Imagine a time when technological advances have truly liberated the human race from its greatest restraint. A time when the incomprehensible unreachable vastness of space has been tamed. Imagine it and then think again. Think instead of a dying planet bled dry by its short-sighted population expanded like a cancerous growth and we've left it too late to operate.

Then just before the final death rattle, the breakthrough comes. We flee like rats. Suddenly our horizons are infinitely broadened. The universe is a big place and now it's within our grasp. Nothing need check our voracious consumption.