Every week, our lead climate reporter brings you the big ideas, expert analysis, and vital guidance that will help you flourish on a changing planet. Sign up to get The Weekly Planet, our guide to living through climate change, in your inbox.Since its ascension in 2018, the Green New Deal has defined the terms of the global climate debate. Perhaps no other climate policy in history has been as successful. Democrats and Republicans alike have been judged by how closely they seem to hew to it.

A year and a half ago, I found myself in an archive room at the London School of Economics, staring at 150-year-old documents complete with swirly handwriting and a red-wax seal.

On March 31, President Joe Biden unveiled a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that he lauded as “a once-in-a-generation investment.” The package recalled the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and the public investments in the space race in the ’60s. However, this program is distinguished from those earlier ones not only by its price tag but in its unprecedented scope.

Richard Branson was hungover on the day the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in 1969. He had turned 19 two days earlier and had celebrated accordingly. But he was “gripped” as he watched Neil Armstrong on his family’s little black-and-white television, he later wrote in a memoir. He knew then—he was “instantly convinced”—that someday he would go to space himself.