![]() ![]() While energetic and technological challenges attract significant attention, arguably the greatest challenges are conceptual or even cultural. ![]() Climate change is often singled out as modernity’s existential crisis, but it is only one of a series of interlocking challenges constituting an unprecedented predicament that must be understood and mitigated in order to live within planetary limits. But modernity has been enabled by the rapid and accelerating expenditure of our one-time inheritance of fossil fuels, and by drawing down the resources and ecosystems of our finite Earth-none of which can be sustained as we transition from a resource-rich frontier to a human-dominated planet. All currently living humans, and most academic disciplines, have developed in this age, which appears normal and indefinite to us. This age of modernity is characterized by consistent growth in energy use, economic activity, and resource consumption, and a generally increasing standard of living-albeit inequitably distributed. ![]()
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