A popular view of the environment, “Spaceship Earth”, is that the planet provides just the right biosphere to support human life. That is misleading because humans are actually ill suited to living in most places. Take for example living in New York—you would freeze to death come winter if not for shelter, clothing, access to clean water, and food. This is technology that humans created to transform inhospitable environments into systems that support human life.
Because humans can use explanatory knowledge and conjecture to create new and better explanations, humans are the only species that is not bound to a range of environments. We can even live in the harshest environments like the vacuum of space which has no air, is astoundingly cold, and devoid of life.
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Techno-optimists believe technology can solve the world’s most pressing problems. With the right knowledge, we can find solutions to climate change like abundant clean energy. Can we acquire the knowledge to build nuclear fusion reactors? Can we do it in time?