How did life originate on our planet? This question has perplexed Bruce Damer, who proposes that the building blocks of life are self-assembling and thrive in increasing networks of cooperation. As he scoured the globe, enduring extreme environments, he has gathered evidence proving his model. Extrapolating from his material, paired with human progress, he gives us a vision of what our future can look like, if we start now, to help our technology work in consonance with the natural world. What he proposes equates to environmental moonshots.