HOW DID HUMANS GET TO THE BRINK OF CRASHING CLIMATE?

Amidst record-high temperatures, deluges, droughts and wildfires, leaders are convening for another round of United Nations climate talks later this month that seek to curb the centuries-long trend of humans spewing ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

For hundreds of years, people have shaped the world around them for their benefit: They drained lakes to protect infrastructure, wealth and people. They dug up billions of tons of coal, and then oil and gas, to fuel empires and economies. The allure of exploiting nature and burning fossil fuels as a path to prosperity hopped from nation to nation, each eager to secure their own energy.

People who claimed the power to control nature and the energy resources around them saw the environment as a tool to be used for progress, historians say. Over hundreds of years, that impulse has remade the planet’s climate, too — and brought its inhabitants to the brink of catastrophe.

CONTROLLING THE ENVIRONMENT

Mexico City traces its roots to a settlement centuries ago on islands in the midst of Lake Texcoco. These days, most of the lake is gone, drained long ago to make room for the building and growth that today has more than 22 million people sprawling toward the edges of the Valley of Mexico.

Getting water in the arid valley — a need that has spiked as droughts have worsened — relies on pumping from deep underground. The toll of centuries of such pumping can be seen in curbs that crumble and structures that tilt atop the resulting subsidence, with some areas sinking around 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) a year. At the same time, neighborhoods are at increased risk of severe flooding because of climate change-fueled extreme rain events and drainage systems that are less effective because of the subsidence.

“Nature doesn’t create these huge problems,” said Luis Zambrano, professor of ecology at the National University Autónoma of Mexico. “Nature behaves as nature ... we are increasing our vulnerability by allowing the city to sink by pumping as much water as we possibly can from the aquifer.”