Time Magazine International Edition

from the editor

The sands of TIME THIS ISSUE, IF CIVILIZATION can get its act together, might just mark a midpoint in TIME’s coverage of the biggest crisis facing our planet. Three decades ago—at a moment when much of the world was only beginning to wake up to the damage humanity had been wreaking on its home—TIME convened a group of 33 scientists and political leaders from five continents in Boulder, Colo., to discuss the threat. The result was one of the best-known issues TIME has ever produced, sounding one of the louder alarms to date. In the Jan. 2, 1989, issue, the editors named “Endangered Earth” the most important story of the year, replacing the annual “Person of the Year” with a planet, our own. The cover, by the artist Christo, showed a 16-in.…

conversation

Behind the cover THREE DECADES AGO, TIME named earth “Planet of the Year” for 1988, featuring a cover by the artist Christo of the earth encased in plastic on a beach in Long Island in New York. For this week’s special-issue cover on climate change, TIME returned to sand—albeit this time on the shores east of Tokyo. Japanese sand sculptor Toshihiko Hosaka and his seven-person team spent 14 days creating the 98-ft.-by-65-ft. TIME cover on the site of the former playground at Iioka Junior High School in Iioka, Asahi. The school, walking distance from the Pacific, closed after the East Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The challenges Hosaka would encounter flowed from the slower, but no less deadly, changes the cover warns about. “The biggest enemy of my work is the heat,”…

how we survived climate change

LET’S IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT THAT WE’VE reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice. There was a point after 2020 when we began to collectively realize a few basic things. One, we weren’t getting out of this unscathed. Climate change, even in its early stages, had begun to hurt: watching a California city literally called Paradise turn into hell inside of two hours made it clear that all Americans were at risk. When you breathe wildfire smoke half the…

why i have hope for the climate-change battles to come

ONE OF THE IMPORTANT MILESTONES in the struggle to build awareness of the climate crisis in the U.S. was the publication 30 years ago by TIME of its historic “Planet of the Year” issue, focusing the nation’s attention on our “Endangered Earth.” Prior to its decision to creatively adapt its Person of the Year brand to help mobilize public opinion in response to the unprecedented threat to the future of humanity, TIME organized a 1988 conference of climate experts and policymakers to review the rapidly accumulating evidence confirming the warnings of scientists years earlier. All who attended felt it was the most impressive conference yet held to explore what many realized for the first time was an existential crisis. In the late 1960s, I experienced my own unexpected awakening to this…

the hottest city on earth

SOURCE: U.S. NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION IT’S JUST AFTER 7 IN THE MORNING IN THE Pakistani city of Jacobabad, and donkey-cart driver Ahsan Khosoo is already drenched in sweat. For the past two hours, the 24-year-old laborer has been hauling jugs of drinking water to local residences. When the water invariably spills from the blue jerricans, it hits the pavement with an audible hiss and turns to steam. It’s hot, he agrees, but that’s not an excuse to stop. The heat will only increase as the day wears on, and what choice does he have? “Even if it were so hot as if the land were on fire, we would keep working.” He pauses to douse his head with a bucket of water. Jacobabad may well be the hottest city in…

africa can be the launchpad for a green-energy revolution

CLIMATE CHANGE is a global challenge that demands global solutions. But we must acknowledge the fact that the most underresourced parts of the world are bearing the brunt of climate change, despite bearing the least responsibility for rising emissions. I have seen this with my own eyes in my native country of Mozambique. Earlier this year, Cyclones Idai and Kenneth wrought devastating havoc there and in neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. The city of Beira, one of the largest in Mozambique, was all but wiped from the face of the earth. Nationwide, more than 600 people were killed. The impact will be felt for years to come. But the authorities don’t just have to repair critical infrastructure. They also have to prepare for the future, potentially worse extreme weather as the effects of…