Growing up in the 1970s, the year 2000 was far in the future. It seemed not only possible but likely that we’d have a lunar base and sentient robots as depicted in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But by the end of the aughts, the decade after the world held its breath to see if Y2K would end civilization, the idea that we’d soon have reusable rockets and artificial intelligence — or even electric cars — seemed far-fetched.

Our attitude toward our environmental challenges is following a similar trajectory. In the 1970s, after the first Earth Day, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of federal environmental legislation, it seemed not only possible but likely that we’d prevent pollution and widely deploy sustainable technology by 2000. Now, after decades of slow progress, hope seemed to be fading and solutions seemed out of reach.

But here we are in 2024, planning to return to our moon and beyond, chatting with artificial intelligence and driving millions of electric cars. Nissan launched the Leaf, the world’s first mass-market electric car, in 2010. Tesla soon followed with the Model S in 2012, then the Model 3 in 2017, and then the Model Y in 2019, which became the world’s best-selling car in 2023. SpaceX failed three times to launch a rocket, then finally succeeded on its fourth try in 2006. So far in 2024, SpaceX has launched 79 rockets — and made it far more affordable to put satellites in orbit. And in November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a computer program that many believe passes the Turing test, being able to carry on what seems like an intelligent conversation about any topic.

History shows that people developing new technologies and building businesses that disrupt older ways of doing things have always been eccentric. As their power, wealth and influence grow, these people become weirder and even frightening. Their ideas about changing the world, which at first seemed noble, take on a sinister aspect. The flaws and imperfections in the new technology become apparent once customers, besides the fawning early adopters, get their hands on it.

History also shows that humanity can overcome seemingly insurmountable environmental problems. In the 1970s, China was the world’s most populous country, despite suffering through one of the largest famines ever in the 1960s. Fewer than 4 billion people lived on Earth at the beginning of that decade, and scientists had serious doubts about whether we could continue feeding all of them, much less feed a population double that size. Today, India is the world’s most populous country, and China is encouraging women to have more children. More than 8 billion people live on Earth, and scientists are certain that we can sustainably feed that many and more — if we adopt plant-based diets.

The future is always uncertain, but we have good reason to believe that we will make the leap to affordable space travel, which will greatly expand our resource base. We’ll have access to full-strength solar power and the ability to build data centers in orbit or on the moon, where we can use that endlessly abundant energy for artificial intelligence and memory storage. We’ll not only have electric cars but electric ships and airplanes that don’t burn any fuel. We’ll still have strange people with strange ideas tinkering in their garages (or moon bases) and occasionally striking it rich to share their inventions with the rest of us — and many of them will follow in the footsteps of their forebears, becoming incredibly odd as they navigate their mid-life crises.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable people.” Those of us who inherit the knowledge and devices that unreasonable people have bequeathed us can apply them to solve many of our environmental challenges — or at least not make them worse. Let us strive for the wisdom and will to use our nascent abilities to make our world better for this next generation and all those who follow.

Fred Horch is principal adviser for Sustainable Practice. To learn more about sustainable efficiency, visit SustainablePractice.Life and subscribe to “One Step This Week.”