In a little less than two weeks we will mark the two-year anniversary of the devastating Marshall Fire. The scars of the fire are still present throughout Boulder, Louisville and Superior, from the houses that are slowly rising from the ashes, to the traumas that so many of our neighbors endured.

The anniversary of the fire is a time to remember what was lost and to contemplate how our community must approach an ever-changing climate in the near future.

As we have written before, the Marshall Fire was a freak occurrence. The conditions were horribly perfect: dense and ever-spreading urbanization; an extremely amplified mountain wave causing wind gusts to top 100 miles per hour; and an unusually wet spring followed by an extreme drought.

The truth, though, is that today freak occurrences are getting less and less freakish and becoming more and more normal occurrences.

Climate change is having a real and tangible impact on Colorado — and on Boulder County. Extreme weather events are getting more common. As the planet warms, the High Plains are getting drier. Colorado’s natural areas — more than ever before — are becoming kindling, and the climate is the furnace.

This is exactly why it is so easy to feel hopeless and exhausted in the face of the challenges we are facing — global warming is a global issue that will take global action to address, but we are just one small community that is already enduring the destruction here at home. In other words, we are suffering the consequences without the ability to fight back — a phenomenon that is present in communities throughout the world. Global warming is making its mark while politicians and multinational conglomerates bicker and deflect.

The past few weeks, though, have offered us reasons to rekindle a sense of hope.

The first is from the news out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, that nearly 200 countries have agreed to transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.

Past climate deals have called for reductions of emissions, but never before have the words “fossil fuels” been mentioned.

Of course, there is reason to be wary of such an agreement. As with the landmark Paris Climate Agreement, the deal struck in Dubai (of all places) is nonbinding. Countries will be responsible for formulating their own plans, and none can be legally forced to do anything. Considering that nations around the world would need to reduce emissions by 43% in the next 10 years if we hope to limit total global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, any unenforceable agreement seems meek.

Still, it is progress to have gotten to this point, for the global population and those in power to even be willing to recognize the stakes of the issue and to sign onto an agreement that implicitly acknowledges fossil fuels to be the problem. It is a victory worth celebrating even as we now collectively strive to hold our leaders to their word and press at every level to meet the ambitious goals necessary to avoid global devastation.

But what is maybe even more heartening than the news out of COP28 is that the Boulder Valley School District made history last month as the first in the nation to pass the Green New Deal for Schools resolution. The resolution, which was created by the youth-led Sunrise Movement, is an agreement that the district will focus on making school buildings greener, transitioning to Zero Net Energy by 2050, creating pathways to green jobs, and giving students lessons on climate change in a variety of subjects.

A school district is just a school district, and any green improvements BVSD makes to its buildings will be negligible in the face of our climate crisis. But what isn’t negligible is the commitment to integrate climate change lessons into the classroom to ensure students are properly educated about the environmental challenges they are facing and what exactly is at stake in a warming world.

More important than even that, though, is the fact that this Green New Deal for Schools resolution only happened because BVSD students made it happen. The students attended School Board meetings, spoke at open comment sessions, wrote guest opinions for the Camera and eventually worked with board members to draft the language of the resolution. Students were dedicated and hard-working, and when they looked out at the world and saw inaction from their leaders, they stepped up to do their part.

And who can blame them? It is, after all, their future at stake. This is the world they are going to inherit, and right now they are watching that inheritance burn.

One survey of 10,000 children in 10 countries, including the U.S., by The Lancet found that 84% were moderately worried about climate change, with nearly 60% extremely worried, and half reporting that they felt “sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.”

“We’re so young and it’s already this serious,” 14-year-old BVSD student Sophia Zhang told CPR last month. “Not to sound so pessimistic, but what is there worth living for if we’re just going to let our planet die? We really want to fight for our future so that we can live a future.”

As we approach the anniversary of the Marshall Fire and once again come face to face with the terrifying reality that the effects of climate change are already showing themselves in our community, we should take a moment to be hopeful. Hopeful because our global leaders are finally willing to recognize the dire need for a transition away from fossil fuels. And hopeful because the next generation of Boulderites is already showing they are committed to fighting for a brighter future.

And let’s feel hopeful because without hope there is no reason to fight. Hope is what we need to inspire us to hold our leaders to establish a plan to meet the newly set COP28 goals. And hope is what we need to follow the lead of our BVSD students and push for environmentally conscious policies locally and statewide and nationally.

We’ve witnessed the ravages of fires and floods. We’ve spent summers under clouds of smoke. And we’ve sweated through the hottest summer on record. But if our children aren’t willing to give up and be hopeless, we owe it to them and to the planet they will inherit to do our part.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board