Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

The Pale Blue Dot In 1990, in one of the most celebrated acts of an extremely illustrious career, astronomer Carl Sagan decided it might be interesting to have the Voyager 1 spacecraft, after completing its mission at Saturn, spin around and take a snapshot of the Earth. Viewed across this vast distance, the Earth is inconsequential, a nondescript speck among specks—or, as Sagan says, “a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam.” But it’s a blue mote; thus the photograph’s famous name: “the pale blue dot.” Our planet is a pale blue dot because it’s an aqueous world, two-thirds of its surface covered by oceans. Those oceans are our backbone and our lifeblood. There is no question that a billion people now lack access to safe drinking water, but our oceans hold the secret to a better future. To return to an earlier theme: abundance is not a cornucopian vision. While the innovations just explored share the potential to tap these oceans—recycle their contents and change their chemistry, providing us with all the water we need and then some—it will not happen automatically. We have much work ahead. Yet because these waterwise technologies are all on exponential growth curves, they represent the greatest leverage available. They are the easiest path from A to B, but—and it’s a critical “but”—we still must commit ourselves to the path. Of his famous photograph, Sagan once said: “This distant image of our tiny world . . . underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one anot...