May 19, 2026
I’ve been reflecting on Alex Steffen’s thoughtful recent piece on whether community can address the growing brittleness of our climate reality:
His argument is clear: community is essential, but as a layer within a broader system, not a replacement for the large-scale infrastructure and institutions we ultimately depend on.
Steffen is critical of how “community resilience” is often used: suggesting that strong local networks and initiatives could compensate for failing infrastructure, weak institutions, or absent governance. They cannot. And expecting them to puts the burden in exactly the wrong place.
At the same time, he emphasizes that community becomes more important as the climate crisis worsens, not just as a source of care and belonging, but as the space where people make sense of what is happening and decide how to respond. And crucially: as a connection layer through which citizens engage with the systems that affect their lives.
What I would stress from my own work is an accountability dimension that I so often find missing in these conversations.
Communities are not only where people connect to the systems they depend on. They are also where those systems are observed, questioned, and held to account. They are where:
– signals from lived experience surface and become visible
– the gap between policy and reality gets noticed first
– shared concerns get named and turned into collective agendas
– people organize to engage with and push back on institutions
That last role is easy to underestimate. Systems without watchful communities tend to serve the powers that be instead of civic interests.
This matters especially now. Because the climate crisis is not only a question of security and resilience. It is fundamentally also a question of legitimacy and fairness. How we navigate the enormous disruptions ahead will determine whether we emerge with a just and democratic society, or not. That is not a technocratic question. It requires communities that are politically awake and institutionally engaged.
So the question is not just whether communities are effective. It is also whether communities are able to connect into those systems in meaningful ways, to inform them, challenge them, hold them accountable, and help shape fairer outcomes. The stakes could not be higher.
