Climate Resilience Starts With Economic Justice

In December, Boulder experienced record-breaking daily high temperatures. On Christmas, it was not white. Instead, we had an unprecedented high of 71° F. As a Boulder native, with memories of snowy Christmas mornings, I found myself so unnerved by the warmth that I stayed inside almost the whole day, unable to face what felt like a perversion of the season. Notifications came in from Watch Duty about brush fires. We held our breath, praying, "Not another Marshall Fire."

I checked the weather app obsessively for signs of rain or snow. Nothing. In the week before the holiday, many of us, myself included, went without power for days. At night, the darkness created an atmosphere that reminded me of Octavia Butler's prophetic novel, The Parable of the Sower:

"We couldn't see so many stars when I was little," my stepmother says to me. She speaks in Spanish, her own first language. She stands still and small, looking up at the broad sweep of the Milky Way. ... I look up at the stars and the deep, black sky. "Why couldn't you see the stars?" I ask her. "Everyone can see them." I speak in Spanish, too, as she's taught me. It's an intimacy somehow. "City lights," she says. "Lights, progress, growth, all those things we're too hot and too poor to bother with anymore."

Butler wrote those words in 1993. Thirty-two years later, we're living inside her vision.

This time of ours is dire. But there is still work to be done—work that can be done, that we can do, here in our community. As former Senator Steve Fenberg said, "Boulder can be a laboratory that shows how systems can change." The question is no longer whether change is necessary. The question is whether we have the courage to build something different before it's too late.

Boulder must shift from an extractive to a regenerative local economy, one that prioritizes community ownership, local resilience, and meeting basic needs over profit accumulation. Without this fundamental redesign, our city’s climate goals will remain hollow promises that only the economically secure can afford to support.

The Current System Is Failing People

Nationally, we're living through an unprecedented inequality crisis, and Boulder is not immune. Yet we quibble over whether to give service workers a $5/hour raise while ignoring the fact that CEO pay ratios have reached 400:1, or that those who have built their wealth by extracting from the people, infrastructure, and nature of this place hold outsized power and influence. This imbalance doesn't just create discomfort; it undermines community cohesion and fosters a local ruling class.

Boulder has launched meaningful climate programs: renewable energy expansion, energy efficiency initiatives, transportation modernization, and carbon reduction plans. These efforts are critical. But they don't address a fundamental question: What about the people? For Boulder residents to think beyond themselves, toward the wellness of their neighbors and the environment, they must first have their basic needs met. We aren't doing enough to reshape our local economy so that people in our community can actually access housing, childcare, healthcare, or opportunities to build wealth. Without economic security, climate action becomes a luxury only some can afford to care about.

A Different Framework Is Possible

If we want to build a resilient, equitable economy, we need to fundamentally redesign how our economy works. It has to work in favor of people, not capital. It has to be regenerative, not extractive. This means understanding our economy as embedded within nature and society, constrained by planetary boundaries and shaped by the power structures we choose to build. It means moving beyond the pursuit of endless growth and instead supporting diverse ways of provisioning ourselves: mutual aid, cooperative structures, public goods, and regenerative practices. And it means seeking not maximum efficiency but robust resilience—building systems that can adapt, withstand shocks, and support life over the long term.

Here's What Boulder Can Do

Instead of corporate ownership of housing and speculative second-home real estate, we develop policies that favor community land trusts and cooperative housing models. Instead of outside investors and corporate monopolies dominating our economy, we make it easier to run and sustain small businesses and incentivize spending within our local food system. Instead of concentrating business ownership in the hands of a few, we expand community and employee ownership structures.

Instead of privatized spaces, we create more public gathering places—the "third places" that build social fabric and community resilience. And instead of privatized public goods like waste management and energy, we reclaim these necessities as public entities. Consider: the head of Xcel Energy makes $13 million per year while the company prepares to raise rates in the midst of an affordability crisis. It's unconscionable that so much private wealth is extracted by the CEO of our energy provider while residents struggle to keep their lights on.

Some will say this sounds expensive or unrealistic. But maintaining our current system costs far more: in climate damage, in social services for those left behind, in the inequality that tears communities apart. Others will argue that Boulder can't solve national problems. We're not trying to. We're modeling what's possible, creating a template other communities can adapt. And yes, this approach will challenge extractive business models. But it will strengthen resilient, local ones; the businesses that employ our neighbors, reinvest in our community, and build wealth that stays here.

The real question isn't whether we can afford to change. It's whether we can afford not to.

Next December, will we again watch our city threatened by fires under 71-degree Christmas skies while the powerful profit and the vulnerable suffer? Or will we have begun the hard work of building an economy that regenerates rather than extracts? Butler's prophecy doesn't have to be our future—but only if we act now, and act boldly. Municipalities serve as the testing grounds for state and federal policy, and Boulder is in a unique position to experiment in revolutionary ways that could remake our economy and, potentially, the nation's.

It's time to prove that systems can change.