4 Time November 2/November 9, 2020
i don’T ofTen use This space To direcT
your attention to other publications, but I do
recommend you check out an article Science
published online on Sept. 24. Titled singing
in a silenT spring, it adds a new entrant
to the list of uplifting changes in the natural
world that occurred when we humans went
into temporary retreat at the start of the pan-
demic. It appears that in the relative hush of
the San Francisco Bay Area this past April and
May, the song of the white-crowned sparrow
became quieter and sweeter than it had been
before.
This has been a year of so much pain,
hardship, chaos and loss. And yet as nations
around the world begin
to rebuild from the
pandemic, it is clear
that we also have a
once-in-a-generation
opportunity to change
our tune. Our issue
this week, in partner-
ship with the World
Economic Forum,
explores that oppor-
tunity, which the fo-
rum’s chairman, Klaus
Schwab, has called
“The Great Reset.” How
can we seize this mo-
ment of disruption to
push for a world that is
healthier, more resilient, sustainable and just?
What do all of us— individuals, businesses and
governments—need to do to ensure that we
don’t simply revert to what was before?
Schwab, while acknowledging that it’s
“hard to be optimistic about the prospect of a
brighter global future,” offers some glimmers
of hope in the form of companies that are re-
defining success to be about more than prof-
its. Economist Mariana Mazzucato provides a
road map for transforming our financial struc-
tures. Danish architect Bjarke Ingels describes
his extraordinarily ambitious Masterplanet—a
blueprint for a greener earth. Our correspon-
dents around the globe speak with business
leaders and policymakers about their more im-
mediate plans—from Tokyo’s Governor Yuriko
Koike, currently preparing for the rescheduled
Olympic Games in 2021, to Citigroup’s newly
appointed CEO, Jane Fraser, the first woman
to run a major Wall Street bank. We’ve alsoincluded excerpts of conversations from our
special TIME100 Talks hosted in October by
Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of
Sussex, on how to build a better digital world.
You can watch the full program at time.com/
time100talksFew events will shape the world to come
more than the result of the upcoming U.S.
presidential election. As Americans decide if
it’s time to reach for a reset button of our own,
this issue includes a special report on the clos-
ing days of the 2020 campaign. “On Nov. 3
(or, hopefully, soon after), we will finally get
an answer to the question of what these past
four discombobulat-
ing years have meant,”
writes TIME’s national
political correspondent
Molly Ball. “It is a deci-
sion not about what pol-
icy proposals to pursue
but about what reality
we collectively decide to
inhabit.”
To mark this historic
moment, arguably as con-
sequential a decision as
any of us has ever made
at the ballot box, we have
for the first time in our
nearly 100-year history
replaced our logo on the
cover of our U.S. edition with the imperative
for all of us to exercise the right to vote. To
help, we’ve provided readers with a guide on
how to vote safely during this extraordinary
year. The artwork on the cover is by Shepard
Fairey, whose work includes two prior TIME
covers. “Even though the subject in the por-
trait knows there are additional challenges to
democracy during a pandemic,” Fairey says
of the image, the person is determined to use
their “voice and power by voting.”
We stand at a rare moment, one that will
separate history into before and after for gen-
erations. It is the kind of moment in which
readers across the country and around the
world have always turned to TIME. We thank
you for doing so now.Edward Felsenthal,
ediTor-in-chief & ceo
@efelsenThalWe stand at a
rare moment,
one that will
separate
history into
before and
after for
generations
From the Editor
Before and after△
Fairey designed the 2008 and
2011 Person of the Year covers of
President-elect Obama and the
Protester amid the Arab Spring