What if the privatization of public land, the expansion of the cartel of land owners, has helped bring about climate change by putting more and more land into the market, land that has high resource cost to make livable (think: Miami and the rest of SoFla, Houston, the desert SW)? If land had remained in public hands and rented out under a leasehold model, we could have increased density and allowed those areas to remain untouched.
In a poetic twist, it seems that many of the areas least conducive to life without massive support are the ones feeling the most effects of climate change — flooding and daily tide overflows in Miami, droughts and reduced water flows in the desert SW. All of those areas have transformed the land through development and added automotive transport, increasing greenhouse gases and exacerbating the heat island effect.
Food for thought, but it does feel like the planet is trying shake us off like a dog tries to rid itself of fleas.