Climate progress through coordinated community action
Building the US for more climate-compatible living—and the things that support such a shift—is good for Americans.
It will make us collectively wealthier, freer, and safer. It’s insurance on the things we care about. Government will be more efficient and effective. And resilience—which sits at the center of holistic climate solutions—has moved from niche concept to mainstream priority.
The technologies to drive deep decarbonization exist and are mature. The evidence base for equitable, effective policy is robust. Decades of research and practice have yielded proven approaches to cut emissions, build resilience, and improve quality of life.
Wrinkle
Yet despite more than two decades of solid evidence proving the case, the speed and scale of solutions remains badly inadequate.
What gives?
Five compounding forces work against climate progress in the US: incentives, power, information, trust, and inertia. They reinforce each other, and together they keep the status quo in place even when the public broadly supports change.
Closing the gap between that public support and actual progress requires confronting them directly.
Way forward
One promising approach to contend with these barriers in the near term lies in a place that is familiar but overlooked for its climate action potential:
Local communities.
Like the town or city you probably live in.
They have the tools, reach, and untapped power to become the most powerful near-term lever for climate progress in the United States.
Three things community action brings:
1. Local communities have unique tools to drive climate progress
Towns and cities have specialized powers to design climate policy and make change that federal and state governments can’t replicate.
2. Local communities are quiet but effective engines for large-scale climate action
Local communities are among the biggest underutilized agents of large-scale change — and they’re still flying under the radar.
3. Local governments hold untapped power to make big things happen
Like their federal and state counterparts, local governments are capable of making major changes swiftly — with the right keys.
A big untapped opportunity to accelerate climate progress is to lead local communities to make transformative changes that make life better. That requires liberating local governments from the political and practical constraints that keep them taking half-steps, and building the bridges that turn local momentum into coordinated action at scale.
Community leadership is not a workaround to fix national climate failure. It is a way to convert community wellbeing into a vehicle for climate progress, and local wins into national change—a core strategy that has been needed all along, a pillar of serious large-scale action even when federal support is strong. It may be the most distinctly American path forward we have.
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