Opinion: Marshall Fire begs the question: “Will we respond to climate change by design or by disaster?”

 “It’s going to be by design, or it will be by disaster.” That was the quote I heard related to how we respond to climate change. Perhaps this, expanded to include other areas, should be the theme for the Council’s upcoming goal setting session.

The Marshall fire reminds us that climate change’s drier conditions plus stronger winds makes it incumbent on us to do our best to reduce the risks. We may need to increase the work on our Open Space areas by doing more thinning and using more controlled burns. We also should put some serious focus on helping all homeowners, especially at the city’s edges, reduce their risks and those they might impose on their neighbors, by ensuring that all buildings are more fire resistant.

Given climate change’s increased flooding, we really, really, really need a comprehensive flood management plan, so that we know what improvements or other actions are worth doing, which ones should have priority, and how we are going to fund them. With the proposed South Boulder Creek plan costing a huge sum, the rest of the city’s flood prone areas deserve to know that they are not going to be left hanging for decades into the future.

Most people don’t know that about one-third of Boulder’s water comes from the Colorado River basin. Available data suggests that climate change will force the Upper Basin states (including Colorado) to make very serious cutbacks in their consumption so that the Lower Basin states and Mexico keep getting their priority share. Then Boulder and the other cities that get water from our trans-basin diversion will likely be forced to make tough decisions about whether farmers will keep getting water or whether we do, etc. And even our east slope watershed yields will shrink. We need to make decisions now about limiting total city size, so that we don’t make the future any worse than it will be anyway.

On the emissions side of the equation, we really need a comprehensive transportation plan that effectively reduces emissions and the high levels of congestion that we experience each day. Simply assuming mass transit will get the job done is a big mistake: There is the “first and last mile” problem, the tax increases and TABOR votes to pay the subsidies, and the empty busses we see all the time. We could much more rapidly, effectively, and cheaply reduce GHG emissions, congestion, and accidents by finally starting to charge for parking citywide and then using the revenues to pay people to carpool.

Although not directly related to climate change, our affordable housing approach deserves a comprehensive re-evaluation. We have some excellent programs that yield price controlled and rent restricted units, but the numbers are simply inadequate. Because of the rapid price escalation of market-priced units, Boulder’s housing on average is rapidly becoming less affordable.

The first step should be to push the Legislature to repeal the state preemption forbidding rent control, just as they did with the firearms law. Then Boulder could require, for example, that 50% of the units in new developments be permanently affordable, which is barely enough to preserve the current economic distribution of our population. Also, the experimental program to “buy down” existing units needs to be expanded (and modified as necessary) so that more existing units eventually become affordable. Finally, cutting job growth would help take some pressure off.

The Council should also take a serious re-look at our jobs/population imbalance. This fantasy that we could have all or even most of Boulder’s workers live in Boulder is just that — a fantasy. First, based on the Metro area’s jobs/pop ratio, we’d have to almost double our population just to balance the jobs that we already have, never mind the massive amount of job growth currently planned for East Boulder. And it’s unlikely that workers would want to move out of their single-family neighborhoods in surrounding areas to be jammed together in apartments here, like in Boulder Junction. Instead, we should take the opposite course, and get some businesses that want to expand to move to adjoining cities, which will also reduce commuting and associated emissions. All of this is a big project and requires a lot of political will, because sacred oxen will be gored in the process. But if it’s not done, then things will just get worse.

There’s lots more to be done on climate change, including addressing Xcel’s continuing coal burning. But that’s a discussion for another time.

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