Greetings subscribers. I’m long overdue for a post and am looking forward to sharing this one with you. I could be writing about a lot of things right now given the political climate and threats to my livelihood. But I chose to do something else.
You can listen to this post above. Or you can just read it below!
I’m a Terro.do Climate Change: Learning for Action Fellow (just a fancy word for someone who pays to learn) and one of my assignments was to project myself into 2040 and tell a story of how the climate crisis was resolved and what part I had to play in it. I’m posting two versions of my speech below, mostly as an ironic allegory related to the subject of my story: artificial intelligence. Remember that this is just a story. One of many possible futures.
aparna’s speech at the 2040 Terra.do summit (human version)
As I stand up here at the Terra.do 2040 Global Summit, I suspect you all want me to share with you the story. You know, the story we all know of how humanity wrenched the tillers of this ship we call Earth as it was spiraling down in the maelstrom of certain doom for our species from the nefarious clutches of late stage capitalism. How the Planetary Coalition of Alternative Re-emerginations (PlanCAR) and the Planetary Artificial Intelligence Department (or PlanetAID) worked together to alchemize AI technology—which we were all sure would usher us into the dystopian future of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series from nearly 100 years ago—into an instrument that has saved us and our planet’s precious ecosystems.
While my hologram is standing here before you at the Terra.do 2040 summit, my corporeal body is in an intergenerational household nestled in Kalapuya ilihi (Kalapuya homelands) a place that the colonizers of 200 years ago called the Willamette Valley in Oregon. By the way, these colonizers included my son’s great5 (that’s to the fifth power) grandfather, Daniel Durbin, who under the guise of trading through Hudson Bay Trading Company was complicit in the genocide of Indigenous peoples, all while planting the seeds for the racial capitalistic system that ushered us to the precipice that we found ourselves on just 15 years ago.
Anyway, I’m sitting here in one of the many intentional communities built by 7th Generation Refugium. My window is open and I can hear the tinkling of the streaked horned lark out in our community greenspace. Only 15 years ago, this little bird was endangered with an estimated population of only 1,600 that continued to be threatened by habitat loss and development. These sounds are matched by the squeaks and giggles of the children in our intergenerational household. Can you hear it?
Did you all believe that this was possible 15 years ago? That sovereignty, autonomy, and agency had been returned to Indigenous communities worldwide, who led the efforts to revitalize land care practices from a millennia ago? That our just transition to these practices would be so rapid? That our land and water ecosystems are thriving? That extreme fires would no longer rage every year across Turtle Island’s spine and limbs? That everyone on our planet would have enough food, water, shelter, medicine, and safety, so that they can live full and dignified lives? That the words “plastic,” “iPhone,” and “Tik Tok” feel like a relic from the past, much like “pager” and “floppy disk” were in 2025?
I am but a small cog in the machinery that saved us. I don’t even know why my hologram is here sharing my story when really, I should be uplifting the work of so many others whose lives were under existential threat 15 years ago and who came together to make magic. About 10 years ago, I shifted my career from training and consulting with mission-driven nonprofits on concepts of belonging, justice, and fairness to what I do today. I decided to tap back into my reservoir of skills from practicing law for ten years to become a facilitator for PlanCAR. With the help of mental health professionals and social workers, we were able to host a series of bridging conversations that brought together people from vastly different communities across power differentials and political divides to heal from the traumas that had fomented fear, hate, division, and despair. Nobody thought that talking about trauma is what the planet needed as we raced toward annihilation. Re-emergination required a paradigm shift from seeing the climate catastrophe as inevitably leading to our extinction, to viewing it as an event that could catalyze the emergence of our imaginations that been made dormant by the traumas of capitalism–imaginations that brought about a future that we thought was only fantasy. But to re-emerginate, you need repair and healing from trauma. That is where my team came in.
PlanCAR was resistant to our overtures at first. Because leveraging the technology of AI was a core piece of the plan, many believed that social science (and especially conversations about trauma, healing, and resilience) had no place in climate modeling. But we made the case, proving the effectiveness of our approach through just one pilot project in the U.S., where we gathered far right wing bureaucrats, faith leaders, preppers, technocrats and luddites, radical left wing social justice organizers and activists, and Indigenous leaders. After just one conversation in our 10-meeting series, participants experienced a profound shift. Hubris gave way to humility. Competition turned into connection. Anger transformed into curiosity. Hate dissolved into compassion. The pursuit of instant gratification was replaced by a deep commitment to future generations. Participants didn’t just leave feeling more aligned—they helped spark a pilot project that led to one of the radical climate solutions that ultimately saved us.
Just as digital music was inevitable by 2000 and electric cars by 2010, by 2030, AI had become an unavoidable and essential force in our lives. To solve this crisis, we knew we had to collaborate with PlanetAID. I want to end my story with thanks. I have deep gratitude for the mental health professionals, social workers, faith workers, and healers who worked with me on this project. Not only have you all been integral to my own family’s survival through the intersecting crises of the 2020s, but without you, we would not be here in 2040, continuing to re-emerginate fantasy futures together.
Now Pause:
The story you just read/heard is my story. My words, with minimal help from Google and ChatGPT when I wanted to find synonyms for certain words and my menopausal brain had them at the tip of my tongue but couldn’t find them (like when you know a word starts with an “r” and can almost get it but just need a little nudge).
Then, just for fun, I decided to see what AI could do with my story, so I did this:
Below is the result:
“Re-Emerginating the Impossible”
As I stand before you—
or rather, as my hologram flickers into being at the Terra.do 2040 summit—
I know you expect me to tell the story.
The one we all hold in the marrow of our bones.
The story of how we, teetering on the edge of collapse,
wrenched the tiller of this great ship Earth
from the spiraling maelstrom of late-stage capitalism—
how we defied the gravity of greed,
escaped the black hole of despair.
You know this story.
How PlanCAR and PlanetAID,
once thought to be harbingers of dystopia,
transmuted artificial intelligence—not into our overlord,
but our salvation.
How we reprogrammed the machine to dream,
to heal,
to co-create a future no longer dictated by fear.
But I want to tell you another story.
A smaller one.
One woven into the fabric of time by hands unseen.
While this projection of me stands here before you,
my body is at home,
nestled within an intergenerational household
on the lands of the Kalapuya people—
what the colonizers, including my son’s own ancestor,
once called the Willamette Valley.
He, like so many, came under the banner of trade
but left footprints of erasure.
The echoes of his choices,
woven into the racial capitalist system,
pushed us to that precipice we stood upon just 15 years ago.
And yet—listen.
Through my open window, I hear it.
The streaked horned lark, once endangered,
singing a song thought lost to extinction.
Children’s laughter spills into the air,
bright as riverlight, unburdened by scarcity,
by hunger, by fear.
Do you hear it?
Fifteen years ago, did you believe this was possible?
That sovereignty, autonomy, and agency
would return to Indigenous hands,
revitalizing land stewardship once dismissed as myth?
That the just transition would be swift,
that ecosystems would pulse with renewal,
that the word “wildfire” would no longer haunt our summers?
That no one—no one—
would go without food, water, shelter, medicine, safety?
And yet, here we are.
I do not stand here as a hero.
I am but a thread in the vast weaving
of those who stood at the brink of annihilation
and chose, instead, to create magic.
A decade ago, I stepped away from consulting nonprofits
on belonging, justice, fairness—
and stepped into something deeper.
I returned to the tools of my past, the logic of law,
but wielded them differently.
Not for litigation, but for transformation.
PlanCAR resisted us at first.
Talk of trauma had no place in climate modeling, they said.
But we knew—
before the world could re-emerginate, it had to heal.
So we gathered them.
Firebrands and dreamers, preppers and technocrats,
faith keepers and justice seekers,
workers and wisdom-keepers, farmers and fighters,
artists, healers, builders of worlds unseen.
We sat them together in rooms thick with tension—
rooms where anger cracked like dry earth,
where division ran deep as canyon walls.
And then—something happened.
Hubris softened into humility.
Competition unraveled into connection.
Anger gave way to curiosity.
Hate—dissolved.
Not overnight. Not easily.
But undeniably.
From those first trembling conversations,
a movement was born.
A movement that would seed a radical climate solution.
A movement that, against all odds,
saved us.
And so here we stand.
Not at the end,
but at the threshold of a future
we once thought was only fantasy.
And I—I am simply here to say thank you.
To the healers, the bridge-builders, the quiet revolutionaries
who refused to surrender to despair.
Who dreamed beyond the ruins.
We are here.
Still re-emerginating.
Still imagining.
Still turning the impossible
into the inevitable.
Post-script:
I read this poem and cried. “Bright as riverlight?” “unburdened by scarcity?” “firebrands and dreamers?”
I didn’t know what to do. It was … beautiful, compelling, for sure. But it also felt so… WRONG! Whose words were these? Who was ChatGPT stealing from to re-write my story? So I asked, and here’s how ChatGPT responded.
Post-script:
Is my re-emerginated future possible when AI has the power to weave more compelling versions of stories than I do? What role does AI have in solving the climate crisis?
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