 75,000 years ago, on a high plateau in what will one day become Ethiopia, a woman scans the barren ground for seeds and berries, tightens the fur's binding baby to her breast, oblivious that she holds in her hands the future of the human race. On the brink of extinction, humanity's population has dwindled to a mere handful, perhaps only a few thousand of us remain on the face of the earth. Just a blip in human history, merely a moment in time. It is the story we never hear about how we almost disappeared. Some 10,000 years ago, upon the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia, an aging farmer gazes out across a golden field of barley. The ancient ones speak of a time when food was foraged from the wild, but he has planted with intent, master of his own destiny, he is blissfully unaware that this very moment in time marks the inception of humanity's ascent. The next few millennia will see us at our best and worst. From conquests and crusades, witch trials and slaves, to mathematics, science, Renaissance arts and the discoveries of space. In 1804, on a filthy wooden floor in a London slum, a young mother unwittingly gives birth to the billionth living member of the human race. Forty years later, her son shovels coal into the insatiable fiery mouth of a shining new steam engine. Soot black eyed and bone broke weary, he is building the future of industry. He is progressing the human race. A 1950s housewife rides shotgun in a 57 Chevrolet Bel Air, sits proudly beside her husband who represents the one sixth of working age adults employed by the automobile industry. Oblivious to unintended consequences, they are paving the freeways into the future. In 2008, from the porch of a long house in Borneo, an elder surveys the thick, dark smoke, blanketing a land where forest fires are foreign. The rainforest slash and burn makes way for monocultural palm oil. The fires burn so vast, the collective smoke would account for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions that year. It is 2018 and we are no longer unaware. No longer averting our eyes from the caged canary that has been lying unmoving for quite some time now. It is 2018 and the earth is submitting her invoices for the streets we have paved with gold. For each incremental blip in human progress. And payment needs to be underwritten by a monumental mind shift. It is time for us to step up and respect the boundaries of just how far we can push this planet, become stewards of our collective futures and recognize just how much our livelihoods depend on it. We live in a globalized community, a big world on a small planet where every flutter of a butterfly wing can either serve to strengthen the hurricane or fuel the winds of change. And like it or not, these days we make our homes in each other's backyards. The Nazarian farmer whose dreams wash away with the soil with every season's floods, the rain no longer soaking the earth, that man is your neighbor. The machete-wielding clear-cutter lives in the Amazon basin next door. Look into the eyes of the Congolese youth risking life and limb in civil conflict to mine the minerals for our mobile phones and you will find a brother. This is not about sacrifice, but about unleashing our full potential. Not about saying no, but about embracing a resounding yes. This is about building the house of humanity with hard hats and steel-toed boots. Traveling the roads about destiny with guardrails to mark the cliffs. This is about humanity growing up and moving out of mama's home, learning to do our own laundry. A hundred billion moments of human progress have got us to this point. 100 billion blips. In late 2017 in Wellington, New Zealand, a woman walks into a fertility clinic with vetted breath. And on this very day, in this very body, I hold one tiny contribution to the future of the human race with every kick, a blip in history, with every blip, a reminder of a global citizen in the making, already taking notes. Got it, thank you.