Taken further, the vision behind Monad Terrace’s strategy of resilience is dystopian: As water levels rise, what will happen to waterfront neighborhoods that can’t afford similar defenses? What if in some distant future, flood-resilient housing is a luxury affordable only to the privileged few?

Resilience — defending current conditions as a response to climate change, rather than fully adapting to and anticipating it — is a slippery concept, and in general it needs to be a part of any climate response. But on its own, it represents an outdated way of thinking, the idea that we can somehow stop or contain the forces of nature. It can also be exclusionary and unjust; if we can never stop or contain nature, we will just deflect it — onto those who cannot afford to get out of the way.

Instead, we should focus on equity-minded climate adaptation, on structural changes that will reimagine new urban futures under climate change. Effective adaptation will protect both the physical environment and the social fabric of neighborhoods.

The problem is that adaptation at scale requires collective action; resilience can mean simply leveraging power. Take, for example, the efforts by Peter Secchia, a Michigan businessman, Republican political donor and former U.S. ambassador to Italy, to secure funds to stop beach erosion along a stretch of Lake Michigan — along which Mr. Secchia happens to own a $6 million summer home. When at first his request failed to get a response, he wrote to lawmakers: “This lack of concern mystifies me. Our property values will diminish greatly” — adding, as if to say the quiet part out loud, “hence, our donations will also diminish.”

In California beachfront communities like Pacifica, just south of San Francisco, sea walls are going up to fortify individual homes to protect from coastal erosion. But they come with a cost, disrupting tide patterns and erasing publicly accessible beaches. The plan is controversial, and it has spurred a debate about whether managed retreat — moving inland — would be a more socially and economically viable solution. Needless to say, many opponents of managed retreat stand to benefit from the “resilient” sea walls.