Why Is This Not Enough?

“Jackson was out walking on his property in Kansas one spring day and called Jensen with a simple question: ‘Why is this not enough?'”

Editor’s note: This essay is adapted from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, which to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in September of 2022.

One of the universal characteristics of Homo sapiens seems to be that we are a meaning-seeking species. Across time, place, and circumstance, human beings try to figure out what it all means or does not mean.

We are surrounded by mystery in what we often call “nature.” The ecosphere was created by, and continues to be maintained by, forces beyond our capacity fully to understand or sometimes even to identify. We also often are a mystery to ourselves. We can reflect on our inner lives and recognize that whatever research might reveal about human psychology, we barely know ourselves as individuals or a species.

Humans look outward and inward. And, if we are smart, we realize that what we know is overshadowed by what we do not know.

Where does that leave the two of us? We cannot help ourselves from pondering questions that people likely have pondered for as long as there have been people. Why is there something rather than nothing? What came before the universe came into being? We have no expectation of definitive answers but great expectations of a pleasurable engagement with others in speculating.