Or you might tell them a sadder story. That we searched everywhere—under the seabed, inside the atom, up in the solar wind—but we never learned to live within the budget of a single planet.
For 150 years, humanity went on a binge. We learned to pull prehistoric plankton (oil) and ancient ferns (coal) out of the crust of the Earth and set them on fire. We built cities in the desert (Dubai), cars for every citizen (Detroit), and plastics from thin air. in search of energy
But the hangover is brutal. CO₂ in the atmosphere is now higher than it has been in 3 million years. The search for energy is no longer just a hunt for abundance ; it is a hunt for cleanliness . Today, the search has fractured into three desperate expeditions. Or you might tell them a sadder story