COVER STORY This issue: One Last Chance. The Defining Year. From a vantage point of view, 2020 looks like the year when an unknown virus spun out of control, killed hundreds of thousands and altered the way we live day to day. In the future, we may look back at 2020 as the year we decided to keep driving off the climate cliff—or to take the last exit. Taking the threat seriously would mean using the opportunity presented by this crisis to spend on solar panels and wind farms, push companies being bailed out to cut emissions and foster greener forms of transport in cities. If we instead choose to fund new coal-fired power plants and oil wells and thoughtlessly fire up factories…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

Security Law brings a chill to Hong Kong. For months, the mosaics of sticky notes, posters and artwork that dotted Hong Kong told a story of resistance. Pro-democracy protesters and supporters affixed messages of hope, solidarity and demands for greater political freedom to so-called Lennon Walls as protests rocked the city in 2019. But after June 30, when Beijing passed Hong Kong’s national-security law, the walls came down. Books written by pro-democracy leaders like Joshua Wong disappeared from public libraries. Activists deleted social-media accounts. Demosisto, Wong’s political party, disbanded…

A Revolution’s Evolution. The honeymoon of extinction Rebellion, the hugely influential climate activist group, ended on Oct. 17, 2019. From its launch, a year earlier, until that day, it seemed like the group might have cracked the formula for saving the planet: its strategy of shutting down city centers with disruptive, nonviolent civil disobedience had drawn ordinary people onto the streets to demand action on the climate crisis. It had made the group, now present in 75 countries, the most radical of a wave of climate activists groups sweeping the world in recent years, including the youth-focused Sunrise Movement in the U.S. and the school strikers led by Greta Thunberg…