At the G20 Summit in Hamburg early July 2017, leaders of the world’s strongest economies issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to the Paris Climate Accord. President Trump—the lone outsider—had announced in early June he would withdraw the United States from the agreement. As China doubles down on meeting its Paris targets, the chasm between the world’s two largest emitters and energy consumers continues to widen as previous joint efforts to curb carbon emissions fade away. Post-summit headlines focusing on the “G19” nations suggest America has abandoned international cooperation against climate change. But some U.S. cities and states are continuing the climate fight with their Chinese counterparts.

HONOLULU – Sludge. The final, unwanted byproduct of a toilet flush. The semi-solid stuff that even wastewater treatment plants send packing to the landfill. Unseen in the steel pipes snaking high on the exterior of Honolulu’s H-POWER plant, sludge is injected into a massive boiler where it joins the city’s trash in a roaring inferno. From the gravel lot outside, it all seems very antiseptic and smells less than a stroll past the neighborhood dumpster. But the 70-megawatt waste-to-energy facility is a workhorse, processing as much as 2,000 tons of refuse each day from Oahu’s 1 million residents. All told, it generates up to 10 percent of the electricity needed to power this Pacific island.

Cities in sub-Saharan Africa are growing rapidly. But will this lead to economic growth? According to a recent World Bank report, Africa’s Cities: Opening Doors to the World, the low level of regional and international trade is one of the main reasons why African cities are relatively poor.

While governments will play the central role in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals, they can’t do it without the private sector, said experts at the Wilson Center on April 12.

MADURAI, India – Before he agreed to serve as minister of state and take command of his country’s mammoth energy production and distribution sector, Piyush Goyal developed one of India’s most spirited political careers. “A man of ideas and competence,” according to First Post, a prominent news organization, Goyal is an accountant and lawyer who rose to the peak of Indian economic and political culture as an investment banker, member of parliament, and treasurer of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

KODAIKANAL, India – In the dogged community of eco-activists, journalists, local leaders, and artists that find common ground defending Tamil Nadu from rapacious development and rampant pollution, Nityanand Jayaraman stands out.

Shortly after the completion of the Empire State Building, the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald was shattered by a visit to its observation deck. “Full of vaunting pride,” he wrote, “the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his mind came crashing down.”