-rock true-believers build a dazzling
moving summation of what he has done well
throughout his 15-year career. You get brash
cathedral of neo-Zeppelin overkill By JON DOL AN
statements that recall his irreverent early days
E
(“Stick That in Your Country Song”), as well as VER SINCE the dawn of Steph Curry and LeBron expect: “Heat Above” reimag-
maximalist rock-and-soul like the Elton John- Jack White, artists who James highlights. ines Cat Stevens as a strutting
meets-Meat Loaf “Heart of the Night,” and the hunger to reassert the Greta Van Fleet are just Planthead. The guitars on
roots rock of “Hell of a View.” power of rock in a rockless as guilelessly impassioned “Built by Nations” ape “Black
Each of these albums has a loose premise age have tended to sound on their second record. You Dog,” with extra Rust Belt
(plenty of “heart” tunes on Heart, lots of like reactionary young coots. would think that maybe at grime, as frontman Joshua
R&B-leaning funk rock on Soul); taken togeth- But Greta Van Fleet, four kids this point they would have Kiszka’s voice shreds beyond
er, Heart & Soul is a concept record of sorts, from Saginaw, Michigan, set moved on to ripping off less his go-to Robert Plant/Geddy
about the everlasting power of music — the themselves apart by playing obvious Zeppelin songs. Lee impression toward
music he makes and the music he loves, which Seventies classic rock that Nope. Their stairway still something like an elven Bon
spans the gamut from the Doors and Bobbie seemed wholly unburdened goes directly to heaven; “Bro- Scott. The peak is “Stardust
Gentry (“Rock and Roll Found Me”) to Elvis Chords,” opening with cav-
and Guns N’ Roses (“Heart on Fire”). ernous yowls and orc-march
Church has always had fun paying respect drums before vaulting into
to his heroes, going back to 2006’s “Pledge
Allegiance to the Hag.” But the 43-year-old
is now mythologizing his own music, with
winking references. Some of the tension in
“Russian Roulette” comes from the narrator’s
desperation to find a “melody without a mem-
ory,” or, in other words, to avoid the type of
music-as-nostalgia tune exemplified by his 2011
signature song “Springsteen” (“Funny how a
melody sounds like a memory”). “Through
My Ray-Bans” is a moving portrait of, well, at-
tending an Eric Church concert (with a nod to Greta Van Fleet
his hit “Drink in My Hand”) that has a deeper The Battle at
meaning, having been inspired by Church’s ex- Garden’s Gate
perience playing at the 2017 Las Vegas festival Republic
(sight of America’s worst mass shooting).
Church’s clever self-consciousness provides
3
a new edge, but that’s not always enough
to set these records apart. Some songs, like dazzlingly inane prog-blues
“Crazyland,” which employs the technique of overkill.
turning emotions into characters à la 2015’s Yet, while Greta Van Fleet
“Kill a Word,” feel like retreads. That might be excel at erecting houses of
because Church has long relied on the same by irony or even self-aware- ken Bells” bustles in your the retro-rock holy, they
group of white-dude co-writers, and it may ness. They just really, really hedgerow with such gusto struggle a bit at the basics —
also be because he’s past the point in his ca- liked making songs that that it's not hard to imagine like memorable songwriting,
reer where innovation supersedes songcraft. sounded like Led Zeppelin GVF finding themselves on and especially lyrics; “My Way
Regardless, on the best moments here, (with some Rush thrown in the business end of a whole Soon” is a glorious sunburst
Church sounds newly invigorated. When, there, too), and on their 2018 lotta legal action. of serpentine guitar attack
on “Doing Life With Me,” Church imagines debut, Anthem of the Peaceful But The Battle at Garden’s and stringy-haired boogie
himself as an aging troubadour counting his Army, they approached the Gate isn’t just paint-by-num- recalling Free or Humble Pie,
blessings, he saves what’s most important ancient music that blew their bers pantomime. They’re but it’s blandly undercut with
for near the end: “The notes and the words minds just like kids at recess quite good at this bullshit, wan wisdom like “I’ve seen
and the songs I sing.” re-creating their favorite and not always in ways you’d many people/There are so
many people/Some are much
younger people, some are
so old.” Speak, brother. And
when the band goes a-court-
BREAKING ing, things can get icky: “Your
mind is a stream of colors/Ex-
FROM TOP: ALYSSE GAFKJEN; HANNA KATRINA
Dry Cleaning’s Pandemic Punk Epiphany tending beyond our sky,” Kisz-
ka offers, pitching philosophic
BANDS AS COOL as London’s Dry Cleaning don't come along often. After forming at a woo over the dragon-tailed
local karaoke night, they got band-to-watch hype for two alluring 2019 EPs. They began sensitivity of “Light My Love.”
working on their full-length debut as lockdown set in, eventually finishing New Long Leg What lucky theoretical group-
with veteran producer and PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish. The way vocalist Florence
ie in 1975 wouldn’t dig that?
Shaw stoically speaks her lyrics over mordant post-punk can recall the Mekons or Black
With these guys, a little
Box Recorder, with songs like “John Wick” or “Unsmart Lady” unfolding like mini mysteries.
self-awareness would go a
The result is a tension bordering on terror that perfectly fits our claustrophobic times. JON DOLAN
long way toward making them
easier to take seriously.
72 | Rolling Stone +++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.
Quic
Ten new albums you need to know about now
SWEET FEET The second LP from

Serpentwithfeet experimental pop artist Josiah Wise is
Deacon a gorgeous meditation on black queer
love, taking its slow, serene time en
Secretly Canadian
route to hymnlike romantic epiphany.
Floating Points, Pharoah JAZZ TRIP Eighty-year-old sax great

Sanders, and the London Sanders pushes his sound to its most
Symphony Orchestra
heavenly extreme, with his murmuring
Promises lines hovering above producer Floating
Points’ ambient-classical shimmer.
Luaka Bop
ART-POP ACE Merrill Garbus’ body-

Tune-Yards rattling mutant New Wave is at once
thrilling and decentering, but it’s her
Sketchy incisive songwriting (see “Hold Your-
4AD
self”) that makes her fifth LP a treat.
Matt Sweeney and HOWLING WOLF Sixteen years after

Bonnie “Prince” Billy the first Superwolf collab, Matt Swee-
ney’s artfully gnarled guitar lines are
Superwolves still an ideal match for Will Oldham’s
Drag City ancient-feeling warble and lyrics.
TRUTH HURTS The beloved goth-metal

Evanescence band returns to the bedrock sound
that made it 2000s heroes, driven by
The Bitter Truth singer Amy Lee’s high-drama vocals
BMG
and razor-sharp pop instincts.
SOUL POWER The Colbert bandleader

Jon Batiste displays a rich soul vision, evoking
Al Green, modern R&B, and New
We Are Orleans jazz, with assists from pals
Verve
like Mavis Staples and Zadie Smith.
DEEP DIVE The increasingly limber

Lake Street Dive roots-pop band eases even further into
retro soul, which compensates for a
Obviously few well-intentioned but clunky lyrics
Nonesuch
about climate change and politics.
SPIRITUAL HEALING The immortal

Merry Clayton rock backup vocalist (see the Stones’
“Gimme Shelter”) revisits her gospel
Beautiful Scars past on this moving set of bruised
Motown
spirituals and tender devotionals.
FROM LEFT: DOUGLAS MASON/GETTY IMAGES; JEFF HAHNE/GETTY IMAGES;
DOUBLE TAKES Sting is in smooth

Sting sophisticate mode, sharing the mic
with Mary J. Blige, Annie Lennox, Eric
Duets Clapton, and others on this generous
Universal
collaborations album.
BRAYLEN DION; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE
Cheap Trick OLD TRICKS Cheap Trick still want

you to want their Beatles- and
In Another Who-worshiping arena-rock throw-
World backs, but offer little worth hoisting a
flame to on their 20th studio album.
BMG
CONTRIBUTORS: JONATHAN BERNSTEIN, JON DOLAN, KORY GROW, CLAIRE SHAFFER, HANK SHTEAMER

enough to depend on him
for everything — it makes the
story feel more monotonous
than intended. Every serial
killer has a routine, but this
one is particularly unpleasant
to sit through over and over,
as we continually revisit the
same poor suckers writhing
in intestinal discomfort.
On occasion, the non-
chronological approach
provides greater illumination.
But it mostly gets in the way,
as in detailing how Leclerc
evolves from unsuspecting
love interest to semi-willing
accomplice. Doctor Who alum
Coleman is good enough to
suggest an engrossing char-
acter arc had we followed
Leclerc straight from the
beginning to the end of her
journey with Sobhraj, but it’s
hard to keep track of how
complicit she’s meant to be.
Coleman (left) Rahim, meanwhile, tries to
TV
and Rahim as a
keep Sobhraj — half-Indian,
couple who take
many prisoners
half-Vietnamese, and resent-
ful of these rich Western
kids — inscrutable. But the
The Serpent performance is too under-
NETWORK Netflix stated for its own good, given
STARRING Tahar Rahim how much of the plot leans
Jenna Coleman on the idea that Sobhraj’s
LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN

Billy Howle
Ellie Bamber charismatic attentions felt
Amesh Edireweera to his victims, as one puts it,
Tim McInnerny “like the sun shone on you.”
@ These stumbles weigh
Netflix’s Seventies-set true-crime thriller ‘The Serpent’ down the early hours of
is poisoned by the out-of-sequence storytelling trend the eight-part miniseries.
At a certain point, though,
Herman and Angela begin
comes across as a naked lure guileless backpackers to just jumped to, but good luck making enough progress that
attempt to dress up a story rob and/or kill them. Their following when certain events The Serpent takes on an ur-
that isn’t that interesting to slaying of a Dutch couple, happen relative to others. gency befitting the atrocities
begin with. Or, it muddles and the indifference of local Scenes are often presented committed by Sobhraj. Those
a tale that would be more authorities, forces diplomat multiple times in differ- later chapters are so tense,
exciting told in order. With Herman Knippenberg (Billy ent episodes, in theory to exciting, and occasionally
The Serpent — about serial Howle) and his wife, Angela provide new context to what touching that the periodic
killer Charles Sobhraj (Tahar (Ellie Bamber), to become we previously saw. Coupled rewinds don’t get in the way
Rahim), who preyed on West- amateur detectives. with Sobhraj’s ritualized too much. The question is
ALAN SEPINWALL ern tourists along the “Hippie It’s a straightforward methods — he would poison how many viewers will stick
Trail” of Thailand, Nepal, and suspense-thriller setup The his victims, making them sick around for that payoff.
India in the mid-Seventies — Serpent can’t stop itself from There are stories that
I
T’S TEMPTING TO begin it’s a bit of both. Parts of the complicating. Soon, the story are only effective because
this review of The Serpent story are so potent that they is unfolding across multiple they’re told out of order,
in the middle, offer- succeed despite the presen- timelines, with Knippen- like Memento, and others,
ing a tidbit meant to tease tation, while others drag as berg’s investigation like Breaking Bad,
your interest in the Netflix this serpent loops around to moving ahead in a where the bending
true-crime miniseries before swallow its own tail. straight line, while of time enhances
bouncing back and forth in After a 1997-set prologue, Sobhraj’s crimes a tale already
time to make the whole enter- the series lands in 1975 are presented in expertly told.
prise seem livelier. After all, Bangkok, where Sobhraj, what can feel But too many
ROLAND NEVEU/NETFLIX, 2
that’s how The Serpent cre- girlfriend Marie-Andrée like an almost creators lean
ators have opted to tell this Leclerc ( Jenna Coleman), random order. on the gimmick
story, as has been the case and henchman Ajay (Amesh There are chy- as a crutch and,
with so many recent shows. Edireweera) are in the midst rons to explain Howle and as in the case of
Too often, this out-of- of their usual routine: posing the date and Bamber on The Serpent, keep
sequence narrative device as gem dealers so they can location we’ve the case tripping over it.
74 | Rolling Stone +++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor

WATCH LIST
What to stream, what to skip this month
Dr. Winnifred Cutler

BIOLOGIST’S PHEROMONE
FORMULAS INCREASE
AFFECTION FROM OTHERS
These cosmetics increase your attractive-
ness. Created by the co-discoverer of human
Pedrad (left) pheromones. Dr. Cutler has authored 8 books
in a school on wellness and 50 scientific papers.
daze as Chad
ABOUT A BOY Thomas) move with daughters

Ruby (Shahadi Wright Joseph)
and Gracie (Melody Hurd) into
SON ALSO RISES
Chad an all-white L.A. neighborhood Invincible
in the Fifties — Compton, in fact,
NETWORK
AIR DATE
TBS
April 6th
in the days before white flight.
NETWORK
AIR DATE
Amazon Prime
New episodes on Fridays
ATHENA PHEROMONE
They’re beset by both the racists
1 next door (embodied by Alison $
Pill’s Betty, whose creepy, un-
This comedy, in which Saturday wavering smile looks like it could Powerful teenage sons of super- for women tm for men
Night Live alum Nasim Pedrad shatter glass) and the various heroes are big on TV, first with unscented fragrance additives
plays an Iranian American ghosts that seem to be lurking the CW’s Superman & Lois and
teenage boy, has been stuck in the basement. It is, in other now with Walking Dead creator ♥ Bob (FL) “Your scientific 'magic
in development for years. That words, the plot of the haunted- Robert Kirkman’s animated adap- trick' does seem to work, & I give
gives the Pedrad-created series tation of his long-running comic. it credit as one of the things I did
the awful timing to debut after This one’s told from the point of
two great seasons of Hulu’s view of the title character, a.k.a.
that helped save my marriage. I'm
Pen15, whose adult stars play Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), in sales & going to give it another go to
themselves as adolescent girls. whose father is the revered see if it helps in my professional life.”
But Chad would be unbearable Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons). What
even if it had the benefit of starts out as a familiar story of a ♥ Anne (TX) “I need to get an order of
novelty. Pen15 can be tough to kid following dad into the family 10:13. Please send two by FedEx. I
sit through when it acknowl- business soon gets thorny with
Ayorinde love it! It brings all the fireworks.”
edges just how awkward kids (right) is not twists. Invincible often seems
can be in middle school, but it so lucky. confused about whether it wants
ultimately has huge affection and to be an upbeat, all-ages adven-
empathy for its faux teens. Chad, ture or something much darker,
on the other hand, seems to house installment of Lovecraft thanks to frequent profanity
have nothing but contempt for Country, only stretched from and excessive gore. (That’s as
its title character, who says and one episode to 10, with all of the a t hen ai nst itut e.c om
does the wrong thing in every padding that entails — including Vial of 1/6 oz. added to 2-4 oz. of your
situation, then finds ways to two separate episodes devoted fragrance lasts 4 to 6 mos., or use straight
keep doing that again and again. to backstory. In individual mo- Contains human synthesized pheromones.
FROM TOP: LIANE HENTSCHER/TBS; AMAZON STUDIOS; AMAZON PRIME VIDEO
Pedrad disappears into the role ments, the fiery performances Works for most, but not all. NOT SOLD IN STORES.
physically; too bad she can’t by Ayorinde and Thomas make Free US Shipping Cosmetics; not aphrodisiacs.
stand to like Chad even a little. the show as disturbing as
required. But the story simply Call: 610-827-2200
isn’t built to last for so long, A hero in or send to Athena Institute,
GHOST WORLD requiring creator Little Marvin training Dept RS, 1211 Brafield Rd.
and his collaborators to trowel Chester Springs, PA 19425
on complications and extraneous far as things go, maturity-wise.)
Them: Covenant subplots that wind up dulling But the clean, bright visual style
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AIR DATE April 9th also much stronger at depict- winning. While shopping for a for a *total _______ by: ❑ money order, ❑ check
@ ing human monsters than the costume, Mark tells his father’s ❑ Visa,M/C,Disc._______-________-________-_______
supernatural kind — the torment tailor, Art (Mark Hamill), that he Exp._____ CVV:____ Sign: __________________
In the debut season of a new visited on the family by the Bet- wants something iconic; Art re- to: Name______________________________
horror anthology series, African tys of the world hits harder than plies that’s “tough as hell to pull Address_______________________________
American couple Lucky (Deborah the dangers posed by things that off.” Invincible isn’t quite iconic City/State_________________zip__________
Ayorinde) and Henry (Ashley go bump in the night. yet, but it has its charms. A.S. Tel:______________ email___________________
(*PA add 6% tax, Canada add US $13 per vial) RS

ESSAY
A ‘Justice League’ of His Own

“director’s cut.” This is a director un- was pliable and comparatively light
‘The Snyder cut’ is mistakably reclaiming his territory. on its feet, an extensive and canny
finally here — and it’s a It should be remembered that it exercise in franchise management.
radical revision of the was Warner Br - Sn der’s films have often made it
ny now shelling o der t
all-star DC superhero flop these upgrades — w e do you go once,
By K. AUSTIN COLLINS over the futur Batman v. Superman, you’ve
Snyder
directing Universe aft uperman?
T
HE POSSESSIVE in the title Momoa v. Superman kick-star But that isn’t to say that the Man
says it all: It is Zack Snyder’s and crew that landed us her of Steel and his fellow major Leaguers
Justice League. This rere- on the set Before a personal tr y in Snyder’s aren’t given their due in this new ver-
lease of 2017’s disappointing life made his leaving the project final, sion. That’s the supreme irony here:
all-star DC superhero team-up is on HBO Max and the beleaguered the studio’s uncertainty over his More than the 201 ven any
not merely “the Snyder cut,” as it theatrical version (completed by the vision made hiring Whedon a viable ve Avengers vies), Zack
has been called by both rabid fans similarly beleaguered Joss Whedon) cleanup man. He was, after all, the Snyder’s Justice Lea makes a strong
and suspicious nonbelievers, all of we saw almost four years ago is not director of the first Avengers movie — case f veryone on its team of
whom doubted we’d ever see such merely cosmetic. Nor is it the kind of and Snyder’s vision of the superhero titular heroe s is true most of all
a thing. The difference between the restoration and reordering of missing template is as heavy, grandiose, and for Ezr ’ ason Momoa’s
nearly four-hour cut that premiered scenes usually implied by the term self- ained as the MCU’s template Aqu ant mar-
AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Cyborg, the Flash,
Batman, Superman,
Wonder Woman,
and Aquaman fight
to save the world
and their
director’s
vision.
gin — Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, who in this
new cut is practically the emotional
not use every minute of that run
time wisely. Past errors are repeated;
More than the We still have the Mother Boxes and
Steppenwolf (though you do get
core of the story: a man whose trau-
matic past is now fully fleshed out and
the brash, conclusory battle scenes
feel just as compulsory and nonsen-
2017 original, a greater sense of where he fits in
the rankings of Bad Guys Trying to
whose powers are elaborated upon in
some of the movie’s most riveting and
sically destructive as they have in his
previous films. But even this makes
Snyder’s ‘Justice Destroy the World, which is not very
high). It’s still a film with an opening
intricate scenes.
Justice League 2.0 renders Cyborg
more sense than it used to. It fits with
Snyder’s boyish amazement at the to-
League’ makes stretch devoted to the meet-and-greet
mechanics it takes to get the gang
into something closer to the Dr. tality of these superheroes and what a strong case together. And it all still hinges on
Manhattan of Watchmen: a knows-it- they’re capable of — a quality that bringing Superman back to life.
all, seen-it-all supreme being whose has tended to set his films apart from for its team of It’s Clark Kent’s death that kicks off
superpowers are the result of a cata- the more grounded Marvel output, the plot, and we see the way that Su-
strophic mistake, and whose lens on in which big, totalizing things tend superheroes. perman’s dying shout echoes through
the world is thus somewhat grimmer to happen, but the more important land and sea, stirring that evil awake.
for it. More room for Cyborg also threads feel interpersonal. Black Pan- We see the ways that otherwise histor-
results in a larger role for Joe Morton, ther wouldn’t be nearly as effective ically warring tribes — the Atlanteans,
as his father, the head of S.T.A.R. Labs without the ideological clashes at its the Amazons, the race of men — all
— another context that gets adequate center. Nor would the Iron Man trilo- become attuned to that cry. It’s an
elaboration. This, more than almost gy be as charismatic were it any less opening gesture that has the effect
any other addition, accounts for the a vehicle for Robert Downey Jr. of saying this matters. Compare
enlarged scope of the movie. It also to Downey us half to death. that with the fleet-footed first act of
opens the door to more questions There’s little to worship in these the 2017 film, in which much of our
about Whedon’s cut of the film. How Marvel films, beyond the pitch- sense of these stakes is mentioned but
does what may have been a central perfectness of Chris Evans playing a not literalized onscreen, and you’ll
storyline — not least the storyline guy called Captain America, whereas know, within minutes, what sets Sny-
involving the film’s black character — Snyder’s movies are all worship, all der’s film apart.
get reduced to ashes? the time. And the new Justice League This doesn’t make the movie great.
To say that the residue of the larger arrives with a stark, clarifying sense But there’s much to be said for a
project was already apparent from the of vindication reinserted into the Justice League that feels more genuine.
Whedon version is to drastically un- mix, no matter how good or bad it is Rather than being a studio-bred
derstate the case. Then again, Snyder (and it certainly offers a bit of both). mash-up of competing intentions, the
has four hours to play with. He does The basics of the plot are the same. new cut is a Frankenstein’s monster
of most every element of its orig-
inal director’s style. Scenes of the
embattled Amazons taking on the
cosmically silly Steppenwolf have the
bronzed, slo-mo, sculptural intensity
of Snyder’s gladiatorial epic 300. The
humor so falsely injected into the
grimly serious world of the movie has
been pared back. The Flash, for ex-
ample, is far less of a jitterbug; when
Batman first sneaks into his hangout,
we no longer see K-pop playing on
Barry Allen’s TV monitors. He’s no
longer reduced to being an asocial
nerd. If anyone is reduced, it’s Bruce
Wayne — to his bank account.
Fans were immediately suspicious
of Whedon’s version because its sen-
sibility was so conspicuously severed
from Snyder’s vision. No, the new
Justice League is not exactly a slam
dunk, and a coda drops us right
into the territory that, one senses,
Warner was trying to avoid. (Re-
member that alien dream Batman
had in Batman v. Superman?
Well, get ready.) Yes, Snyder
overplays his hand here. But
FROM TOP: CLAY ENOS/HBO MAX; HBO MAX
it’s most definitely the more

compelling hand.

She’s probably 65 or 70, so I hope she is at the top tial third wave with a more virulent variant? Actual-
C O V I D Q U E E N O F S O U T H D A KO TA of the vaccine list. ly, we do know.
The next morning, I seek the soothing waters of Tonight, there are more public events to hold and
[Cont. from 31] shakes his head in disbelief. “And the Watiki Water Park, where hundreds of kids and more people to make sick. I pass Rapid City and the
this president and governor, in the middle of all this their unmasked parents lounge in tepid, humid wa- Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, where the governor is
shit, want to come to the heart of the Black Hills, to a ters. Spotting my mask, notepad, and fogged glasses, hosting the annual Black Hills Stock Show and Rodeo.
place that has a deep history of injustice and racism, a parent shouts at me: “It’s winter, what the hell else There are hundreds of cowboy hats and few masks.
to spew bullshit. It was white supremacy.” are we supposed to do with our children?” Noem waves and the crowd rises to its feet. The PA
Tilsen’s parents met at a protest, and he remem- Covid aside, this is the upside of the Noem ap- announcer shouts into his mic, “I wish there were 50
bers marching for justice as a little boy with Hot proach. The park closed for a month when the pan- governors like [we have] here.”
Wheels clenched in his hands. It’s in his blood, and demic began, but since then has been running at I do the per-capita math in my head and figure if
he didn’t plan on protesting Trump in a half-assed full throttle. Currently, the park is adding 20 more we had 50 Noems we’d have another 200,000 dead.
way. Tilsen notified local police where and when tables where parents can drink beers while the kid- I drive on for an hour through a snow squall before
they were going to protest. Tilsen thought they had dos splash away. Business is booming, and that isn’t turning off for Deadwood. The onetime gold-rush
reached an understanding, but on the morning of by accident. The park has been targeting tourists town is now known best as the source material for Al
Trump’s speech he saw that Noem had approved call- within a 500-mile drive. Swearengen’s 279 utterances of “cocksucker” during
ing in the National Guard at the urging of local police. Watiki is just doing God’s work. “I have people Deadwood’s three-season run on HBO. It is now a
Tilsen had about 200 protesters; some were heckled from Texas and California coming up to me and say- frontier-village theme park; there’s the Swearengen
by Trump supporters shouting “Go back to where ing, ‘Thank you for being open and being somewhere Inn and ticky-tacky shops where you can pose your
you came from.” Still, it wasn’t something that Tilsen I can bring my family,’ ” a staffer tells me. Another baby dressed up as, I don’t know, a Deadwood-era
had not experienced before. He was surprised, how- asks me if I need a towel. baby? I’m looking for Saloon #10, the direct descen-
ever, when the police declared their gathering unlaw- Thanks, but I won’t be staying. dant of the bar where gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok
ful and the National Guard moved in. took a bullet in the back of the head while holding a
A
“They were not even trained,” says Tilsen. “They WEEK LATER, I remember that Noem said pair of eights and aces.
weren’t using their shields for protection, but bashing those not comfortable with her maskless land Or so they say. Much of Hickok’s legend was self-
them around like weapons. I’ve never been at a pro- could stay home. I take her advice and gas invented by a man who changed his name three
test where they are actually swinging their shields.” up my car. times. Did he shoot some bad men? Probably. Did he
In the resulting melee, Tilsen says, he grabbed one Much had transpired over the winter. No mask man- shoot good men in the back for spite? Most definitely.
of the shields to prevent it from smashing his head. date came out of Pierre, but the budget did include It all fits. Deadwood is the ultimate print-the-legend
The protesters retreated, and Tilsen wrote “Land a request for $5 million to buy Noem a new plane. town in a state ruled by a magical-realism governor.
Back” on the shield. He was then arrested and trans- It was scuttled by the predominantly Republican Leg- I walk through the doors and, like Hickok, take a
ported to the Pennington County Jail. Tilsen says he islature after it emerged that Noem had used the ex- seat with my back to the door. Deadwood is corona
noticed two things at the jail: Everyone incarcerated isting state plane for travel to political events. On the convenient — five states are within a 90-minute drive.
was Native American, and there were no masks. Still, one-year anniversary of the pandemic, Noem wrote But nowhere is as virus-brave as Saloon #10, where
he thought he would be quickly released. Instead, he an op-ed for Fox claiming only 1,690 South Dakotans men toss darts, drunkenly tackle one another in front
was held for three and a half days and charged with had died rather than the widely accepted number of of their delighted women, and play poker until they
four felonies. more than 1,900. Her administration used the sta- are broke. All before 9 p.m. The sawdust on the floor,
“I was sitting there and going, ‘Holy shit, they were tistical sleight of hand of counting only those whose originally placed there to soak up blood, probably
ready for this,’ ” he says. “This was Kristi Noem say- deaths were “caused” by Covid, not those who died doesn’t work as efficiently against the coronavirus.
ing, ‘I told you I’d have the guts to call out the Na- with Covid. With that clever accounting, the Noem I carve out a two-bar-seat safety zone and pro-
tional Guard on these Indians.’ She’d been wanting Administration magically reduced Covid-related tect it like an ancient Deadwooder would guard his
to, and this was the right opportunity.” deaths by more than 11 percent. claim. I ask Cal, the bartender, about business. He
Tilsen’s trial date is set for April. He says he’ll opt Her star was ascending in Republican circles with has worked here for more than a decade.
for a jury trial before he takes a plea with jail time. the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser and an appearance at the “Never better,” says Cal, his long beard flecked
A footnote: Two months after Tilsen’s arrest, South Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual with beer suds. “And I mean never better. Ever.”
Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg veered out event. The news that Lewandowski would helm I go back to my no-Covid zone and search my
of his driving lane near Pierre and killed a pedestri- Trump’s PAC was another good sign. At CPAC, Noem phone for a hotel room, until a man in a cowboy hat
an. He claimed for the first 12 hours after the accident wore the same sleeveless red dress that she wore at interrupts me. “Do you mind if my wife takes that
that he thought he’d hit a deer. This claim seemed Rushmore. “Let me be clear, Covid didn’t crush the empty seat?” He asks in a way that is less asking and
dubious when the dead man’s glasses were found in- economy,” said Noem. “The government crushed more telling. I may talk a good Covid game, but when
side Ravnsborg’s car, presumably flying in when he the economy.” Later she added, “I don’t know if you challenged I cave like a spineless jellyfish.
hit the windshield. After a five-month investigation, agree, but Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot.” That brought her “Sure.”
Noem called for Ravnsborg’s resignation and he was a standing ovation. At the souvenir stand, Lewan- But the man has tricked me. Instead of his wife,
charged with three misdemeanors with a possible dowski was spotted holding a poster of Noem in a a toothpick-chewing, six-foot-four-inch, 300-pound
90 days in jail. cowboy hat, staring into the far distance under the dude shows up 10 minutes later and wedges himself
Tilsen? He faces up to 16 and a half years. words “America’s Governor.” onto the barstool and orders a Diet Coke.
Still, something essential is missing from her act. The first guy shrugs.
D
URING THE FALL CAMPAIGN, Trump support- Noem is not a beguiling or charismatic public speak- “He’s prettier than my wife.”
ers often could be seen waving flags saying er. Nor has she exhibited an ability to go into full-rage And they laugh with a cowboy crescendo that you
“Fuck Your Feelings.” Noem has adapted a mode like Trump. If she is going to keep the MAGA would see only on, well, Deadwood. His giant friend
more telegenic take on the slogan that has inevitably crowd entertained, that has to improve. “She’s learn- is closer to me than I allow my own kin. I say a prayer
trickled down to her citizens. While South Dakota’s ing the Trump language and using social media to go for both of their wives. Giant guy sizes me up.
reservations have a “We’re all in this together” feel, after people,” says Miller. “But her performance at “You don’t seem to be having a good time. What’s
the rest of the state is more self-absorbed. CPAC was robotic. Maybe she’ll get better with time.” the matter, brother?” He eyes my mask. “You think
One night I stop at the decidedly misnamed Cheers I leave Sioux Falls and head west. I stop for coffee that is going to protect you?” He looks at his buddy
Lounge. As MMA bouts play on the television, kara- at Wall Drug, and take a loop around Mitchell’s Corn and grins.
oke is in process. There are duets and a drunken Palace, two of South Dakota’s pre-Covid charm facto- I get my burger to go. I drive on icy state Route 99,
old man singing Merle Haggard’s “Swinging Doors.” ries. I think about Noem and how her quest for great- heading out of town. I slow when I see a sign that is often
I nurse a vodka tonic, when a kind old woman comes ness and the Trumpian twisting of facts have given placed on the sites of South Dakota highway fatal-
over to my table. She points at my mask and address- her citizens the false sense that all is well. Numbers ities. Like much of South Dakota, the sign is brutal
es me in a South Dakota nice voice. are currently down and vaccines are being distrib- and to the point: “WHY DIE?”
“Honey, you don’t need to wear that in here.” uted, but who knows how she will handle a poten- Only the Snow Queen can answer that one.

to beef up the nation’s aging power grid; mandate
C L I M AT E C R I S I S : D E M O C R AT S utilities to rapidly transition from fossil fuels to car-
bon-neutral sources of electricity; expand public
[Cont. from 56] If they again put their hopes in Re- transit and high-speed rail; fund the infrastructure
publican hands, the answer is almost certainly no. needed for an all-electric vehicle fleet; and make a
“The reality is that the Obama administration desper- massive investment in green energy and green jobs.
ately wanted bipartisan support for everything that Democrats would welcome GOP support for their
they did. Unfortunately, that’s like waiting for Godot. agenda, but they’ve made clear that they’re going
It never shows up,” Markey says. “Today, people re- forward one way or another. In practice, that means
flect upon what happened, and they realize that the passing legislation through reconciliation, a provi-
Republicans will drag out each negotiating process sion in the Senate’s byzantine procedural code that
for as long as they can, and then ultimately not be allows some measures to pass with a simple majori-
there with sufficient numbers in the end.” ty — rather than the typical 60 votes needed to beat
The risk of going it alone with such a narrow ma- a filibuster. But even with reconciliation, Democrats
jority, however, is that Democrats will eschew sweep- would still need their full caucus on board, including
ing changes and instead aim for incremental reforms Manchin. Democrats can build that support by mak-
that have a better chance of succeeding. That may ing the benefits of climate action obvious and spread
be easier politically, but it’s a compromise the planet them everywhere, says Faiz Shakir, who managed
cannot afford, says Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a lead- Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign: “One
er in the Democratic Party’s climate push. “Nature of the most powerful ways that FDR’s New Deal oper-
has told us what the test is,” he says, “and if we make ated was that it thought about projects in every con-
all the politicians and all the groups happy but don’t gressional district in America, and I think that that’s
pass that test, then we flunk.” the way we should be thinking as we do green infra-
Hoping to succeed this time, Democrats are revisit- structure investments and green jobs.”
ing their last effort and changing, well, almost every- They’ll also have to rebuild credibility with peo-
thing. For starters, they’ve recognized they need to ple who’ve suffered under past policies supported
talk more about what their climate plans can do for by Republicans and Democrats alike. “If you are a
people, rather than how they work. “I think we sort coal miner and you are being told, ‘Oh, there will be
of talked ourselves into thinking, ‘Boy, we can point a nice job after five years of a just transition in the re-
to this great policy mechanism,’ rather than leading newable sector,’ you would understandably be skep-
with all the great things that are going to happen if tical, because your experience over the last 20 or 30
we address climate change in this country,” says Keo- years has been that when politicians promised that
hane, the Environmental Defense Fund economist. there would be jobs after outsourcing occurred in
“It was sort of like we were leading with our chin.” America, there weren’t jobs,” Shakir says.
This time around, lawmakers are leaving behind But even the best-constructed climate plan is going
the Obama-era obsession with free markets and to come under assault from Republicans, most of
adopting climate plans that better align with a more whom continue to be in thrall to fossil-fuel interests
diverse and progressive movement that sees protect- and to Donald Trump, who spent four years doing ev-
ing the climate as part of a broader effort toward en- erything he could to ensure oil-and-gas dominance
vironmental, economic, and racial justice. Markey, and strangling any last vestiges of climate sanity from
a 74-year-old senator who first came to Congress al- the party. To beat that, climate advocates are openly
most 50 years ago, has adopted the language of a depending on what they say is the biggest change this
new generation of activists to talk about the current time around: The public is demanding climate action
climate movement, saying it’s bolstered by “intersec- in a way it never has before.
tional activism from Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise A decade ago, Americans as a whole were in favor
Movement, Indivisible, indigenous and native organi- of climate action, but they didn’t feel particularly
zations, and peace groups, who are going to be push- strongly about it. When surveyed, the issue consis-
ing leaders to be as ambitious as possible.” tently ranked near the bottom on their list of priori-
Democrats are also not pinning all their hopes ties. That was part of what drove Democrats in 2010
to a single, do-or-die stand-alone climate bill this to beg for industry support in their bid to attract
time, but rather looking to infuse climate provisions moderate lawmakers. They needed cover from the
across their legislative agenda. “Anybody who is seri- middle, because they lacked a groundswell from an
ous will get their stuff ready and just look for oppor- organized grassroots effort, which can demand ac-
tunity,” says one congressional staffer. In December, tion and impose political consequences on lawmak-
Democrats managed to pass $35 billion in funding ers who refuse to take it.
for renewable energy, including a plan for the EPA A decade of climate horrors, combined with a re-
to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a potent green- surgent progressive wing of the Democratic Party that
house gas. It was one of the most significant legisla- has rallied around a Green New Deal, has changed all
tive windfalls for green energy in the nation’s histo- that. Climate consistently polls at or near the top of
ry, and it wasn’t even the headliner of the legislation, the list for Democrats, particularly young ones. Vocal
which was principally about Covid relief. Keeping cli- efforts from groups like the Sunrise Movement have
mate out of the headlines can help bills pass with a already yielded dividends: They pushed Biden to
bipartisan vote, says the staffer. His dream scenario campaign on climate, and he launched his presiden-
for a climate bill is that “it goes through just getting cy with a slew of pro-climate executive actions.
a story on page A-6 of The Washington Post on the Markey says the strength of the climate movement
day it’s enacted — and never before and never after.” — and lawmakers’ willingness to listen to it — could be
One of the first big opportunities for Democrats the critical difference from last time. “The Waxman-
during this Congress is the infrastructure bill they Markey bill was an inside-out effort, born of a con-
plan to push later this spring. The details are still gressional timeline that demanded we move quick-
being worked out, but what’s taking shape is effec- ly,” Markey says. “Now, we have an outside-in force
tively a domestic Marshall Plan — both for workers with the movement of engaged and mobilized young
and the climate. In the package, Democrats hope people. Now, we have an army.”

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Robert
Redford
The acting legend on his
climate activism and lifelong
search for the truth
You’ve said that as a what took me into the belly
longtime environmental of the beast.
activist, you’ve become Having been someone
more radicalized over time. who spoke up about envi-
Was there a moment when ronmental concerns very
you began to understand early on, how have you
that what was happening to seen the movement change
our planet was more seri- over the years?
ous than you’d realized? People have become far
I was attending a conference more aware of the issues we
in Denver, in 1989, where face. Unfortunately, people
there was a presentation by who deny climate change
two scientists who explained also have stronger voices
Earth’s temperatures were and are usually in positions
rising — they called it global of power. We’ve had to live
warming. They explained with what’s happened over
what would happen if we the last four years, where the
ignored this threat. That mo- attitude about the environ-
ment was my wake-up call. ment was so strictly negative.
I knew they were speaking That caused so much damage
the truth. Because one thing — it’s like a road that needs
we’ve learned is that time repairing. We have to repair can’t emphasize this enough
waits for no one. I realized it quickly. Climate change
“The last four needs to be done, certainly,
but I feel like they’re the because we’re talking about
that when there’s something is happening now, full time. years, where the people to do it. who’s current, Bill Gates.
you have to do, you better No more denying. attitude about You helped bring All I’m very, very encouraged by
act, and act quickly. Are you more or less the President’s Men to the his commitment to finding
Where does your optimistic now about our
the environment screen as a producer, as solutions with the challenges
connection to nature ability to fight these envi- was so strictly well as starring in it. What we face. He’s committed his
come from? ronmental disasters? negative . . . caused do you think that film can time and money — let’s not
Well, I think it had to do with I’m more optimistic than tell us about what the forget that — to this cause.
a trip that my mom took me ever. My optimism comes
so much damage. nation went through over What advice do you
on, many years ago. I was from seeing young people We have to the past few years? wish you could pass on to
born and raised in L.A. — I because they’re inspired, repair it quickly. That history has a tenden- your younger self?
was kind of rooted in that they’re engaged, and they’re cy to repeat itself. I was “Why did you ever get into
place. So my mom decided passionate — they’re like a
Climate change attracted to the story about this?” [Laughs.] To be serious
to take me on a cross-country new group. They understand is happening two journalists who were about it, I’d probably say al-
trip, and she drove me to that the future is in their now, full time. No searching for the truth. And ways look for the truth, even
Yosemite National Park. We hands, and we’ve got to that was the story I wanted though truths can be elusive.
went through that long tun- support them.
more denying.” to tell. It wasn’t about Water- I’m always inspired by the
nel when you come out of Do you think that Biden gate, really. It was about words of T.S. Eliot: “For us,
Fresno, and when I came out re-entering the U.S. into the journalism and truth. there is only the trying. The
of the other side, I was sud- Paris climate agreement is a Who are your personal rest is not our business.”
MIKAEL JANSSON/TRUNK ARCHIVE
denly sitting on this preci- step in the right direction? heroes and why? So maybe, “Just follow your
pice looking out on this val- I think Biden’s a bright guy, [Marine biologist] Rachel instincts and keep searching
ley. I thought, “God, this is and I think he’s put together Carson, because she was for the truth.”
amazing. I don’t want to be an incredible team, with [Na- an early advocate for na- Looking for the truth
standing here looking at it, I tional Climate Adviser] Gina ture. Jacques Cousteau, who seems to be a constant
want to be in it.” So I got a job McCarthy and [Special Pres- was one of the first to open thread through your career.
at Yosemite National Lodge idential Envoy for Climate] up the world to life within I think so. But you said that,
waiting on tables, and that’s John Kerry. There’s more that the ocean. And finally, and I I didn’t. [Laughs.] DAVID FEAR

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6 | Rolling Stone | April 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY Sebastian Quintero

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“Kacey Musgraves When Anti-Vaxxers

‘Rolling Stone.’ for understanding the misinformation

If you haven’t —Kevin Smith, via Twitter

heard her music Cynicism about institutions and expertise

Letters become the property of ROLLING

April 2021 | Rolling Stone |9

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KINGS THEATRE, BROOKLYN HEIGHTS THEATER,

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BOOTLEG THEATER, L.A.

MAJESTIC THEATRE, SAN ANTONIO

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What was it about the

There are periods in

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Trademarks owned by Société des Produits Nestlé S.A., Vevey, Switzerland.

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ARTIST YOU NEED TO KNOW

Arlo Parks’ Mellow Neo-Soul Gold

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The Quiet Resilience of ‘Now’

‘Now’ Debut-Week Rank (2013-21)

PHYSICAL ALBUM SALES

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Top Albums So Far ‘Dangerous’ Liaisons

HIS ‘VOICE’ HEARD

WHILE MANY overnight sensations hit

the charts thanks to TikTok trends and

hometown’s drill music scene, which Taylor Swift Doubles Up

of The Voice, he mixes melodic Bone Lover 108

ter what you rap about.” DEWAYNE GAGE

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Rockin’ Roles Will Never Die

ARETHA ELVIS WHITNEY

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April 2021 | Rolling Stone | 31

John David it would make you angry if everyone assumed the

But hope rises again. The economic winds

WILL AMERICA FINALLY

ting a revamped, eco-centric approach to trans-

A big part of taking on climate change for

KING OF THE ROAD

GINA MCCARTHYIS BACK IN CHARGE

HOW MICHAEL REGAN

PLANS TO FIX THE EPA

TIDAL GREEN LOW-METHANE FLOATING ELECTRIC TREE HYDROGEN