The Docket | Climate Past

Turning Point Archive

The Problem with the Seedlings

By Maya Jiménez— February 5, 2026

Feature image for article: The Problem with the Seedlings

In 1975, Wangari Maathai set up a booth at Nairobi's agricultural show with tree seedlings. People stopped, asked questions, expressed interest. Not one followed up.

She spent the next two years watching rural women in Nyeri describe streams that had dried up, firewood that required hours of searching, soil washing away after every rain. The women understood what was happening to their land. Government foresters didn't think uneducated rural women could plant trees. On June 5, 1977, Maathai made a choice about whose knowledge mattered. Only two of the seven trees planted that day survived. What happened next would plant fifty million more.

Turning Point Archive

The Problem with the Seedlings

By Maya Jiménez— February 5, 2026

In 1975, Wangari Maathai set up a booth at Nairobi's agricultural show with tree seedlings. People stopped, asked questions, expressed interest. Not one followed up.

She spent the next two years watching rural women in Nyeri describe streams that had dried up, firewood that required hours of searching, soil washing away after every rain. The women understood what was happening to their land. Government foresters didn't think uneducated rural women could plant trees. On June 5, 1977, Maathai made a choice about whose knowledge mattered. Only two of the seven trees planted that day survived. What happened next would plant fifty million more.

Conversations Across Climate Time

An Interview with the Woman Who Taught New Zealand to Trust Each Other's Milk

Conversations Across Climate Time

An Interview with the Woman Who Taught New Zealand to Trust Each Other's Milk

History Echoes This Week

Cuba Wrote Ethiopia's EV Playbook in 1989

Ethiopia banned fossil fuel vehicle imports in January 2024. The country has 50 charging stations and half the population lacks electricity. Unprecedented? Cuba did this thirty years ago with agriculture.

Soviet collapse in 1989 cut Cuba's food imports 80% overnight. The government's response: grant land rights for urban farming despite having zero organic expertise, no distribution networks, no legal structure. Build it while starving.

Ethiopia spends $7.6 billion yearly importing fuel it cannot afford. Cuba couldn't buy food. Same calculation: when foreign currency crises make current systems impossible, mandate the transition anyway. Bet that desperation builds infrastructure faster than planning ever could.

History Echoes This Week

Cuba Wrote Ethiopia's EV Playbook in 1989

Ethiopia banned fossil fuel vehicle imports in January 2024. The country has 50 charging stations and half the population lacks electricity. Unprecedented? Cuba did this thirty years ago with agriculture.

Soviet collapse in 1989 cut Cuba's food imports 80% overnight. The government's response: grant land rights for urban farming despite having zero organic expertise, no distribution networks, no legal structure. Build it while starving.

Ethiopia spends $7.6 billion yearly importing fuel it cannot afford. Cuba couldn't buy food. Same calculation: when foreign currency crises make current systems impossible, mandate the transition anyway. Bet that desperation builds infrastructure faster than planning ever could.

TAKE NOTE

Land redistribution: Cuba granted 25-year renewable rights to 3 million hectares in 1993, no farming experience or equipment required first.

Production trajectory: Havana's urban agriculture jumped from 20,700 metric tons in 1997 to 272,000 tons by 2005 through improvisation alone.

Infrastructure reality: Ethiopia targets 500,000 monthly EV imports by 2030 while current owners report charging stations "almost not available."

Currency motivation: Both prioritized foreign exchange savings over readiness—Cuba cut food imports from 70% to 50%, Ethiopia targets $4 billion annual savings.

Reversal pattern: Some Ethiopian EV buyers already switching back to fossil vehicles, echoing early Cuban agricultural failures before systems stabilized.

Six Ways They Adapted

Humans have been adapting to environmental change for thousands of years. We're not pioneers here. But the timescale varies wildly. Some transitions unfold across generations. Others happen fast when circumstances force the issue.

Look across history and the patterns get interesting. Sometimes sophisticated engineering solves the problem. Sometimes social cohesion matters more than technology. Sometimes the answer is trying multiple solutions simultaneously and seeing what sticks. And sometimes we know exactly what works but can't convince ourselves to pay for it upfront.

History won't give you a blueprint for your specific situation. What it offers is evidence that adaptation takes many forms, partial success counts, and the barriers are often human rather than technical.

Six Ways They Adapted

Humans have been adapting to environmental change for thousands of years. We're not pioneers here. But the timescale varies wildly. Some transitions unfold across generations. Others happen fast when circumstances force the issue.

Look across history and the patterns get interesting. Sometimes sophisticated engineering solves the problem. Sometimes social cohesion matters more than technology. Sometimes the answer is trying multiple solutions simultaneously and seeing what sticks. And sometimes we know exactly what works but can't convince ourselves to pay for it upfront.

History won't give you a blueprint for your specific situation. What it offers is evidence that adaptation takes many forms, partial success counts, and the barriers are often human rather than technical.

Water Scarcity

Baghdad Ran 65,000 Baths Simultaneously

Medieval Baghdad didn't pick one water technology. The city combined underground qanāts, cisterns, gravity-fed aqueducts, and rainwater collection to support 65,000 public baths. The systems worked for centuries because when one source failed, others compensated. Redundancy turned out to matter more than efficiency.

Flood Prevention

Kashmir Dammed a Lake in 880 CE

King Avantivarman's minister Suyya dammed the Vitasta River to stop Mahapadma Lake from flooding the valley. The intervention worked—catastrophic floods stopped. We don't have good records on maintenance costs or how long the system lasted, but ninth-century hydraulic engineering was more sophisticated than we usually assume.

Disaster Recovery

Neighbors Mattered More Than Insurance Payouts

After 2014 floods in Southeast Europe, researchers tracked 447 residents through recovery. Communities with strong social networks recovered better than wealthier areas with weaker ties. Your neighbor checking on you predicted outcomes more reliably than your bank balance. Economic resources helped, but social cohesion was the stronger variable.

Agricultural Adaptation

Fifty Years of Adjustments Slowed the Losses

Global crop analysis from the 1970s through 2020s found farmers adapted constantly—shifting growing areas, expanding irrigation, changing varieties. These adjustments helped. Yields are still 4-13% lower than they would be without climate trends. Adaptation moderated damage but couldn't prevent it entirely.

Infrastructure Investment

Four-to-One Returns Nobody Wants to Fund

Each dollar spent on climate-resilient infrastructure returns four dollars in avoided damage, according to World Bank analysis. MIT found payback within two years. Funding remains scarce because the benefit is nothing happening—no flood, no collapse, no crisis. Selling prevention is harder than selling recovery.

Energy Transition

Renewables Grew Tenfold in Seventeen Years

Non-hydro renewable energy jumped from 2 to 20 exajoules between 2000 and 2017. Previous transitions took generations—84 years from biomass to coal, 73 years from coal to oil. Current renewable growth is unprecedented. Turns out energy transitions can accelerate dramatically with coordinated policy pressure.

Historical Climate Insights

Three Consecutive Drought Years Ended the Hittites

Juniper tree-ring isotopes pinpointed a three-year drought (1198-1196 BC) matching the Hittite Empire's collapse with unprecedented precision. The finding reveals how societies adapted to gradual climate shifts for centuries can still break when extreme events hit consecutively, overwhelming even sophisticated resilience systems.

How close are we to our own breaking point?

Lead researcher suggests consecutive extremes may be stretching modern adaptive capacity.

What made this possible?

Tree isotope analysis achieved three-year precision, finally matching environmental data to historical collapse timing.

Ancient Societies Built Backup Systems, Not Efficiency

UT Austin researchers found successful ancient communities maintained redundant water sources and diverse income streams rather than optimizing single pathways. When primary systems failed, these backup structures let communities preserve core functions and cultural identity through major disruptions.

Why does efficiency fail?

Evolution favored redundancy for billions of years, but modern systems optimize single pathways to breaking.

Where does this go next?

Project is mapping Texas cultural sites vulnerable to climate disasters using historical resilience patterns.

Bronze Age Trade Networks Handled One Shock, Not Two

Network modeling showed interconnected Late Bronze Age civilizations could absorb any single collapse, but paired disruptions triggered cascading regional failure. Climate impacts depended heavily on population density and political complexity, not environmental conditions alone.

What happens when shocks compound?

Globalized systems create robustness against isolated failures but amplify vulnerability when disruptions pair up.

Why complicate the climate story?

Because social structures and institutions determine outcomes more than environmental conditions do.

Identical Volcanic Shocks, Opposite Egyptian Outcomes

Ice core data matched to documentary sources showed volcanic-induced Nile failures significantly increased revolt probability in Ptolemaic Egypt. Early versus late Ptolemaic responses to identical environmental shocks diverged completely based on political legitimacy, fiscal capacity, and institutional strength.

What determined survival?

Institutional strength and social cohesion mattered more than the environmental shock itself when stress hit.

How precise did they get?

Temporal resolution finally showed same environmental conditions producing collapse or adaptation depending on governance.

Historical Climate Insights

Three Consecutive Drought Years Ended the Hittites

Juniper tree-ring isotopes pinpointed a three-year drought (1198-1196 BC) matching the Hittite Empire's collapse with unprecedented precision. The finding reveals how societies adapted to gradual climate shifts for centuries can still break when extreme events hit consecutively, overwhelming even sophisticated resilience systems.

How close are we to our own breaking point?

Lead researcher suggests consecutive extremes may be stretching modern adaptive capacity.

What made this possible?

Tree isotope analysis achieved three-year precision, finally matching environmental data to historical collapse timing.

Historical Climate Insights

Ancient Societies Built Backup Systems, Not Efficiency

UT Austin researchers found successful ancient communities maintained redundant water sources and diverse income streams rather than optimizing single pathways. When primary systems failed, these backup structures let communities preserve core functions and cultural identity through major disruptions.

Why does efficiency fail?

Evolution favored redundancy for billions of years, but modern systems optimize single pathways to breaking.

Where does this go next?

Project is mapping Texas cultural sites vulnerable to climate disasters using historical resilience patterns.

Historical Climate Insights

Bronze Age Trade Networks Handled One Shock, Not Two

Network modeling showed interconnected Late Bronze Age civilizations could absorb any single collapse, but paired disruptions triggered cascading regional failure. Climate impacts depended heavily on population density and political complexity, not environmental conditions alone.

What happens when shocks compound?

Globalized systems create robustness against isolated failures but amplify vulnerability when disruptions pair up.

Why complicate the climate story?

Because social structures and institutions determine outcomes more than environmental conditions do.

Historical Climate Insights

Identical Volcanic Shocks, Opposite Egyptian Outcomes

Ice core data matched to documentary sources showed volcanic-induced Nile failures significantly increased revolt probability in Ptolemaic Egypt. Early versus late Ptolemaic responses to identical environmental shocks diverged completely based on political legitimacy, fiscal capacity, and institutional strength.

What determined survival?

Institutional strength and social cohesion mattered more than the environmental shock itself when stress hit.

How precise did they get?

Temporal resolution finally showed same environmental conditions producing collapse or adaptation depending on governance.