When San Diego passed a far-reaching Climate Action Plan last December, there was real reason to celebrate. The nation’s eighth-largest city, a poster child for Southern California suburbia, had passed a far-reaching, progressive environmental policy (with a Republican mayor in charge) that not only advocated for important goals, such as slashing carbon emissions in half by 2035, but made them legally binding. It was a bound promise suggesting a level of civic engagement and vision that would make the city a trailblazer for others, hitting benchmarks that perhaps have never been hit by any other city.