How do you create a future that you can’t wait to arrive and to live in? Put a little differently, how do we minimize or avoid the negative effects of climate change while working towards a society improved and enhanced by technology? This is among the most significant questions that many wrestle with and one humanity is constantly trying to address. Common wisdom dictates to “begin with the end in mind,” which works well for small-scale innovations over short time horizons (1-5 years), but how do we plan for technologies that haven’t been developed or deployed yet, much less those that haven’t even been imagined? As such, when we peer further and further into the future, the outlook becomes cloudier with countless branching possibilities. One thing we do know about the future is that we need large quantities of clean energy as soon as possible to both support the growing global demand for energy and fight the negative effects of climate change.
