In the last two months, there were two major stories in climate news, one global and one local.

At the local level, Spokane City Council approved a strategic plan to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, updating an earlier 2009 strategy, on a six-to-one vote. 

Three weeks later, 120 world leaders met in Glasgow, Scotland, to negotiate their own national and international commitments to keeping global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius, though different nations expressed differing degrees of commitment, and past records suggest that the wealthiest countries (the US included) will struggle to meet their own goals. 

These two events, a city council vote and a worldwide conference, suggest two things: First, that climate change has become so present in daily life that it has entered the often run-of-the-mill domain of local politics, and second, that political communities at all levels are increasingly ready to negotiate under the premise that climate change is already happening. 

For climate activists, this is an opportunity to make our voices loud and clear. Those in power are listening, or are increasingly unable to refuse to listen. There is motion, both local and global. 

Locating global change at the local level is another resounding theme from COP26. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley made headlines for her speech on the stakes for developing nations, stating bluntly that a rise of 2 degrees “is a death sentence for island nations.” 

COP26 is the kind of headline-making event whose monumental scale can often make it seem more productive than it actually is, a feat of scheduling and coordination more than action and development. But this year, many attendees representing formerly colonized and underdeveloped nations expressed their grave concern that wealthy nations will do little or nothing to help reduce emissions while demanding that poorer countries take up stronger commitments. These global debates between nations echo the debates that played out in Spokane over the SAP, across radio stations, opinion sections of regional papers, and virtual city council meetings. 

Two key debates at COP26 were adaptation and financial responsibility, which for most people comes down to a question about who should pay for climate action. While often used by corporations and economists to hijack conversations about the urgency of climate change (or to outright deny their own role in the problem), the burden of responsibility is a crucial piece of every known solution we have. If we require a switch to clean energy, how can we ensure that switch is financially accessible? How can we ensure that those who have contributed the most to greenhouse gas emissions pay a proportionate role in paying for adaptive measures? How much do wealthy nations whose rapid industrialization produced decades of untenable CO2 emissions owe to nations in the global south, who are now facing the drought, famine, and flooding that result from higher temperatures? 

While these questions are rooted in complex historical and geographical contexts, we can see the same anxieties playing out at the local level in Spokane’s Sustainability Action Plan—and, by extension, that’s also where we see people actively trying to resolve these questions. 

An earlier draft of the Sustainability Action Plan, (which was long ago scrapped from the version that city council passed), included a proposal that would have “asked the city to consider banning natural gas connections in new construction,” This prompted a counteractive ballot initiative to ban future bans of natural gas, which a judge struck down. While much of the concern over the earlier draft came from disingenuous opposition to any climate action that places any regulation on the private sector, some concern represents real anxieties over the local feasibility of combating climate change.

An example I keep returning to is a gas tax in France that placed a disproportionately higher financial burden on rural and working-class citizens, rather than the corporations most responsible for emissions at a much larger scale than any one person’s vehicle can produce. While at somewhat lower stakes, the question of banning natural gas installations—an increasingly popular proposal in many US cities—poses an important question for the restaurant industry, an already low-wage/high-profit sector of the economy that heavily relies on gas cooking for both quality and efficiency. In my own experience working in restaurants, I know the value of natural gas for small, locally-owned family restaurants, for whom converting to an alternative heating system would be a financial burden on its own, in addition to the risk it would pose to existing recipes. While most discussions are about banning new gas hookups, the questions about who should pick up the bill remains contentious. 

Even though the Sustainability Action Plan did not include such a measure, I’m sympathetic to the anxiety of cooks, among other low-wage workers, who correctly recognize that their contributions to climate change are minimal compared to that of massive corporations. This is a global issue, as well as a local one. What it comes down to is that we have to change our society, in wholly structural ways, and someone has to start the difficult task of adapting. Should it be the many who can afford little, or the few who can afford much? 

At the global level, COP26 obviously did not resolve any of these issues. However, the fact that delegates were able to openly and consistently express these valid concerns shows that financial and political power plays a role in climate change is increasingly obvious. At a local level, I think we’re increasingly able to articulate the way we experience that power dynamic in our own lives, from first-generation family restaurants to single parents who contract for a rideshare app with their own vehicle to make ends meet. 

The fact that COP27 will be held next year in Egypt, a country that Great Britain, the host of COP26, informally colonized through violent military rule for half a century, is itself a significant gesture, if not toward a radical shift in power dynamics, then at least in a conciliation of the platform that such conferences insist on occupying. 

Spokane city council passing the Sustainability Action Plan is a success dolled out through local discussion and debate, however heated, however muddied, and its passage represents one model for advancing more climate policies at the local level. More importantly, it represents the power of community to come together toward common interests. The road ahead will be of course difficult, but if we build on the momentum of 2021—as well as the honesty about how urgent the situation is—we can see the next year brim with similar successes.