America’s political commentary about climate change has been rather gloomy recently.

Core parts of President Joe Biden’s climate plan have crumbled in the face of Washington political realities. This month, the lack of one key Senate vote in his own party forced the president to scrap a clean electricity proposal that supporters had described as essential for lowering the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Now that same lawmaker, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, is reportedly opposing another climate component of the Build Back Better Act, this one involving fees on emissions of methane, a gas with even more planet-warming potential than the carbon that often leaks from gas and oil wells.  

Pundits have suggested that all of this threatens U.S. standing at a key international climate conference that opens next week, the COP26 gathering. Some advocates have questioned whether the American political system, and perhaps even democracy writ large, is equipped to deal with a global and existential climate crisis. 

But that “mostly empty” version is not the only climate story these days, and many researchers, advocates, and policymakers say it’s important to recognize and build on the progress that is happening. Despite the consensus among scientists that faster and greater action is needed, these individuals caution against a rhetorical approach of panic and “last chance” alarm. Indeed, they are finding strength and inspiration in bottom-up success stories, macro shifts in attitudes, and even the messy grappling of the political process itself. 

“There is a lot of hard work going on,” says Daniel Bresette, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, an education and policy organization in Washington. “But it takes time to build a majority block of votes to pass legislation. There’s a way to look at that pessimistically and say, ‘Well, the process isn’t working.’” 

Andrew Harnik/AP

Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, a holdout vote who sank President Joe Biden's clean electricity program, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 27, 2021. Mr. Biden is seeking to ensure that $150 billion in spending canceled by Mr. Manchin will be spent on other climate initiatives.

Yet the only way climate action can happen, he says, is if enough people agree that it’s needed. “And that is happening – it’s OK to acknowledge that it might take a little bit of time.” 

That’s not to say he doesn’t feel time pressure. Mr. Bresette, like many involved in climate policy, believes that the longer governments and individuals take to lower greenhouse gas emissions, the greater the damage to Earth’s climate and the harder it will be to reverse it. A United Nations report released earlier this week found that countries’ current emissions promises fell short of avoiding the sort of climate change that would cause, in officials’ words, “endless suffering.” 

At the same time, he and others see climate movement, particularly outside of the federal legislative process. Municipalities across the United States have embraced significant climate action, from Dallas, which plans to become carbon neutral by 2050, to Los Angeles, which this summer began piloting electric school buses to transport students. 

“Below the level of the state, there are all sorts of amazing things happening,” Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, said on the podcast “Climate Pod” recently. Dr. Hayhoe, author of the new book “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope,” listed numerous local climate initiatives in Texas, from Houston’s climate action plan to the fact that Fort Hood is powered 43% by clean energy. “Change is happening – I feel like if it can happen in Texas, it can happen everywhere. But as you can see, it is percolating up from the bottom. And what is going to be the last to change is our politics at the state and the national level.”

Even still, 10 U.S. states have passed legislation that commits to 100% clean electricity by 2050 or sooner. This summer, Illinois became the first Midwest state in that camp, pledging to shift to carbon-free energy by 2045. Oregon aims for 2040.

Such actions, building in recent years, are one reason the U.S. has reduced greenhouse gas emissions some 20% compared with 2005 levels.   

Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

A lone climate demonstrator holds a banner outside Parliament in London on Oct. 25, 2021, ahead of the United Nations climate conference, COP26, which will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, starting Oct. 31.

“There is a lot of progress in the states,” says Chris Chyung, senior campaign manager at the Center for American Progress. “I just keep pointing to them as a beacon, quite honestly. If we can’t get things done in a divided Congress, then we can definitely look toward the states to mitigate some of that. But at the same time, the states can’t do it all on their own.”  

The Biden administration agrees with this latter point. It has promised to use the full power of the presidency to fight climate change and has been integrating climate policy into various arms of government. Last week, for instance, it released new analyses on how climate change intersects with national security, foreign policy, and migration. It has taken steps to integrate climate analysis into financial decisions, from federal procurement to rules on private-sector retirement plans. The Securities and Exchange Commission is weighing a mandate for corporations to disclose their climate risks. 

Significantly, climate legislation remains very much in play. Although much of the media focus over recent weeks has been on the disintegration of the Clean Electricity Performance Program, the president has said that he is committed to using the $150 billion that would have gone to that initiative for other climate action items that, according to reports, could go to efforts like climate-focused block grants to states and clean-energy tax incentives for consumers and industry.  

“The loss of CEPP created a hole in our carbon reductions, and although there’s no one silver bullet that will fill that, it’s powerful that they are reallocating those funds to other climate programs,” says Jamaal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action, a climate action advocacy group. 

Already, the Democratic spending bill has more than $200 billion worth of incentives for clean energy technologies, from aviation fuels to electric cars – with extra going to those made in the U.S. 

This funding would come in addition to important climate efforts that have already received bipartisan support through the infrastructure bill passed by the Senate earlier this year, points out Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center.  

“It has some very monumental new programs representing the down payment on the development of the advanced technologies that we know we’re going to need to hit our net-zero targets,” he says. “It would really be a step change in the level of effort and investment by the federal government.”

Examples from the infrastructure bill include $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen, $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging, and $11.5 billion for low-carbon mass transit – plus other investments connected to offshore wind energy.

And these numbers, Mr. Mackler points out, are by no means hidden.

“They are really climate-focused technology initiatives,” he says. “And that bill was passed in the Senate with a broadly bipartisan vote. It gives me encouragement that, when framed in the right way, a lot of climate policies are actually pretty popular. And that story gets missed.”

This isn’t to say that all of these efforts are enough, he and others reiterate. More comprehensive actions will be needed, as scientists see global warming currently on track to result in devastating extreme weather events, sea level rise, food shortages, and other impacts. 

Charlie Riedel/AP/File

Wind turbines are silhouetted against the sky at dawn near Spearville, Kansas, on Jan. 13, 2021. In its current pared-down form, the Build Back Better Act omits President Joe Biden's clean electricity program – an effort to push electric utilities to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources such as solar and wind.

But a number of recent studies have shown a growing American consensus on the importance of climate action. This week, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 59% of Americans say the issue of climate change is very or extremely important to them, up from 49% who said the same thing in 2018.   

New research from the Climate Leadership Council, a bipartisan group that has long advocated for a price or tax on carbon, shows that many Americans support climate action as well – especially when those efforts are connected to labor force and economic progress.

In a poll released today, for instance, the group found that most Americans, across political lines, were in favor of what’s called a border carbon adjustment, a fee on imports connected to carbon pollution resulting from producing those goods. And more than 75% of respondents said they were willing to pay more for a product if they “knew it was made in America with less carbon pollution, and that paying more would help create jobs here by bringing more manufacturing and production back to America.”

“There’s a narrative out there that voters want to do something on climate but they’re not willing to be part of the solution,” says Greg Bertelsen, CEO of the Climate Leadership Council. “That view is an oversimplification. The fact is, Americans want climate policies that are effective at what they’re intended to do, which is lower emissions.”

Patrick Semansky/AP

Sunlight shines on the U.S. Senate in Washington, on Oct. 27, 2021. Senate Democrats unveiled a proposed billionaires’ tax to help pay for President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic policy package. It drew criticism from some senators arguing the bill could penalize the economy by focusing on taxpayers who are often entrepreneurs and innovators.

Coming off a pandemic year in which many working-class people lost their jobs, America’s 400 richest families saw their collective wealth increase by 40%. Yet under the current U.S. tax code, these ultra-rich are likely to pay a lower tax rate than those making less than $10,000 a year – and some might pay no tax at all.

Now President Joe Biden wants to change that. 

“I hope you can be a millionaire or a billionaire,” the president said at a CNN town hall in Baltimore last week. “But at least pay your fair share. Chip in a little bit.”

Democrats are looking to revise the U.S. tax code to help fund the sweeping social reforms in the Build Back Better bill, which they say would create a more fair and equitable society. To pay for the bill – which includes everything from universal pre-K to expanded health care and climate measures – House Democrats planned to roll back many of the Trump tax cuts. But they ran into opposition in the Senate. So instead, the party has begun to look for ways to generate revenue from the very richest Americans.

On Wednesday Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden unveiled a billionaires’ tax, aiming to capture gains in the stock portfolios of about 700 wealthy Americans that currently go untaxed for years or even a whole lifetime. But the plan appeared to hit a roadblock when Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia called it “convoluted.” He expressed support for the wealthy paying their fair share, but added that he didn’t like that it singled out people who have created many jobs and contributed a lot of money to philanthropic causes.

“Everybody in this country that has been blessed and prospered should pay a patriotic tax,” said Senator Manchin, proposing instead a 15% tax for wealthy individuals, to ensure that they wouldn’t be able to avoid taxes completely, even with the best accountants and lawyers. “I believe we will end up where everyone must participate.”

The disagreement put the Democrats in disarray on the eve of President Biden’s trip to Glasgow, Scotland, for a United Nations climate summit, by which time they’d hoped to have the budget plan finalized so he could tout America’s new climate initiatives. Instead, they wound up arguing among themselves about how best to ensure the wealthy pay their “fair share.”

David Gamage, a scholar of tax law and policy at Indiana University, argues that the ultra-rich should not only pay more in raw terms than average Americans, but should pay a proportionately higher rate. That’s in part because they and their companies are benefiting more from societal institutions like the legal system, market system, and police who uphold the rule of law. 

“Those who benefit the most from these institutions, as measured by wealth, should pay more,” he says.

Republicans and business interests counter that Democrats aren’t properly valuing the innovation, jobs, and products and services that many wealthy individuals contribute to society and the economy. Entrepreneurs, they argue, are more efficient than government at allocating money to good ideas. 

“We all benefit from police and fire and roads, we all have those,” says Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, former CEO of Bain Capital. “But you know what, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Bill Gates have created a lot of value for all of us and created a lot of jobs. Putting in place a tax scheme which will make it harder to begin a business would not be good for any of us.”

Evan Vucci/AP

President Joe Biden participates in a CNN town hall at the Baltimore Center Stage Pearlstone Theater, on Oct. 21, 2021. During the Baltimore event he called on wealthy Americans to "chip in" and pay their fair share of taxes. At stake for Democrats is how to pay for a spending bill on education, health care, and climate change.

What the rich pay

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe corporations and wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes, according to an April 2021 poll by the Pew Research Center. 

So how much do they really pay? A new White House report estimates that America's richest 400 families paid an average 8.2% federal income tax rate over the past decade. That’s lower than the lowest of the country’s seven tax brackets.

That math involves certain assumptions that not all would agree with. But in a concrete example, investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica analyzed a trove of leaked IRS data and found that in 2018 the 25 richest Americans were worth $1.1 trillion – the equivalent of 14.3 million American wage earners combined. Yet according to their analysis, the top 25 paid a combined $1.9 billion in personal federal taxes, compared with $143 billion for the wage earners. 

In certain years, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg, Carl Icahn, and George Soros didn’t pay a penny in federal income taxes, according to an analysis of leaked IRS data obtained by ProPublica.

Much of that is due to billionaires hiring accountants and lawyers to help them utilize loopholes in the tax code, which is legal. And in recent years, the IRS’s ability to conduct audits has decreased, particularly when it comes to complex tax returns, according to Natasha Sarin, deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department. Since 2010, the number of IRS agents has fallen about 20% to just over 75,000, of which fewer than 3,000 focus on investigations.

So in a separate initiative, Democrats are proposing to essentially double the IRS’s manpower. They also plan to require banks to notify the IRS when $10,000 or more of non-wage income goes into or comes out of an individual’s accounts in a given year, a tool which supporters say will help the agency better enforce wealthy individuals’ compliance. 

“As a matter of fairness and as a matter of revenue, you really focus on compliance in a meaningful space by which you can make significant progress,” said Ms. Sarin on a webinar moderated by the Committee for a Responsible Budget on Oct. 26.

“Dynastic wealth”

Senator Wyden has been working on his proposal since 2019. It aims to change a two-tiered system in which everyday Americans like nurses and firefighters pay annual taxes but wealthier individuals can defer taxation on the appreciation of their stock portfolio and other assets in a cycle that he describes as “fuel[ing] the concentration of dynastic wealth.”

Under his proposal, America’s billionaires – about 700 citizens – would have to pay taxes each year based on the market value of their portfolios at year’s end. Gains would be taxed, but if they took a loss in a given year, they could count that against gains earned in one of the prior three years.

“It’s a gigantic improvement over the tax system we have now that mostly fails to collect taxes from billionaires,” says Indiana University’s Professor Gamage, who consulted with Senator Wyden on the tax.

Critics are already calling the initiative unworkable and possibly unconstitutional. There’s also the more immediate concern that if billionaires were to lead a sudden sell-off in the stock market before the new tax took effect, that could hurt the retirement accounts of many Americans, at least temporarily.

Andrew Harnik/AP

Sen. Ron Wyden, of Oregon, speaks to reporters following a Democratic strategy meeting at the Capitol in Washington, on Oct. 26, 2021. He introduced a bill that would tax the wealthiest Americans, who currently often see large gains in investment value go untaxed.

Professor Gamage, who also worked on the tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act, says that as long as the Supreme Court upholds existing precedents and the 16th Amendment, which provided for a federal income tax, Senator Wyden’s proposed tax – including on unrealized gains – should pass muster. But others are not so sure the court would or should uphold those existing precedents, some of which are controversial.

And Senator Manchin was not the only Democratic senator who signaled caution about the billionaires tax. Mark Warner, another Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said it could “distort markets,” while Sen. Tim Kaine said it was “riskier” than other funding proposals. Other Democrats said they would need to see more details.

Jettisoned House plans

Meanwhile, some House Democrats are irked that their own carefully developed plans for raising revenues were being jettisoned at the 11th hour for complex alternatives that they have had little time to study or fine tune.

“I’m frankly and honestly disappointed,” House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters Oct. 26, though he added he would support the billionaires’ tax if that’s what it took to advance the president’s Build Back Better act. “This is a bill worth paying for in a way that we can get the votes to do so. Unfortunately, it does not appear we could pass the [House] version through the Senate.”

If Democrats can’t come up with enough ways to raise revenues, through taxes or otherwise, that could jeopardize the president’s promise that his Build Back Better agenda wouldn’t add to the national deficit or cost people making under $400,000 a penny more in taxes. 

Already, Republicans are arguing that the Democrats’ big spending is driving up inflation, causing the price of everything from gas to groceries to go up – not to mention heating bills this winter. 

“There should be fair taxes for everybody, but ultimately there should be limited government here in Washington,” said GOP whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana Tuesday.

The purpose of the Democrats’ tax proposals was not so much about making the tax code more fair, he argued, but rather paying for trillions of dollars in new initiatives. The tax proposals, he said, “have nothing to do with equity.”

Michael Buholzer/Keystone/AP

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan (left) and his delegation leave a hotel in Zurich where they were holding talks on Oct. 6 with top Chinese officials in a bid to iron out differences on a range of topics from trade to Taiwan.

Cold War II, it’s being called, and there’s a good deal of evidence that it may already have started.

Yet despite the steepening decline in relations between the United States and China, there are also signs that both countries may be looking for ways to step on the brakes.

That won’t be easy. And there’s no prospect of a return to anything like the engagement and cooperation that bound the two nations at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

But the key question remains open. Can the world’s two major powers find a way to be rivals, even foes, on fundamental political and economic issues, while coexisting and even cooperating on world issues where their interests align?

President Joe Biden has insisted there is room for such an arrangement, and the coming weeks and months are likely to provide hints as to whether he is right. But so far the signs have been discouraging, and they are not expected to improve at two major international summits in the next few days – a G-20 meeting of the world’s major economies this weekend, followed by the global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Climate change has been one of the few subjects about which Beijing and Washington are actually talking, and U.S. envoy John Kerry has argued that China, both as a major power and as the world’s largest carbon emitter, is critical to success. But Beijing’s response has been stark: Mr. Biden’s “conflict with cooperation” formula won’t play here.

In other words, if you want a joint U.S.-China push on climate change, it will cost you. Stop denouncing our policies toward Hong Kong and the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, pull back from public support for Taiwan, and soften the Trump administration’s line on trade.

And while China could still announce new climate targets before Glasgow, that summit’s organizers, and the Italian hosts of the Group of 20, have failed to persuade President Xi Jinping to attend in person. They’ve been left to hope that he will at least check in remotely.

So is Cold War II unavoidable?

There are certainly serious rifts, and they’ve been growing since Mr. Xi ascended to the presidency in 2012 and took a tighter personal grip on power than any leader since Mao Zedong. His vision is of a China ascendant, more authoritarian at home and ambitious overseas, while Western democracies inexorably decline.

Ng Han Guan/AP

Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen on a billboard in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Four years after Beijing's brutal crackdown on largely Muslim minorities native to Xinjiang, its behavior there continues to sour relations with Washington.

Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been confined to “reeducation” camps. The pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong has been crushed, and Beijing has ripped up the “one nation, two systems” pledge it gave when Britain returned its former colony to Chinese rule.

China has also been fortifying islands in the South China Sea and modernizing its armed forces – reportedly testing a hypersonic missile this month.

In Washington, a broadly bipartisan view has emerged that China – once seen mainly as a cheap source of consumer goods for the West – is now a competitive threat on the economic and trade fronts, using unfair state subsidies to develop its high-tech industries.

The Biden administration has made it clear that it will continue to argue for human rights, fairer trade, and the security of democracies in China’s neighborhood. And Washington is naturally keeping a close eye on China’s military buildup – as is NATO.

Still, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg recently echoed President Biden’s contention that areas of cooperation – such as climate change and arms control – could and had to be found.

Will the U.S. and China begin moving in that direction?

Mr. Biden went out of his way, addressing the United Nations last month, to stress that “we are not seeking a new Cold War,” saying that though Washington would “compete vigorously,” he was mindful of the danger that relations could “tip from responsible competition to conflict.”

The U.S. president held his first one-on-one conversation with President Xi by telephone last month. While Mr. Xi balked at an early summit, the leaders did agree to meet by video link before the end of the year.

Both men are also aware of the potential economic price of a full-on Cold War II. U.S.-Soviet trade during Cold War I was negligible, but the U.S. and China are deeply connected by more than half a trillion dollars in annual trade.

From the U.S. perspective, one major advantage of making China a “frenemy” is that it would avoid further unsettling an already turbulent international climate, troubled by the prospect that a cold war could always heat up, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

But China may also have its reasons to dial back hostilities. Economically, despite its meteoric expansion, it still lags in key areas, such as the invention and production of the latest-generation microchips.

And Beijing, too, seems aware of the danger of potential military escalation, or miscalculation.

Though Mr. Xi is on record as predicting that China will eventually “reunite” Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary, he said this month that “peaceful reunification” would be preferable.

And in a sign that Beijing too might want to calm the atmosphere, China responded to Western reports of its hypersonic missile launch by denying it had ever happened, claiming it had merely been testing a reusable space vehicle.

Whatever they did, the Chinese are at least steering clear of potentially incendiary bragging.

In a scene from the new documentary “Found,” a baby in a white dress looks out from the arms of her adoptive mother to a woman in a flowered shirt who smiles, waves, and walks over to gently press her forehead against the child’s head.

The nanny is one of hundreds working in orphanages that brimmed with babies during China’s decadeslong one-child policy. These caretakers often came to love as their own the children they nurtured, who were intentionally left by their parents along busy streets or on the steps of government buildings so they’d be discovered.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Amanda Lipitz, “Found,” from Netflix, follows three blood-related cousins – one of them Ms. Lipitz’s niece – as they get to know each other and travel from the U.S. to orphanages in China to better understand their roots. Along the way, they find a thread of shared experience that ties them not just to each other but also to a wider network of people. In unraveling this thread, the film explores larger themes of identity and connection. 

“I feel like a lot of times when people talk about this situation … they use negative words to describe it,” says Ms. Lipitz, in a Zoom interview. “[But] I wanted it to come from this just positive place of they were loved, they were found, they were safe, they were protected. And they continue to be.”

The documentary arrives at a time when adoption stories are more prevalent – including in TV shows like “This Is Us” and “Modern Family” and the 2015 documentary “Twinsters.” “Found” adds to this growing body of work by showing a different side of Chinese adoption.  

In weaving together the perspectives of adoptees and adoptive parents in the U.S. – and nannies and parents who gave up children in China – the documentary demonstrates the ongoing emotional effects of adoption. And by showing the personal experiences behind China’s one-child policy, “Found” challenges traditional narratives that girls were abandoned because they were unwanted or unloved.

“The documentary demonstrates the complexities of search and reunion, as well as offers a humanizing perspective of birth families,” says Kimberly McKee, an associate professor in the Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. “A lot of times, especially in the case of a Chinese adoption, there tends to be these one-dimensional pathologized narratives about birth families, and ‘Found’ really tries to counter some of those perceptions by illustrating the constrained choices that so many of these families encounter.” 

A family odyssey

China’s one-child rule was announced in 1979 and was replaced by a two-child policy in 2015. More than 78,000 children, a majority of them female, were adopted into families in the U.S. from 1999 to 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. Chloe Lipitz, Ms. Lipitz’s niece, was among them. She joined her American family at 15 months old, and over a decade later, was set to celebrate her bat mitzvah in Israel. 

Ms. Lipitz says that an image in someone’s mind often inspires a movie, and for her it was “my beautiful and incredible niece at the [Western] Wall in Jerusalem, surrounded by our big Jewish family.” The idea for the film grew out of Ms. Lipitz’s wondering what it must have been like to be the only person of color in a white family and how Chloe would feel if she could go back and fill in the gaps of her past. 

Shortly before the bat mitzvah, Chloe connected with her cousin Sadie Mangelsdorf through a DNA matching service. Soon after, the girls discovered they had another cousin, Lily Bolka. And so their odyssey began. 

In the film, the three young women – at that time, in 2017, ages 13 (Chloe), 14 (Sadie), and 17 (Lily) – talk together via video chat and start to plan for their trip to China. The camera captures their internal conflict as they navigate what it means to be Chinese American adoptees and how much of their past they want to uncover. 

“Would you want to meet your birth family or look for them? I would not,” says Chloe in the film. 

“I think it would be nice to like know who our real parents are and like visit our hometown and see where we’re from,” Sadie responds.

Thinking about how deep into the past to go is typical, says LiLi Johnson, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “[These] are common questions within adoption communities,” she says. 

Netflix

Liu Hao (seated at right), a genealogist and guide in China, conducts interviews in the film "Found" to try to find relatives of adopted American teens.

Eventually, as Lily, Sadie, and Chloe travel through China and meet the people who fill in the gaps of their early lives, they find in each other a comfort that comes from knowing that someone else understands their experience. And they find kinship that goes beyond genetics.

Finding those ties brought a vital lesson, says Chloe, in an interview via Zoom. “[There are] times you can feel so alone, especially just not knowing who you are. [But] you are important in so many lives that you’ve touched in the past that you may not remember.”

Questions about identity

The film also draws out themes, well documented in research on transracial adoption, about the complexities of navigating an Asian American identity. Through scenes where the girls process comments about not being considered Asian enough and flip through family photo albums where no one looks like them, “Found” prompts larger consideration of what it means to live in white families while navigating outside that unit as Asian Americans. 

“I hadn’t really thought about it much that I was like one of the only Asians in the communities I had been in,” Chloe says in “Found.” “But as I grew ... I just wanted to find more people that I could relate to and that looked like me.“

Lily says in a Zoom interview that she had a tough time with adoption when she was in high school, because she avoided it when she was younger and didn’t want to talk about it. The documentary opportunity came as she was healing. She says the trip to China did fill in gaps in the past, but “filling that past, it’s a healing process, too. It’s not easy.”

Dr. McKee, who is herself an adoptee from Korea and whose work focuses on transnational adoption, says movies like “Found” can play an important role. “I’m hoping that these films are also seen as a good starting point for really recognizing that in the case of Chinese transnational adoption and transnational adoptions from Asia broadly, that we have to have a conversation about what it means to be Asian American, what it means to be an Asian adoptee,” she says.

While the film focuses on the perspectives of adoptees, watching the girls’ journey to self-discovery holds lessons for all, says the director.

“You know, everybody has holes in their story,” says Ms. Lipitz. “It might not be going back and looking at ancestors. It might just be your own journey to finding out who you really are [and] what you really want.”

“Found” is rated PG for thematic content and brief smoking.

My oldest son and his pals founded a political party last spring when they were all unceremoniously sent home from college. The Young Progressives of Delco, New York, was born of what they saw as America’s terrifying and exhausting realities. Its first initiative was to hold a local mayor to account for what YPOD saw as his racist, homophobic, and misogynistic Facebook page. 

First came the group chat, because you can’t have a movement without a group chat. Then a petition. Social media accounts were created and optimized. The founders met via Zoom to discuss strategy and responsibilities. I listened at my son’s door, because I’m that mom.

There were no oversize egos, no boring reiterations of why they were there in the first place. Someone had an agenda. Someone had the action items. Someone had a calendar. That’s when I knew we were all going to be OK.

My only responsibility was silence, which I’m not very good at. But no one wants to hear some old hippie blather on about how many times she marched on Washington or how to properly get a chant going at a rally.

The mayor would not step down, take sensitivity training, or even allow the Young Progressives to speak at town meetings. This only emboldened them. Their next initiative was an entirely nonpartisan voter registration drive. Genius.

In a decidedly red county, any talk of progressive politics can label one a – oh, pick a derogatory phrase. But no one here dares to question the unabashed patriotism of one person, one vote.

A local business offered its empty restaurant. Between registration lulls, the socially distant volunteers sent postcards to encourage voting in close state races elsewhere. They helped new county residents, transplants from Brooklyn, change their registration. State senators dropped in to offer their thanks. 

When local elections were announced, YPOD founders posted an inspirational call for candidates to run on its ticket.

My son texted me. “Mom, are you going to run? You promised, remember?” 

“I don’t stand a chance,” I replied. “And I’m a long way from young, son.” 

“It’s not about winning, Mom. It’s about running.”

The next day I went to the village clerk and collected a petition to get on the ballot. I needed 35 signatures. It was minus 8 degrees F, and the sidewalks were crusted with patches of ice (make a note to pass a shoveling ordinance).

The 12-year-old in me whined, “Amy, this is a complete waste of time! You have no name recognition, and you’re trying to unseat an incumbent. Go home. Watch something stupid. Eat coconut cake.” 

But as my father used to say, “Your only job is to leave the world better than the way you found it.” OK, Pop. OK.

I got my signatures and a sense of voter issues. My five-point platform included typical proposals on zoning and stimulus. But No. 5 was sticky: the fire horn. Fire horns have long been a fixture of rural America, as a way to call volunteer firefighters in from the fields. Ours also goes off daily at noon. It’s loud. It’s a fire horn. 

In my campaign literature I said we should “talk about the fire horn.” See how objective and gentle I was? Then the “News Around Town” Facebook page took a flamethrower to it. Derision, suspicion, and name-calling ensued. Such is the nature of discourse via social media.

Election Day arrived. On the walk to Village Hall, I recalled that Cleve­land School’s bicycle safety poster contest was the last time I’d been on a ballot. The competition was stiff. My depiction of a bike accident was powerful. The twisted frame of a banana-seat Schwinn. A limp stick figure in a puddle of Crayola razzmatazz red. It was a chilling warning to children to ride on the right.

My mother told me the nice thing to do is to vote for the other person. I lost to Janet G. by one vote: mine.

I did not make that mistake this time. I put an X by my name and placed the folded paper ballot in the box guarded by two women in festive sweaters. Sometimes it takes 50 years to right a wrong.

Voter turnout was twice as large as last time, and the election attracted the most first-time voters in recent memory. 

I did not win. But progress is never a loss. It’s where hope stakes its claim.

AP

A power plant fires coal from the nearby Garzweiler open-cast mine near Luetzerath, Germany.

If you’re looking for a scorecard to judge the highly anticipated United Nations Climate Change Conference that starts Oct. 31, watch for the debut of this particular scorecard: The world body that now sets rules for financial accounting of public companies plans to announce a similar body to set “sustainability standards.” The aim is to ensure firms are transparent and accurate about their promises to both fight climate change and adapt to climate-related risks.

The proposed International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) would help investors and others hold companies accountable for their promises to lighten their impact on the environment. In other words, the board would provide eyewash for any green washing, or challenge a company’s rhetoric and numbers when they don’t result in verifiable action.

Unfulfilled promises about climate action, by both companies and countries, have dogged these U.N. climate conferences. This 26th conference being held in Glasgow, Scotland, may see the global use of quantifiable metrics for measuring real progress.

One reason for the global standards is that many companies want them. Under pressure from activist stockholders and employees to be less polluting, they now face a proliferation of standards by different bodies. The standards are often inconsistent, lack comparability, or are too subjective. Companies seek clarity and simplicity, especially when operating in many countries.

Several countries from China to Canada are eager to host the headquarters of the new board, as it could be a powerful force for influence over climate action. It will help build long-term trust in companies as credible fighters of climate change as well as help define what is the best path toward a healthy climate.

Differences remain over how the ISSB will operate. Will it allow for subjective judgments, such as the long-term benefits of tree planting? Will it merely assist companies to find new ways to improve their bottom line in helping the environment? Will it force them to lower profit expectations for the sake of a global cause? Nudging often works better than coercing.

For now, at least, the world is expanding ways to achieve the public good of a healthy climate. While new limits may be placed on air pollution, the idea of a common goodness has no limits.