Shining a Light on Earth & Safeguarding Our Planet
Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: What Is History? What We Lose With Erasure & Gain With Dissemination
This week’s focus: “How to,” recommendations on how to expand what we teach and/or discuss with young people
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is under XX words, an estimated X-minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
This month, our theme is “What Is History? What We Lose with Erasure & Gain with Dissemination.”
So far, we’ve examined the Maya Codices, and how only 4 of these texts remained after colonial destruction — and the sophisticated information we can glean from those that survived.
We reviewed the life of Ida B. Wells, who risked it all to cast light upon truth — to name unchecked racism and violence — even when it’s hard to look at it. And how it created a path for legislation, even if it was a century in the making.
We unearthed the Timbuktu manuscripts, and the painstaking and risky efforts people have taken to preserve and protect rich chapters of one’s history — the voices of ancestors and what makes us human.
Today, in honor of Earth Day, we are shining a light on a way to approach the complex topic of climate change and how to safeguard our planet.
Unfortunately, climate change has become a topic that has been forced into hyper-politicized or partisan corners. But we can discuss the climate, our planet, and ways to survive and thrive on Earth in a manner that is rooted in facts, data, and stories that aim to unite instead of divide.
In this newsletter, we highlight a framework to do this, one that views our climate and Earth as a relationship to be tended to — each hand will hold something different but connected.
On one hand, we’ll embrace data, descriptions of consequential details like parts per million, so we can measure what’s happening on Earth in a clear, scientific way. On the other hand, we’ll also hold onto science, and include memory, stories of soil and seeds, to guide us back to ourselves, to remember that we have an imprint of living that can be sustainable — actions rooted in something that engages Earth and our relationship with it in a way that leans toward something we may call renewal.
Remember, what we are suggesting is a way to discuss humans and how we live on this planet, not the only way.
A Way to Measure Climate Change
In its 4.5 billion year history, the Earth has obviously experienced massive changes, including shifts in climate. It transformed from a stifling hot, volcanic world with oceans of magma, to a planet with continents and saltwater oceans, one that has a stable length of day, seasons, and tide.
Natural phenomena have indeed influenced Earth's climate. In Big History, Cynthia Brown writes that our planet has changed over the course of billions of years: “[A] shifting climate underlies Earth’s story. The climate changes seem to have been generated mostly by the continents moving about on Earth’s mantle of molten magma, creating mountains and changing the flow of ocean waters. Striking meteorites probably also affected the climate, as well as changes in the Earth’s tilt, wobble, and orbit — a complex interacting network of many factors.”
Other forces, like earthquakes, volcanoes, meteors and asteroids, and solar radiation can also influence climate. In short, massive geological forces have changed the environment on Earth. The other element to change the climate to such a large degree are humans, especially through activities that release more carbon into the atmosphere.
Therefore, in addition to natural phenomena, like volcanoes and the literal shifting of continents, it’s important to recognize humans have also played a role in climate change, especially in recent centuries.
The Natural Resources Defense Council notes that geological forces and human behavior, such as “the unchecked burning of fossil fuels” have impacted Earth: “Right now, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are the highest they’ve been in the last 800,000 years.”
The Keeling Curve is a facts-based, data-centered way to measure how much carbon has been released — day by day — in the Earth’s atmosphere across a span of nearly 70 years.
As described by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at UC San Diego, “The Keeling Curve is a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration…In 1958, Charles David Keeling began measuring atmospheric CO2 concentrations at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory. This record is considered the foundation of modern climate change research.”
As described in this video, How Scientists Measure Carbon Dioxide in the Air, scientists use evacuated glass flasks to capture samples of air, which are then analyzed in the lab to measure how much carbon dioxide they contain, using devices called manometers. The contents face more measurements, such as analyzing the “isotopic composition” of the CO2 to determine the source of the carbon, or whether it, for example, “came from a car, or it came from a plant, or it came from the oceans.”
In 1958, when this analysis began, the concentration levels of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 315 parts per million. By 2018, it nearly reached 410 parts per million. Looking at the chart today, the latest reading — on Earth Day 2025 — is about 430 parts per million. (If you want to read more about this, consider the following source by MIT Professor Ron Prinn, where he identifies the crucial threshold we don’t want to cross.)
Data and facts can be a powerful tool for sharing information as they too tell a story. This particular narrative can be a hard one to face, because it involves us, our children, our future.
It may be helpful to remind ourselves that one hand can hold data and logic, the other may hold memory and a communal path forward. Both can include science and human engagement.
A Path Forward, Rooted In Hard-Earned Wisdom
From soil to trees, the Earth holds incredible natural life. And throughout history, many knew this, including Wangari Maathai.
Wangari Maathai held many titles of “first.” As her biography shares, Wangari Maathai was the first woman from the incredibly large and diverse continent of Africa to win a Nobel Peace Prize. She was “the first female scholar from East and Central Africa” to earn a doctorate (in biology), and the “first female professor ever in her home country of Kenya.”
She is perhaps most known for “The Greenbelt Movement,” the grassroots movement she led to combat deforestation and erosion, a problem that was “threatening the means of subsistence of the agricultural population” in her home country of Kenya, and in other regions around the world.
Over time, by focusing on tangible solutions, her local problem-solving efforts led to a global campaign. In her own words, “The environment is not really an issue for tomorrow, the environment is [an] everyday issue. It’s the air we breathe, it’s the water we drink, it’s the food we eat, and we can’t live without these things.”
Why did Maathai focus on trees?
Wangari Maathai noticed that her local world was negatively impacted by deforestation; she wanted to reverse the desertification that was taking place, improve water sources, and empower women and communities.
She focused on mobilizing mostly women to plant trees, not only as a way to renew or heal their environments, but as a way to “address poverty” and to expand “democracy, women’s rights, and international solidarity.” With tree seedlings in their hands, rural farmers had more economic opportunities, and a way to nourish and transform the land, water, and air.
She states, “The entry point is the tree. A tree has a personality. And as it grows and it changes the landscape, it also seems to change the minds of the people. It brings with it a certain pull that actually encourages people to do more. So that you start with a few farmers, and before you know it, so many of the [other] farmers also want to participate.”
And as the movement spread, it grew deeper roots, it extended across communities, where people showed other people how to start tree nurseries — how to nourish the tree seedling until it was strong enough to be purchased by the Green Belt Movement, and be transplanted into a conservation. These protected regions were home to millions of other seedlings that successfully took root.
In addition to teaching farmers how to successfully grow trees, educational efforts also included financial literacy and access to services, such as providing access to loans, and teaching others how to invest in other income-generating ventures like beekeeping and raising goats.
How can you measure the impact of seeds?
When speaking about her impact, Maathai relishes the moment when people can “stand on their own,” or when “they can truly say they have improved their quality of life, and it all started with planting that one tree.”
While it's challenging to say exactly how many trees were planted — as estimates range that between 30 million and 50 million trees were planted as a result of Maathai’s efforts — or how many lives were impacted, what becomes clear through her story is that we carry with us, in our hands, across communities, seeds of change.
And with clear intention, with communal education and effort, seeds can heal physical environments. And perhaps, when exchanged and applied with critical care and love, seeds can be the conduit for healing each other — for healing ourselves.
Both Data and Seeds
While The Keeling Curve and the measurement of CO2 and the story of Wangari Maathai and the planting of trees are not the only ways to approach the topic of climate change and how to safeguard Earth, they do represent a “balanced” framework.
When faced with something as complex and challenging as the importance of Earth and impending climate change, we can use one hand to measure, and the other to remember — humans are connected to this planet, we carry an imprint within us that is deeply rooted.
We can exchange bits of data, and we can exchange seeds. Both will likely be needed as we carve a sustainable path forward.
Resources to Learn More and Carry Your Own Conversation Forward
A Guide to Climate Change for Kids, by NASA
Our Planet is Warming. Here’s What’s At Stake If We Don’t Act Now, by WWF
What If There Were 1 Trillion More Trees?, by TED-Ed
Soil Solutions to Climate Problems, by Center for Food Safety
Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya, a book for children by Donna Jo Napoli and Kadir Nelson
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