About four weeks ago, 50 people came together to talk about climate change and our city’s future.

During that two-hour gathering, there were a number of ideas and recommendations circling the room. People talked about Duluth being a more walkable city, constructing small affordable houses, organizing a network of neighborhood climate resilience hubs, gardening, more local media coverage about climate change, community repair shops, creating a circular economy, teaching sustainability, using libraries for community building and climate education.

As the members of the Duluth Citizens Climate Commission reviewed the comments and notes from the gathering, it became apparent that all the ideas and recommendations were connected to the core foundation of how Duluth could become a more resilient city.

Everything we were talking about that evening was based upon exploring and embracing our collective resiliency in this climate-change world.

On Oct. 1, the United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security posted an article on its website titled “Resilience Starts at Home - Capacities for Urban Transformation.” The authors of that article wrote, “Resilience starts at home, but it grows through the relationships connecting homes with neighbourhoods, institutions and policy. Strengthening these relationships is how local capacities can become the foundation for wider urban transformation.”

The authors also cited the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction which defined resilience as “the ability to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of hazards.”

So how does a city like Duluth become more resilient? How do we learn to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the numerous impacts of climate change? How do we strengthen our relationships with our neighbors and community leaders to build a more sustainable city? How do we create the local capacities that will become the foundation for Duluth’s transformation?

Thomas Doherty, in his book Surviving Climate Anxiety, talks about transformative resilience as the ability to break away from unhealthy aspects of the status quo and create new ways of living that support a more sustainable life for humans and all species.

Doherty also argues that we need to build our capacity to navigate these climate threats with confidence so we can move forward and work proactively on addressing what he refers to as “climate breakdown” in the future.

In what ways has Duluth become an unhealthy city due to climate change? In what ways can our city deal with the climate breakdowns that will undoubtedly present themselves in the years to come?

If Duluth is to successfully address the various challenges from climate change, then it would appear that we must identify and then build those capacities and local systems to help our city create more sustainable lives for all of us.

We can already see and experience the climate emergency in Duluth and around the world.

The CO2 atmospheric levels continue to rise.

The wildfires in northern Minnesota, Canada, Southwestern U.S. and Western Europe have become more destructive.

The average annual temperatures are higher.

And the water levels at many of our major lakes and rivers are historically lower.

Since this past summer, Duluth has witnessed hazardous air quality alerts from the wildfires and there have been numerous reports of severe droughts in the region.

Also, it’s been reported that our winter months are getting milder and we will see hotter days in the summer. 

Looking back at the Duluth gathering and everyone’s comments and suggestions, there were a lot of great ideas for helping our city move forward. 

We could start with building a stronger local media presence that presents the latest news and information about climate change and its impacts on our city.

We could use the print media, radio, television and social media to report on the current global news as well as providing a public forum to interview local elected officials and activists who are addressing climate events right here at home.

We could collaborate with groups like Covering Climate Now and Climate Steps that would offer valuable resources and information to Duluth’s local media.

And we could find opportunities to incorporate more climate education initiatives in our public schools, unions, community service organizations, churches and with our healthcare providers.

The more informed our citizens and community leaders are, the greater chances we’ll have to become a more resilient city.

In her book Climate Chaos, Neala Schleuning talks about a concept called “reworlding” in which we are required to respond to climate change by actually doing something differently.

Scheuning proposes that we have to live in a new way, that we have to learn new ways of living. Putting our creative energies into these actions will help us make a new, more cooperative and interactive world.

If we want a more resilient Duluth, it’s time we put our creative energies together and undertake the necessary steps and actions to transform our city into a healthier and more livable place for all of us.