♪ judy: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight, election day. voters head to the polls in crucial off-year contests that may hold clues for next year's nationwide congressional and senate races. then, getting the vaccine. the c.d.c. approved the pfizer shot for children, as young as 5. but many american parents remain skeptical. and the tipping point, world leaders convene to address the increasingly urgent threat of climate change, but china's absence looms large. >> we cannot achieve these global climate goals unless china reverses emissions trends. judy: all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour."

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♪ announcer: with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions -- this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. judy: voters went to the polls today to cast ballots in contests across the country. two of them governors races in new jersey and especially closely watched virginia where

former governor terry mcauliffe faces republican glenn youngkin. at this hour with 70% of precincts reporting, youngkin is leading with 55.1% of the vote while mcauliffe has 44.3%. in the contest for governor of new jersey, with only 5% of the vote in, incumbent democrat phil murphy is ahead of republican jack ciattarelli with 58% to 41% of the vote. over to ohio where democrat shontle brown has defeated laverne gore in the special election to fill democrat marcia fudge's old seat in the 11th congressional district. fudge stepped down in march to become president biden's housing secretary. i'm joined by jessica taylor of the cook political report to explore all of this and more. thank you for being here. at this stage let's talk about virginia first. what are you seeing, 70% of the vote in, a significant lead for

glenn youngkin. what are you seeing? jessica: it is. a lot of northern virginia, heavy mcauliffe territory, has yet to report but based on our projections at the cook political report, youngkin is exceeding targets he needs there. we never expected him to win in those areas but he's exceeding the benchmarks that we had where he needed to be. he's out-running donald trump's 2020 results in very red counties further down south in the state. and so this looks like a very good night for republicans and might not just be youngkin but they're leading in the race for lieutenant governor, the race for attorney general, the state house of delegates could flip, as well. this would be the best night they've had in 12 years. judy: the republicans. this is a state that president biden won by -- jessica: 10 points. judy: so a change in political flavor. we have what we're calling exit poll interviews done with voters leaving the polling place.

let's look first at the suburban vote and compare it to what we saw in just last november. terry mcauliffe, 47% of the suburban vote to youngkin's 53%? jessica: this is almost reversed from just a year ago when biden got 53% of the vote and trump got 45% in the suburbs. we're seeing a higher percentage of suburban voters turning out. this is where i was told the race would be won or loss. youngkin was campaigning heavily in suburban counties, ex-urban counties. loudon county was the critical county perhaps with a lot of tensions over the school board and what's taught in schools there. judy: i wanted to ask you about that because education and we're not showing the numbers here but we saw throughout the afternoon in watching more exit polls, a number of, what is it, education came in second, or maybe it ended up being the first as the

issue people put as something that was important to them in casting votes. jessica: it was right up there with the economy and covid that i think a month or two ago would have been number one in voters' minds and education, again, an issue where democrats usually run well, but one that youngkin had driven home as such a key issue for him and again i think it all goes back to the final debate where terry mcauliffe made what was maybe the fatal error perhaps saying that parents shouldn't be telling schools what to teach. he waited -- he never walked it back. he waited to release a response ad. republicans were quick to the draw. in the northern virginia d.c. media market, you couldn't watch television more than 10 minutes without seeing that on air. judy: there was a lot of reporting around youngkin's use of the critical race theory, taught in colleges and universities. he said he would never want to see it taught in virginia public schools k through 12. it's not taught there now but he made it an issue and he made it

one successfully even though it's not in the schools. jessica: i think it was a perfect storm of things because you had parents that had been struggling with their kids being at virtual school and wanting to go back and falling behind so i think it was sort of, you know, again, parents saw what their kids were doing, worried about them falling behind so it really -- i think covid really did play into it in that way and played into it advantage for republicans on education. judy: it certainly appears to be doing that. let's look, jessica, at voters being asked their view of both candidates. this is interesting. their view of terry mcauliffe, former governor, left office four years ago, favorable 45, unfavorable 52. jessica: there's never an incumbent running for re-election in virginia because the only state here that limits them to one consecutive term. he was essentially the incumbent, de facto incumbent,

since he'd been governor four years ago and left office pretty popular, too. so if you're under water like that versus youngkin above water by 10 points. judy: let's show our viewers here, again, voters ask view of glenn youngkin, favorable 53. it's the mirror opposite. jessica: and i think another key point happened right after the democratic primary ended. youngkin, again, put millions of his own money into the race and he was able to air about six weeks or so of positive ads defining himself early, talking about his business background, working as a dishwasher in high school. those went unanswered so youngkin got to define himself before democrats could. judy: very successful private equity executive and put $20 million of his own money that we know of into the campaign. the last exit poll i want to share with our viewers, jessica. voters asked what your view is

of donald trump. and that was 53% of them said they had an unfavorable view of donald trump but among those, 18% of them still voted for glenn youngkin who had been endorsed by donald trump. jessica: this toss me that mcauliffe's doubling down in the final weeks of the race trying to paint youngkin as a donald trump clone did not work. also remember, voters are more likely to be willing to split their ticket when it comes to governor than for senate, for instance. there is a silver lining for democrats. i think because when we look back at the past presidential elections, the past two cycles, the senate races have gone almost exactly the same as the presidential results, say, for susan collins in 2020. but remember, vermont, maryland, massachusetts have republican vernors. kansas has a democratic governor. kentucky and louisiana have

democratic governors. they're not voting for a party to control washington. they'rreally voting for who you want to see in charge so voters don't think of those in the same way as they do federal races. judy: jessica, i have to ask you. you study these senate and governor's races all the time. everybody wants to read the tea leaves and know what will happen next year with so many senate and house seats up. what should we read from this with the early results? jessica: democrats need a message. you can't just be anti-trump right now. and i think that people that came out to vote again donald trump, democrats don't have them in their pocket. i can think back to last year when i was talking with a democratic strategist in the suburban vote. they said, do we own those voters now or have we rented them? they're not in their pocket. they have to do something and that means congressional action pointing to something that a democratic majority in congress has been able to do. virginia could be the first

earthquake. judy: in the two governors' races tonight, phil murphy seems to be holding on early in the count but terry mcauliffe running behind with 70% of the vote in, the former democratic governor of virginia running behind in virginia. we're waiting to see more results. we'll be back later. thank you, jessica. jessica: thank you. judy: in the day's other news, the c.d.c. director rochelle walensky signed off this evening on pfizer's covid vaccine for children between 5 and 11 years old after a panel earlier today endorsed a low dose version for children. vaccines could start be administered withi days. world leaders at the u.n. climate summit pledged today to cut methane emissions and

conserve forests. president biden wound up his two days at the glasgow gathering focusing on america's role in the new initiatives. pres. biden: it's one of the most potent greenhouse gases there is and amounts to about half the warming we're experiencing today. >> hoping to solidify america's role as a leader in the fight against climate change, president biden joined the european union today to announce a proposed 30% reduction in methane emissions worldwide by 2030. methane, which can come from agricultural production, doesn't last in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide but traps far more heat than co-2. controlling its release is considered one of the quickest ways to slow the pace of climate change. the president also formally announced a plan to cut back on u.s. methane emissions by targeting the oil and gas industries, another major source. his proposals include two new rules to be enforced by the

environmental protection agency and the department of transportation. another new global commitment made today was on deforestation. these forests, sometimes described as the lungs of the planet, serve as enormous reservoirs for carbon. over 100 countries including the u.s., china and russia, pledged to stop cutting them down by 2030. promises like this have been made before but often not kept. this initiative covers about 85% of the world's forests and would provide financial support for conservation and restoration as well as aid for indigenous peoples who rely on them. meanwhile, amidst the pledges and promises, legendary documentary filmmaker sir david attenborough hoped the current impacts of a warming world would stir greater action. >> perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer an imagined

future generation, but young people alive today, perhaps that will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story. william: i'm william brangham. judy: in ethiopia, the government declared a six-month state of emergency. rebels from tigray province have captured key towns and are threatening addis ababa, the country's capital. facebook has announced it is shutting down facial recognition system over growing privacy concerns. the system automatically identifies users in photos and videos. the company sayst will delete the face prints of more than one billion people by december. yahoo is the latest tech company to leave china citing growing restrictions. government censors had blocked many of yahoo's services. the professional networking site linkedin shut down its operations in china last month. lawyers in kenosha, wisconsin,

began making their cases today in the trial of kyle rittenhouse. he's charged with killing two men and wounding a third amid protests and violence after police shot a black man in 2020. prosecution and defense depicted rittenhouse as either acting to protect himself or looking for trouble as they made opening statements. >> the evidence will show that hundreds of people were out on the street experiencing chaos and violence and the only person who killed anyone was the defendant, kyle rittenhouse. >> it isn't a whodunit, when did it happen, or anything like that. it is, was, kyle rittenhouse's actions privileged under the law of self defense. judy: rittenhouse is now 18. if convicted, he could face life in prison. the u.s. justice department sued today to block a giant merger in book publishing. penguin random house, the nation's largest publisher,

wants to buy simon and schuster for $2.2 billion. the suit says the new company would have too much power, hurting authors and readers. and on wall street, all three major indexes set records again. the dow jones industrial average gained 138 points to close above 36,000 for the first time. the nasdaq rose 53. the s&p 500 added 17. still to come on the "newshour," election workers from across the country discuss the threats they face for doing their jobs. why some parents are resistant to getting their kids the covid vaccine. the pandemic's effect on the mental health of millions of college students. plus, much more. announcer: this is the "pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington and from the west, from the walter cronkite school

of journalism at arizona state university. judy: democrats in congress have spent the past several days working towards passing the bill backed better and infrastructure packages. lisa desjardins joins me for an update. hello, again, lisa. back at it again. give us what the latest is. does it look as if there will be action? lisa: this is an important day, i believe it is possible, maybe even likely, that we will see a final vote on the infrastructure bill this week and a house vote on the build back better bill first draft also this week. i'll get to why but let me remind people what's at stake in the two bills. the build back better bill includes universal pre-k, childcare, housing, major climate legislation, health provisions. the infrastructure bipartisan bill has money for roads, bridges, replacing lead pipes

and broadband. why now? this has been hung up for so long. there has been a shift in particular among house progressives who wanted to wait for the senate to take a full vote on build back better before passing the infrastructure bill. let me try and tick off what's happened more clearly. house progressives now say they are on board. the current framework, not a full bill yet, but the framework, and as a minimum starting point for this bill, they think anything in it adds will expand it. previously they wanted a guarantee that conservative moderate democrats would get on board. there's not that guarantee. they're saying they're trusting president biden that he will get those votes. other turning point happened late last week, a meeting between cynthia cinema of arizod brokered by joe naguse and brian schatz, the senator.

behind-the-scenes motions and now moving ahead. judy: one piece of this that is now having an interesting set of developments and that's prescription drug prices. tell us what's going on there. lisa: we'll talk more about this in days ahead but i want to talk about a deal that emerged today on prescription drug prices. democrats have agreed amongst themselves a $35 a month cap on insulin, vy significant. also future drug prices for everyone would be capped to inflation. medicare would be able to start negotiating on 10 drugs to start but including some of the most expensive. a lot of fine print and issues still open -- immigration, climate. things are starting to happen, it seems. judy: so much to follow but maybe this is a turning point. lisa: we'll see. judy: thank you. ♪

judy: the ripple effects from president trump's accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election are still being felt today. our "pbs newshour" npr marist poll this week found more than four in five american adults believe the future of american democracy is under serious threat. and several local and state workers who administer elections throughout the country continue to receive personal threats. stephanie sy will have our look at what consequences may result from that. but first we hear from election officials who shared with us what they've been experiencing. >> i am justin kirk, elections supervisor in georgia. >> natalie adona, county reporter for the county in nevada. >> the executive director of the city of milwaukee election commission. >> i'm michelle carew, outgoing

elections administrator in texas. i have been working in elections for 14 years. while attending the election commission meeting in july, it was two hours long and the public was allowed to speak and talk about things they felt i was not doing correctly as an elections administrator. they questioned my integrity as an administrator. >> she hasn't done her due diligence to make sure she has a good working relationship with the republican party. >> i had a phone call after the presidential election january runoff from someone from a different state who called to inform me how horrible of a person i was, how i was letting the country down because she wasn't happy with the results of the election in a county that her candidate won by a large margin. >> in the course of several days, i ended up receiving over 150 threats, many of which were death threats, many of which called me some pretty heinous

words and also had voicemails telling me i deserved to go before a firing squad. >> i also had some voters on the phone who were not so kind, one that stands out in my mind in particular, had been upset because california's identification law does not require us to ask voters for voter i.d. all of the time. he was upset that i followed the law and when i told him that my job is to follow the laws and here are all the safeguards in place for us to identify any voter fraud, and he lost his temper with me. he told me that the nazis also followed the laws blindly and how could i live with myself. that was really hard to hear. >> i had a lot of people ask me,

why are you leaving, why now? and my answer is, i don't want to do this anymore. i don't want to be part of these unfounded truths, these constant lies, constant scrutiny. >> i'm a mother of two small children. it definitely scared my husband, scares my parents. but i truly love my job and i have to push forward because it is a field that i love. part of me thinks that the intention of these threats is to get election officials to leave their jobs. >> after the january election, i was having panic attacks. maybe not for months but for a couple of months because i'd been under such pressure for such a long time, coming out the other side of it, almost didn't feel real. in this election cycle i was nervous. >> we want to be able to give voters the information that they

need and also to give our staff maybe a little bit more assurance that we are doing everything that we can to help protect them. >> we've improved security in our office so that all of our staff feels safe coming to work, myself included. >> for the first time i'm including things like poll worker safety in training sessions or reaching out in a different way to local law enforcement to make sure we have the resources we need and potentially need if we need it. >> we don't want any type of applause. we are not looking for that. we just want people to know your vote counted. it was counted fairly. your vote was cast. and you were represented well. stephanie: those are just a few of the election officials around the country facing verbal attacks and death threats from fellow americans either unhappy with election results, claiming fraud, in all cases questioning the integrity of these public

servants. joining me now to discuss this more is tammy patrick, senior adviser for the democracy funds ections program. thank you so much, as always, for joining the "newshour." you heard it, voicemails, text messages where people are threatening election officials. lives, even their children's lives. it seems beyond the pale. is this something you ever experienced? tammy: happy election day and thankfully it wasn't something that i experienced in my more than a decade of being a local election official but i will tell you this is something i have been hearing more and more frequently in the last six, seven, eight, nine months. and far too often we're getting targeted of the election officials that conducted that election freely and fairly and this is absolutely exemplary of what i'm hearing from all across the country, in places where the

former president won, in places where the current president won. stephanie: you're hearing about election officials of all levels, either quitting or retiring, out of just these threats, worrying them and their families. what do you worry will be the consequence of that? tammy: vacancies in and of themselves are pretty common. however, we're seeing a systemic rise in the number of vacancies because people are retiring early, they're leaving the job that they love, because of the pressure and the mental toll that it's taking on them. this can cause a problem because of a loss of both institutional knowledge for professionals and then we also have the double problem in thisoment of election professionals being replaced by partisan actors. so individuals that will be filling those vacancies with ulterior motives in mind.

stephanie: the sub text of what you're saying is that the partisan actors may have integrity issues. what are the solutions? there have been efforts to pass legislationy to increase protection for election workers. the department of justice has formed a task force. will that work to stop the threats? tammy: it's going to take all of us, it will take accountability throughout the system so whether it's the federal government having task forces to hold people accountable in this moment or bar associations holding lawyers accountable or voters holding their own elected representatives accountable at the ballot box, it's going to take all of us to make sure we get our democracy back on track. as we go into today's election, we know that there are many local races that are up for grabs today as it were and as we move into 2022, there are even more local elections that will be held. so secretaries of state that are running on platforms that the

2020 election was illegitimate or stolen need to be held accountable. tammy: it is election day, tammy, as you mentioned, and there's this close governor's race in virginia where the republican candidate has brought up election integrity so to speak. do you see today and that race as a test or harbinger of what may be coming in the midterms next year or even the presidential election after that in 2024? tammy: all of the elections we've seen so far this year including the california recall election are all giving us an indication of what to expect in the future. so we've seen candidates both in california, and in virginia, calling into question the legitimacy of an election if they were to lose. now, that is not only playing out at the state level, statewide, but we're seeing that narrative also be used by candidates in local races. so calling into question the ability for anyone to fairly

lose an election. stephanie: tammy patrick with the democracy fund, thank you so much. tammy: thank you for having me. ♪ judy: with the c.d.c. approval of a children's covid vaccine expected shortly, parents will be able to get first doses for their children in the next few days but a kaiser family foundation survey found only 27% of parents say they are eager to get the shot. one-third say they'll wait for now and another 30% say they definitely will not get it for their children. we wanted to hear more about how parents see this and what they need to know. william brangham is back with a perspective of a top pediatrician but first here's what parents told us. >> for us, the whole time, vaccines have been the key to being able to get back to some sense of normalcy and especially

with her being an only child, it's been really hard to not be around other people. we're at that point where it's as soon as she can get vaccinated, she'll be the first in line. >> i don't think a choice i would make. i just don't think it's within their self-interest. we have gone a little bit too far as a society because of the pandemic and setting precedents to take away personal liberties. i heard dr. fauci say on tv. dr. fauci: put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy and that's the virus. >> the angle people are coming from that liberties are not as important. >> there's a lot unknown with long covid and i know even some kids have been affected by it. obviously i don't want that for my child so i'm going to get her

vaccinated as quickly as possible. >> i would say i'm a vaccine-hesitant parent. i'm concerned about myocarditis in young children and i also think the risk in children is low if they get covid so i'm cautious and it's not something i'm going to jump into it. >> i'm still on the fence. i probably will end up doing it but i'm worried about the small group of kids in the trial and they're just guessing based on what happened with the older group with the myocarditis and what-not. so that worries me because it is such a small group and they're guessing what will happen. my husband's family has heart issues so i'm worried that will pass on to my kids but then again, if they got covid, that's a really big chance they could also have heart issues. i don't know. >> i can't wait for them to get vaccinated. i tried to get them in trials to get vaccinated and we're on the wait list at the pediatrician's

office. >> these are the people we'll be having today. >> the kids play covid. they're playing a covid testing clinic which they do every week in school now and i know that we're getting the covid vaccination, they won't get as sick if they get covid or one of the variants and they're less likely to die. >> we plan to vaccinate our 7-year-old because he has several life-threatening food allergies which means he's more likely to have to visit the emergency department when he has anaphylaxis reaction. having him vaccinated means when he does have to go to the hospital, that's taking one of two major concerns off the table for us. he could potentially react to the vaccine as an allergic reaction. i guess the other potential concern i think about is we really don't know the long-term effects or side effects of this vaccine because we don't have

that longitudinal data quite yet. >> i think i'm going to postpone a little bit and not do it right away so i know what numbers are coming in and what's happening in the now. me and my husband had no hesitation about getting vaccinated but for them, i want to protect them, i need to know more. >> because my daughter has a complex medical history, she's very small and she's also at high risk so one of our concerns is whether her small size, being more like the size of a 3-year-old, would impact in any way the safety or her eligibility even to get the vaccine. william: so these concerns and questions are what pediatricians and other medical professionals will likely hear in the days ahead and we'll try to address some of them now. dr. yvonne maldonado is chair of the american academy of pediatrics committee on infectious diseases and she was a principal investigator in the pfizer vaccine trials for children. she gets no payments from pfizer.

dr. maldonado, very good to have you. i loved hearing from all those parents and i want to dive into some of their questions. a combination of questions here. one pent expressed a concern that there were too few kids in the trials and that when you start vaccinating potentially tens of millions of kids, new problems could crop up. another parent expressed the concern that we haven't been vaccinating for that long so what happens if a year from now, two years from now, could a problem come up. what about those concerns? dr. maldonado: thank you for those questions. it's natural for a brand new virus and new vaccine that people will have questions and the first thing i would like to say is that the american academy of pediatrics which represents 67,000 pediatricians around the country has been really keeping up to date around the facts about covid, about covid vaccines and pediatricians around the country are waiting

anxiously to answer questions for parents so i think for vaccine hesitant families it's really important to contact your providers. if you don't have a private provider, your public health provider will be happy to answer questions for you so this is a natural fear of a new disease we're seeing. but regarding the clinical trials, the number of people enrolled, the number of children enrolled, is about the same and sometimes a little higher than other vaccines for children and in context of the other age groups that have been studied, we've already seen hundreds of millions of doses given to older children and adults so we have a very good sense of how these vaccines work, what the safety is like and what the effectiveness is and in particular now what this particular set of studies did is really put a fine point on what happens specifically with this age group and what we saw was that the side effects, the

effectiveness, all of that is very similar if not better in some cases than what we saw in older children and adults. and so regarding the vaccine itself, the platform itself has been around for decades so we know that this vaccine itself will disintegrate as soon as the immune response is elicited, it is eliminated from the body and there really is no risk at this point that we can see for side effects long term. however, we will need to study this vaccine like we study any other vaccine for long-term impacts and to date with all of our safety systems in the u.s. we have not seen long-term impacts from vaccines that we've used in children before. william: that's certainly good news for parents listening. what about this issue of myocarditis, which is the inflammation of the muscle in the heart. we'd seen it in rare instances with younger males who had been vaccinated. any data that that's a problem for this younger group of kids?

dr. maldonado: we really don't have that data because as you probably know, the risk is highest in boys and in young adult men and the risk it really highest in about 16 to 17-year-old boys at the rate o about 70 per million doses given in that age group. it's much lower in all other age groups so even in that age group it's about one in 10,000 of boys in that group. in other age groups, the risk is exceedingly low and we're not seeing -- we couldn't, obviously, see any signals in the children who were studied here because this was well under a million children who have been studied but the risk seems to mirror what we see for natural myocarditis which is caused by viruses and bacteria and parasites in all age groups and mirrors the same incidents that we see, the same curve that we see in natural myocarditis and this age group at least

background myocarditis from other causes is actually quite low. william: what about the concern some parents have expressed that, one, i don't want my children to get long covid. what do we know about that? on the flipside, you hear parents say, it sounds like kids don't generally get that sick from covid so why vaccine them? what would you say to parents who express that? dr. maldonado: let me start with that first because since last year we heard a lot of misinformation spread nationally that, a, kids didn't get infected, b, they didn't spread disease, and c, they didn't get sick if they were infted. that's absolutely false. in our children's hospital and children's hospitals around the country, children have been admitted to the hospital, put on ventilators, they have died. it is not something you want to happen especially if you have a safe and preventible approach to this disease. now, so far we've seen almost two million children infected in

this age group of 5 to 11 with 8300 hospitalizations in this age group and very severe cases in at least 2500 with 94 deaths. so it is really -- it's been quite a severe disease and i would say that the risks of immediate impact are much more important and that was expressed today at the meeting. every single person who spoke said, a, that they would vaccinate or have vaccinated their own kids, and b, that the risks of this disease and we've all seen it, far outweigh any potential short-term problems. the long-term issues we will continue to follow for long covid but it looks like the risk of long covid is subtle and we won't really know for some time. william: dr. yvonne maldonado, thank you so much for being here. dr. maldonado: it's a pleasure. thank you. ♪

judy: despite world leaders from more than 100 countries being in attendance at the u.n. climate conference, one significant figure is absent -- china's jinping xi, president of the globe's largest polluting nation. without china, efforts to fight climate change will likely be vain. the country's reliance on coal is key. we have two looks now. in a moment we'll hear from special correspondent patrick fok in northern china. first here's nick schifrin. nick: in china it is the best of times and it is the worst of times. beijing produces more solar power, more wind power and more electric cars, than any country in the world. but china also produces more greenhouse gases than the rest of the industrialized world combined. >> there's schizophrenia there that there is both an investment in the future in exactly the kind of technologies that are going to be needed to build a sustainable economic engine for their country.

at the same time, clinging to some of the vestiges of the past. nick: pete ogden is the vice president for energy and climate for the un foundation. he was president obama's climate director when obama and chinese president xi jinping, representing the world's two largest emitters, agreed to climate collaboration. that produced the 2015 paris climate accords' pledge to reduce emissions enough to limit global warming to 2 degrees celsius. climate experts say beijing has met its paris promises. beijing's poured billions into electric cars and the world's largest network of electric buses. by 2060, it hopes renewable energy provides 80% of the country's power. beijing wanted to clean up notorious air pollution, but that wasn't the only motivation. >> i think clean energy is not just about the environment. clean energy is an economic strategy for the country, and we really see the government prioritizing clean energy

industries as strategic to china's economy, to its overall economic transition. nick: joanna lewis directs georgetown's science, technology and international affairs program, and has studied china's climate policies for decades. she says beijing believed green technology could help achieve long-term growth. and xi jinping wanted to be seen as a green leader. china pledges to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, and peak all emissions before 2030. but u.s. special envoy for climate john kerry said this summer, that 2030 is too late. >> if china sticks with its current plan and does not peak its emissions until 2030, then the entire rest of the world would have to go to zero -- zero -- by 2040 or even 2035. it knocks at least a decade off the timeline for the rest of the world to decarbonize. and that, my friends, sets a goal that currently is impossible to achieve.

nick: this week in glasgow, xi jinping is a no-show, as are any new chinese pledges, or details on how it will achieve previous pledges says ogden. >> the chinese announcement, failed to include much that was really new. we just really need to see much more information about about -- about what they're going to take, how those steps are going to be taken in the near term. nick: back at home, beijing is taking backward steps by increasing -- not decreasing -- its reliance on coal. greenpeace says this year provincial governments approved two dozen new coal plants. >> the reason why we do see china sticking with coal and just having a difficult time moving away from coal is because it is such a fundamental part of the economy. there are very complex politics. it's a huge labor source for the country. these are obviously powerful companies in terms of setting policy.

nick: climate activists hailed xi jinping's september pledge not to fund new overseas coal plants. and chinese domestic reliance on coal has dropped from a peak of 72 percent, but beijing still requires coal to fuel its short-term growth. and that meanseijing's emissions could get worse before they get better. >> we cannot achieve these global climate goals unless china is able to reverse its emissions trends. nick: chinese officials say their transition from coal won't be rushed. as one put it: “you cannot ask a person to go on a climate diet while he is still starving.” and chinese coal has a legacy, that goes back centuries -- even in the places going green. patrick: this is patrick fok, 150 miles west of beijing in northern china. as you approach by train, wind turbines stretch along the dry terrain for as far as the eye can see. but this is datong, - also known as china's coal capital. coal mining here dates back around 1,500 years.

and as the country's economy opened up in the late 1970s industrial mining took off, fueling china's boom. >> conditions for workers today are much more comfortable than before. the work is not so tiring, after mechanization. the underground environment is not so bad. patrick: wang hongwei is a retired mine worker, in his 60s, and part of several generations. from datong that have lived off the coal produced here. his sons followed in his footsteps. shanxi province, where datong is, has a total of around 950 mines and according to 2018 figures from the world bank, employed close to 900,000 people. as part of efforts to tackle climate change, china has taken offline some of its dirtiest coal powered plants and sent workers to more renewable energy efforts. >> the mountains and fields are covered with solar power. it will definitely be better in the near future than it is now.

the state will surely send its employees to other projects or factories. doesn't matter.who are retired, we'll just stay at home and get a state pension. patrick: still, those working the mines today aren't exactly fretting. as china struggles to shake off its coal addiction, there's no sign of the jobs drying up just yet. all over datong you can see china's massive efforts to switch to renewable energy. there are solar farms and wind turbines dotted all over the landscape here and yet at the same time it's furiously ramping up coal production. in 2020 alone, the country brought 38.4 gigawatts of new-coal fired capacity into operation. that's more than three times the amount built in the rest of the world over the same period and enough to power about a fifth of the whole country. environmentalists like li shuo who's a carbon emissions and energy specialist for greenpeace say china's insatiable demand for non-renewable energy will make it difficult for it to meet its goal of net zero emissions by 2060.

>> if you really end up peaking, let's say, in 2030, the curve between 2030 and 2060 is very steep. to the extent that many people would think that this is science fiction. patrick: last month authorities also called on mines to boost coal production by nearly hurricane hanna million tons as it battles a power crunch that's threatened to derail china's recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. president xi jinping pledged earlier this year that coal consumption would peak by 2025. but drastic reliance on the fuel source to meet energy demand whether he can stick to that promise. >> what will happen after the peak is as important as when it happens -- are we going to see a long plateau? and if so, that's probably not great news for climate change, or are we seeing a steady decline, or a drastic decline? i think the post peaking period either for coal consumption or

china's emissions are also very important. there hasn't been a lot of discussion on that front. patrick: and for the people of datong, there's another discussion to be had about their livelihoods when the coal industry does one day crumble. that day is nowhere near, as china's coal reliance continues. for the pbs newshour, i'm patrick fok, in datong. nick:and i'm nick schifrin in washington. ♪ judy: college is a time of major transition and of stress. add in the pandemic and colleges are left struggling to cope with ever-increasing levels of mental distress among students. john yang looks at the problem and what can be done for students in our series, rethinking college.

>> a study found that 48% of college students reported moderate psychological stress, 53% reported being lonely and one in four considered suicide. many college campuses are scrambling to expand and rethink the ways they help students cope with mental health concerns. riana elyse anderson is an assistant professor of health behavior and health education at the university of michigan. this issue really got a lot of attention nationally when the university of north carolina had a mental health break for students after there were two apparent suicides. you study this issue and teach young people on a college campus. what do you see -- talk about your personal experience to give our viewers a sense of this issue? riana: we know over the past year we watched stress, anxiety and depression go up about four-fold for everyone and that absolutely includes our young

folks so whether these are pediatric populations or the collegiate population, we're watching the number balloon and that's on top of what we saw even as a pattern before covid so we're watching college students really get impacted by the comparison they're seeing in their classmates, online, in social media. they're using comparison and feeling particularly anxious about it for themselves. john: what were the factors before the pandemic? riana: social media has ballooned in this past decade where children and adolescents are now college students who have been utilizing those industries the past -- strategies are starting to see that person got into college and scored in on an exam whereas before you didn't know what was happening nationwide. now you have this greater comparison and it's reay impacting one's wellbeing. john: is there a sense of a generational difference that young people now are perhaps

more concerned about mental health issues? riana: a wonderful article came out looking at even the generation like myself which is just one above the millenials who really started thinking about mental health a bit differently than our generation before us. we're starting to see now that generational divide in the gen-zers who are saying not only am i noticing it but i want to take the days like the u.n.c. students demanded or i have to see a counselor and that's something the generation before never thought possible so on one hand, what a wonderful thing to have that autonomy to say but it's another thing when collegiate professors are asking how do we contend with doing what we need to do for school to continue and meeting the needs of our students? it's challenging for us to contend with that. john: are there differences along racial, ethnic,

socio-economic lines -- thinking of first generation college students whose families may not be prepared to help them through this? riana: certainly covid has impacted that. we're seeing a dual impact of not only the resources impacted by covid but the socio-economic and racial disparities so we're watching folks who perhaps didn't have the access or tablets, technology to do the work from home or perhaps they didn't want to show their screens so that's lessening the amount of time they're on screen, they're feeling less connected to folks and now that they're back in a college setting, that year has really impacted them and they're trying to understand how do they find community, how are they now exposed to some of the things that they weren't exposed to last year including discrimination or rejection so they're contending with a lot of things that are unique for them relative to their classmates. john: talk about how colleges and universities can address this. how can they help students deal

with this and you talk about students being more willing to seek help. are they being a little overwhelmed or finding great demand than they have the supply for? riana: you said it well. the ways we can combat that are prevention and intervention strategies so with respect to what you just said, cap services or counseling and psych services most universities have, if we know what the numbers are, we can plan accordingly, make sure we have referrals in the community and expand staff so intervention strategies once we're aware of the mental health problems are things we can do but we can also engage in prevention strategies, can we reduce the number of assignments we're giving and can we take more days like u.n.c. did as a community so it's not just you taking an individual day -- no one in the institution is expecting anything of you so we can prevent the problems in the

first place. john: riana elyse anderson from university of michigan, thank you very much. riana: thank you. ♪ judy: an update on tonight's elections in the virginia governor's race, now with 88% of precincts reporting. republican glenn youngkin leads democrat terry mcauliffe with 53.2% to 46.1% of the vote. in new jersey, incumbent democratic governo phil murphy is in a tighter re-election race than expected with 33% of precincts reporting, he has 49% of the vote to republican jack ciattarelli's 50%. in new york city, democrat eric adams has easily defeated republican curtis schleywaugh. join us again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the "pbs newshour," thank you.

please stay safe. we'llee you soon. >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by -- >> the landscape has changed and not for the last time. the rules of business are being reinvented with a more flexible work force by embracing innovation, by looking not only at current opportunities but ahead to future ones. resilience is the ability to pivot again and again for whatever happens next. >> people who know, know b.d.o. consumer cellular. johnson & johnson. financial services firm, raymond james. bnsf railway. carnegie corporation of new york

supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. the target foundation committed to advancing racial equity and creating the change required to shift systems and accelerate economic opportunity. and with the ongoing support of these institutions -- this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

-getting back to our roots helps us understand what we love and why we love it so much, rediscovering a nearly lost art or an adult twist on a childhood favorite. i grew up eating sapote negro for dessert like at least once a week. -mm-hmm. -when we find those flavors and textures that remind us who we are, it is a treasure. in my kitchen, do i have a treat for you today. i cook with my friend and fellow chilango francisco migoya, head chef at modernist cuisine, one of the most innovative kitchens in the entire world. together, we make one of the most comforting foods, pellizcadas with chicharrón and salsa verde. and because francisco is an expert in the science behind breadmaking, he's going to show me how to make the perfect conchas. whoa! whoa! come with us, back to our roots. -♪ dame, dame ♪