For the third year in a row, according to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, global temperatures have been unprecedented. 2016 was the hottest year in documented global history, trumping both 2014 and 2015 and once again cementing issues of environment, climate change, and planetary health as paramount.

Given President Trump’s history of sensationally ignorant comments about the climate crisis, his threat to leave the Paris agreement and his anxiety-inducing appointment of Scott Pruitt (who has built a reputation by suing the very institution he now represents) to the Environmental Protection Agency, it falls into the hands of the private industry and individual action to stymie the seemingly rapidly approaching eco-apocalypse.

However, we’re on the right path. In the same year that broke multitudes of high-temperature records, the largest wind-farm in the world is slated for construction here in Iowa. According to Business Insider, the wind-farm “called Wind XI, the $3.6 billion project will include 1,000 turbines and is expected to be completed in 2019. Once it’s up and running, the wind farm will have the capacity to generate up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity — enough to power roughly 800,000 homes in the state.” Though this is a noble and necessary approach to energy production, it is not enough.

We need to reimagine traditionally ecologically inclined notions of development. Since the publication of Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, in 1962, systems of production have been striving for a balance between human industry and planetary sanctity. We’ve called this balance “sustainability.” But the climate of the environmentalist struggle was not more urgent than as it is now.

What has been effective rhetoric in the past will undoubtedly need to change for the present. We need to recalibrate and reimagine the implications involving not only the ways we produce and consume but also how we choose to engage in the struggle against climate change. We need regeneration, not sustainability. This task at hand has gotten more difficult, but the climate situation has also grown worse. Regeneration is not to simply halt negative human-induced impact of climate and environment but to reverse it. To go from carbon-neutralto carbon-negative.

Iowa State University has been on board for years. An initiative led by Rebert C. Brown would build both the ideas and the technology needed to realize notions of a carbon-negative economy. In an interview with Iowa State, Brown said, “If we can actually draw down that CO₂ and generate economic activity, then we would have an economic process that generates income and reduces the effect of CO₂ emissions.” Brown sees this economic process realizing itself through something called “biochar.”

All Power Labs of Berkeley California, has tapped into a similar mindset. Through the process of gasification, All Power Lab CEO Jim Mason takes bio-fuel and converts it into a charcoal-type substance, harvesting power in the process. Surprisingly, the best part of this is the refuse, which neither threatens to raise already too-high carbon levels nor is necessarily problematic for the planet. In fact, “biochar” is good for regenerating nutrients in soil.

While the Trump administration has already removed any mention ofclimate change from the White House website and instead heralds destructive economic policy, regenerative individuals across the nation are striving to pick up the slack.