Political and climate storms rolling in - Look homeward to make real change

Building strong communities

The doughnut economics model created by economist Kate Raworth provides a guide for building resilient communities, ones which create a strong social foundation while staying within ecological limits. This graphic illustrates the paradigm and where humanity is falling short on both counts.

6 minute read

Build strong places to weather the storms

Never has it been more important to build strong places capable of weathering the storms barreling down on us, both the physical storms of a disrupted climate and the political, social and economic storms of a nation and world tumbling into increasing conflict. Never has it been more crucial to strengthen and build the community networks and institutions that promote human solidarity. Donald Trump’s election to his second presidential term sends that message loud and clear.

Though things weren’t exactly going great before the election. Climate extremes were intensifying. 2024 was already on the way to being the first year the 1.5°C barrier is breached, beyond which the risk of triggering climate tipping points jumps to higher levels. (See graphic.) The general trend toward overshooting the planet’s ecological boundaries was only intensifying. War and genocide wracked the Mideast, while tensions were mounting between the great powers, posing perhaps the greatest ever threat of nuclear war.  The super-rich were only getting richer. Trump’s election is a matter of going from bad to worse.

I promised at the conclusion of my recent post summarizing how we are hitting climate limits, "On the brink of an irreversible climate disaster," that “I will follow up with my reflections as a long-term climate activist and writer, stating what I think we can do, facing such a dire situation.” I was holding off until after the election, though my conclusion remains the same.

We must build the future in place. Beginning in the communities where we live.

Fundamental change begins at the margins

At least this election provides the virtue of clarity. We can have no illusions things will be okay.  They won’t. Or that tinkering-around-the edges reformism will cut it. It won’t. Let’s face it. The crises we face are systemic. We need deep transformation of our economies, societies and political systems, and that level of change rarely starts at the centers of political power. It starts in the peripheries, at the margins, where the latitude for experimentation to create working models is greater. Because that’s where people power can have greater leverage than in national centers increasingly smothered by lobbying money and interest group politics, deadlocking real change.

It is true that a Harris Administration would have left open possibilities at the federal level that are now closed. But facing blockage on Capitol Hill, with one or now two houses controlled by the Republicans, the major contribution of a Harris term would likely have been damage control. And Trump will undertake actions that set back some of the progress that has been made on climate and other areas. Though the momentum of now economically competitive clean energy technologies cannot be stopped, and states and cities will continue to act.

The best that can be said about losing leverage at the federal level is that progressives and climate advocates will be forced to concentrate where we can make truly transformative changes, state and local governments, communities and bioregions. The election will focus us closer to home where models for transformative change can be built and transmitted laterally across the landscape, eventually to reach national centers.

We must challenge business as usual economics

Poll after poll indicates that despite glowing macroeconomic statistics, many people in middle and lower income realms did not feel it and cited the economy as the major factor in voting for Trump. The swing of working class voters to Trump, including people of color, was pronounced. Of course, Trump will not deliver, instead benefiting rich interests with further tax cuts and driving inflation with tariffs. The plight of the working class will likely grow worse. An economic populist agenda of the kind Bernie Sanders put forward in his campaigns – free college, a $15 minimum wage (it has to be more now), universal health care, etc. – will certainly be needed if the Democrats are to come back from their slump. I covered this in my recent post, “It's the economy, stupid!" Why Harris and the Dems lost. People who work within the Democratic Party should struggle for this.

But even an economic populist agenda will not supply the level of transformative change that is needed to meet our onrushing crises. We must challenge business as usual assumptions of an economy dependent on endless growth. We must build models of a different kind of economy focused on meeting basic human needs while coming into balance with the limits of nature. Building a strong social foundation while moving back within planetary boundaries. Economist Kate Raworth has developed such a paradigm with her doughnut economics, an idea now percolating in communities throughout the world.

Recently I completed a scenario for how a city begins to transform itself by creating a network of new community institutions. Public banking. Social housing. Worker coops. Circular economies. Local food networks. Community energy cooperatives. The two-part series starts here, second part linked to the first. Undertaking such a set of actions at local and state levels, in communities and bioregions, can reach people who feel economically left out. It can begin to rebuild an urgently needed sense of human and community solidarity, one that seems so sorely lacking in our polarized society. These ideas for a different kind of economics ultimately need to reach national levels, but it is in communities and bioregions, cities and states, where they will be modeled and proven.

Preparing for a disrupted world

We have to be real that no matter what we do, a certain level of of disruption is inevitable. We are going to see intensifying climate extremes, deluges and floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires. Systems will break down. Crop failures will drive up food prices. Storms will cut off electricity, shut down water and sewage systems, and shred transportation networks. Health care networks will be stressed. For a glimpse of the future, take a look at Asheville, North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians after Hurricane Helene. We could have avoided most of this if political systems had responded to warnings decades ago. But the power of fossil fuel corporations and other industrial interests blocked action. So here we are.

Climate adaptation can no longer be ignored. We must prepare. Survival in an era of disruption will not be an individual matter. We must ruggedize our communities by creating green and distributed water infrastructure, power microgrids, local food supplies, and other such toughened systems. Community centers must become cooling centers. Local and state governments working with civil society must build up climate emergency response plans. We must make sure cooperative networks are in place to assist hard hit areas that cannot recover on their own.

At the watershed level, we need to restore ecological integrity through restoration projects. Nature and the species that make it up will certainly be battered, as well as the human inhabitants. We need to make ecosystems as resilient as possible. For example, by improving riparian habitat so rivers flow more naturally, replanting degraded lands and removing invasive species. All forms of ecological restoration will be important. As will be bringing more of nature into cities, with its capacity to buffer extremes of temperature and precipitation. And we must halt destructive logging where we can, by direct action if necessary. (My own recent engagement is reported here.)

On a deeper level, we must transcend the competitive individualism that has driven our society, and build a new level of solidarity that protects the weakest and shelters the vulnerable. Networks of mutual aid and security will be increasingly needed. We do not know what is going to happen in our fractured society where many are driven by hatred and fear. We need to counter this by joining hands in a fundamental spirit of compassion. And look beyond self-interest to elevate the common good as the driving force.

Time to circle together

The time is now for us to begin gathering together wherever we are. In our neighborhoods, our towns, our cities, our watersheds. To circle around and ask ourselves what can we do to build a better world beginning in the places where we live. How can we reduce pollution and demand for energy and materials? How can we protect people and ecosystems? How can we ensure everyone has their basic needs met? Whether these are small actions that are immediately feasible, or bolder agendas for community transformation.

We must look beyond immediate group interests to build broad coalitions spanning communities and bioregions. We must undertake voluntary actions in civil society and political actions in local and state governments. We must build a new base of human solidarity working from the ground up. That is how we will survive the darkness and turbulence we can expect in the coming years.

We can ask whether this will be enough to meet the challenges rolling toward us. That is always a question, and there are no certain answers. But it’s what we’ve got. We need to act where we can most effectively act now, in our communities and bioregions, cities and states. We’re only going to make it working together, building the future in place.

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