Student reflections on deliberate climate change

 You can view the discussion posts for Tyler Christian Daniels below, or you can switch to viewing the full discussion context.

from Module 9 Relational Summary

Apr 7, 2026, 9:31 AM

Tyler Christian Daniels

The thing that hit me hardest this week was finding out that climate change in America was not an accident. It was a plan. The early English settlers, including people like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were actively trying to reshape the climate of the Western Hemisphere to make it feel more like England. Clear the forests. Drain the swamps. Plow the land. They genuinely believed that removing the native ecology would make the continent more hospitable, and they acted on that belief with everything they had. What they got instead was the Dust Bowl, depleted soils, deserts where forests used to be, and a food system now running on fossil fuel inputs just to stay alive. We have been doing climate change on purpose since before the country had a name. We just called it progress.

I work as a land development planner in Polk County, Florida. The Green Swamp and wetland buffers come up in my work constantly because every new subdivision, every commercial establishment, every road expansion has to be evaluated against what the land underneath it actually is and what it is doing. Our county takes that seriously, and I see firsthand what it looks like when environmental protections are part of the process from the beginning. But I also see the other side of it every day. We are dealing with the accumulated damage of decisions made decades ago by people who had the same mindset the lecture describes, the belief that improving land means extracting from it, reshaping it, and moving on. Older septic systems leaching into our lakes. Runoff from decades of impervious surface development choking water quality. Overhunting that disrupted ecosystems that still have not recovered. Traffic corridors that cut through habitats with no plan for what that fragmentation does over time. The damage does not announce itself immediately. It builds quietly until the county inherits a crisis that nobody who made the original decisions ever had to answer for.

That is exactly what Professor Culhane is describing when he talks about the locust strategy of American land use. Buy cheap, extract fast, sell high, leave. The people who drained the wetlands and platted the subdivisions around our lakes in the 1960s and 70s are long gone. The county is now the one holding the bill. And that pattern repeats itself everywhere across the Western Hemisphere. The Maya story from Pedro Cuc in the lecture hit close to home for that reason. His people cleared the forests for corn, changed their own climate, and watched their civilization weaken before the Spanish even arrived. The lesson his parents passed down was simple: soil is life. That knowledge gets ignored in every extractive economy because it does not fit the speculative model of buy cheap, extract fast, sell high, and leave.

The solution side of this week was encouraging. Geothermal power is Drawdown solution number 18, estimated to reduce 16.6 gigatons of CO2 with a net savings of over one trillion dollars. The Rankine Cycle engine that makes low-grade geothermal heat usable has been around since the 1850s. The story about the Bimini Baths in Los Angeles having their geothermal hot springs plugged with cement in the 1950s, because white owners would rather leave the land underdeveloped than share it with Black residents during the civil rights movement, was genuinely shocking. A clean renewable energy source sitting underneath a major American city, cemented over for racist reasons. That is the accountability gap at its most direct.

What the Chena Hot Springs project in Alaska proves is that you do not need extreme temperatures or deep drilling to make geothermal work. You just need the political will to try it. The comparison to oil drilling is hard to argue with. We already drill miles into the earth for a resource that poisons everything it touches when it spills. Drilling for heat that has always been there and always will be is less difficult and infinitely cleaner. The barrier is not technical. It never was.

My advice coming out of this week is to pay attention to what is underneath the official story of American land use. We were taught westward expansion as ambition and destiny. What it actually was is a locust strategy of settlement, extraction, and abandonment that we are still paying for in depleted soils, toxic farmland, damaged lakes, and ecosystems that cannot sustain themselves without intervention. I see that in my work every day. Understanding that history does not mean paralysis. It means you know what you are actually working against when you push for something better, and you understand why getting it right the first time is so much cheaper than inheriting the damage later. 

ou can view the discussion posts for Esteban Lorenzo below, or you can switch to viewing the full discussion context.

from Module 11 Relational Summary

Apr 13, 2026, 8:24 PM

Esteban Lorenzo

            This lecture focuses on what the traditional West once was, and how the politics of the global north has influenced what it is today. Before the conquistadors arrived, the Americas were habited by the real locals. Indigenous societies such as Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas thrived in their own political, social, and economic systems. In the United States alone, there are 574 federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native nations with their own government (National Geographic Society, 2025). As the conquistadors arrived, settled, and drove western expansion their history, and way of life, was destroyed. For us in the sustainability world, this hits close to home as their way of life is what we aspire to have: a balance between society, environment, and economy. This lecture was very interesting to me; I think my favorite up to this point. When it comes to native American history, I only know what was taught to me in schools in Puerto Rico. However, it’s a topic that I have always found to be fascinating.

             When I was 12, my family did a trip from California to Las Vegas where we drove through Route 66 and stopped in small towns along the way. On our way to the Grand Canyon, we stopped in some town in Arizona (I think Page?) where we went into a store where Native American vendors were selling handmade goods and artwork. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the cultural significance of what I was seeing but remember being fascinated by it. I was so interested that I made my parents buy me a book at the Grand Canyon gift shop about the Navajo nation. Looking back now, it represents a small glimpse into communities that have been marginalized yet continue to preserve their identity. As I was watching this lecture, I was reminded of this trip and how resilient Native American nations are. While indigenous people in Mainland United States face challenges today, they have been able to pass on some traditions through generations. Unlike Puerto Rico, where we only know what they teach us in history books and there is no Taíno nation. Thanks to technology, this has changed over time with historians finding information of how Taínos truly lived within the island. This

linkLinks to an external site.

is a good example.

            I was very intrigued by the concept of long-term sustainability through indigenous governance, particularly the Seven Generation Principle from the Iroquois Confederacy. This concept is so different from our modern political system that prioritizes short term economic gains or election cycles. It makes me wonder if today’s sustainability challenges could have been resolved (or rather avoided) if these perspectives had been respected early on. This goes on to show that re-impowering indigenous communities and incorporating their knowledge into modern policy frameworks could be the solution we need. As a society, we must be willing to approach sustainability with a broader perspective that includes history and culture. Sometimes the answers we seek already exist within those whose knowledge has been excluded, and there is no need to go deep into “new technologies”.

National Geographic Society. (2025, May 14). Native Americans in colonial America.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/native-americans-colonial-america/Links to an external site.

Zaid Alkhairi

Apr 9 5:04pm

| Last reply Apr 24 3:34pm

Reply from Zaid Alkhairi

For this discussion, I am analyzing Drawdown solutions through the perspective of an agribusiness executive in the Political West, particularly one involved in large-scale commodity production like soy and cattle feed. This stakeholder is often positioned at the center of environmental debates, yet their decisions are heavily shaped by market pressures, policy incentives, and global demand.From a short-term economic perspective, maintaining large-scale monocropping systems, especially soy production, offers high efficiency, predictable yields, and strong profitability. These systems align with global trade structures and are supported by subsidies and infrastructure. However, from a long-term perspective, these same practices contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and deforestation, ultimately undermining the very resources agriculture depends on. Drawdown solutions such as agroforestry and silvopastoral systems present a more sustainable alternative, but they require high upfront investment and delayed returns, making them less attractive within current economic systems.The impact on marginalized communities is significant. Industrial agriculture often displaces Indigenous populations and small farmers, particularly in regions like the Amazon. In contrast, Drawdown Solution #39, Indigenous Peoples’ Land Management—has been shown to protect ecosystems while supporting community livelihoods. However, from the agribusiness perspective, shifting toward these models may be seen as a loss of control over land and production, revealing a tension between profit-driven systems and equity-based approaches.In terms of public perception and the Overton window, many Drawdown solutions remain on the edge of mainstream acceptance. Practices like regenerative agriculture are gaining traction, but fully transitioning away from monoculture systems is often viewed as too radical or economically risky. There is still a widespread belief that industrial agriculture is necessary to “feed the world,” even though the lecture challenges this by showing how forest-based systems can be equally or more productive in the long run.The ethical implications are complex. Agribusiness leaders may justify current practices as necessary for economic growth and global food security. However, the lecture emphasizes that many of these systems are not driven purely by necessity, but by political and economic structures such as land speculation and commodity markets. This raises ethical questions about whether it is justifiable to prioritize short-term profit over long-term ecological stability and intergenerational equity.Democratic participation is another critical issue. Many decisions about land use and agriculture are made by powerful corporations and political elites, often excluding local communities. Transitioning to Drawdown-aligned solutions would require more inclusive governance, where Indigenous knowledge and local stakeholders play a central role in decision-making.One key takeaway from this perspective is that the barrier to implementing Drawdown solutions is not a lack of knowledge, but a misalignment of incentives. As discussed in the lecture, systems like soy monocropping persist not because they are the most sustainable option, but because they are economically and politically reinforced. To overcome this, policies must shift to support long-term ecological health, such as incentivizing agroforestry, reforming subsidies, and recognizing Indigenous land rights.

References:

Project Drawdown. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

Hecht, S. B., & Cockburn, A. The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon

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David Young

Apr 12 7:06am

Reply from David Young

Zaid,

I enjoyed reading your response and I think you did a good job laying out the tension from the agribusiness perspective, especially the short-term vs. long-term tradeoffs. That’s where the lecture really shifted my thinking too, less about whether these systems “work,” and more about what they’re optimized to do. Monocropping and large-scale commodity systems are incredibly efficient at producing yield in the short term, but they’re not designed for resilience.

What stood out to me in the lecture is how often systems that look “messier” on the surface, like agroforestry or silvopasture, are actually more productive over time because they align better with natural processes. That’s part of why Drawdown highlights solutions like Indigenous Peoples’ Land Management (Solution #39) and regenerative systems more broadly. They’re not just environmental ideas, they’re functional systems that have worked for a long time, just outside of modern economic incentives. We need to find ways to incorporate them into economic incentives.

I also agree with your point about risk perception. From a business standpoint, shifting away from monoculture can look like giving up control or predictability. But the flip side is that staying in those systems creates a different kind of risk, soil degradation, input dependency, and long-term instability.

To me, it comes back to what the lecture framed as “taker vs. leaver” systems. A lot of current agriculture is built to extract, and it performs well in that role. The question is whether we start valuing systems that sustain themselves over time, even if they require a different kind of investment upfront. 

I look forward to reading your discussions in the future. 

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Thomas Culhane

Teacher

Apr 24 3:34pm

Reply from Thomas Culhane

Since getting back from Colombia for the fourth time, visiting and implementing our biodigester/zipline garrucha solution on cacao plantations, my thoughts on this are changing and moving toward my "dialectical provocation method" wherein, in the spirit of Elenchus, "I call bullshit".  Bullshit on the notion that silvopastoralism and agroforestry require "up front investment" and take time to produce yields.  In the case of Irlan, the farmer we worked with this year, the forest was mostly already there.  The cows prefered wandering in the forest and eating browse and when Irlan cut some tree boughs to allow the zipline to pass the cows came running.  They love leaves much more than grass.

It takes labor to cut down trees and creates erosion problems and pest problems through biodiversity reduction, so I don't think people would cut trees if they weren't forced into it by perverse land tenure expectations (usually cleared land is surveyed as having ownership title, "jungle" is not. This is a legacy of colonialism, I fear.)

Also, with agroforestry and silvopastoralism, farmers can follow and influence natural succession -- the "investment" that we claim is "up front" is really (or should be) CONCURRENT.  You are planting fruit and nut and timber trees WHILE using the land for annual crops. 

Let's talk more about this.  I think we are about to uncover some "inconvenient truths" if these observations can be verified. 

Zaid Alkhairi

This module challenged how I think about climate change, population, and the role different regions of the world play in sustainability. One of the most important things I learned is that geography, especially latitude rather than longitude, plays a major role in shaping climate systems, while human behavior ultimately determines how those systems are impacted. The lecture emphasized how natural processes like the Coriolis effect, ocean currents, and Earth’s tilt regulate climate, but also introduced the idea that life itself helps regulate the planet, especially through the Gaia Hypothesis . This really shifted my perspective, because it frames humans not just as destroyers of ecosystems, but as potential regulators as well.

What stood out to me the most was the discussion of the IPAT equation (Impact = Population × Affluence × Technology) and how it can be interpreted differently depending on cultural perspective. In many Western viewpoints, population growth is seen as a threat. However, the lecture introduced a more optimistic perspective from Eastern philosophy, that more people can actually mean more innovation, labor, and solutions. The idea of humans as “prosumers” (both producers and consumers) was especially interesting because it reframes our role in sustainability. Instead of just reducing harm, we can actively create positive environmental impact.

I also found the comparison between Eastern and Western approaches to climate change really thought-provoking. The lecture highlighted how countries like China are investing heavily in renewable energy, green infrastructure, and large-scale environmental solutions such as reforestation and high-speed rail. This contrasts with slower progress and more political division in the United States. It made me realize that cultural values, cooperation, and long-term planning play a huge role in environmental success, not just access to technology.

One challenge I encountered in this module was understanding how to reconcile the idea that increasing population could be beneficial when we often hear the opposite. It initially felt counterintuitive. However, the solution I found was to focus on the interaction between population, technology, and behavior. Population alone isn’t the problem, it’s how people live, produce, and consume. When paired with sustainable technology and cooperative values, population growth can actually become an asset rather than a liability.

Another difficulty was grasping how deeply culture and philosophy influence environmental outcomes. The lecture referenced ideas like Western anthropocentrism versus Eastern views of humans as part of nature, which made me realize that solving climate change is not just a scientific or technological issue, it’s also a cultural and ethical transformation.

Overall, this module made me more optimistic. While the challenges of climate change are serious, the idea that billions of people can contribute to solutions, if guided by the right values and technologies, offers a more hopeful and empowering way to think about the future.