Two Seas: Finding Hope for Our Grandchildren’s World

At first, I assumed it was simply congestion.

What I found stopped me cold.

Only days before we passed through, British Royal Marine commandos descended from helicopters onto a 244-meter oil tanker carrying more than 100,000 tons of Russian crude oil and seized control of the vessel. It was the first time Britain had ever seized a Russian shadow fleet vessel, part of a network of hundreds of ships used to move sanctioned Russian oil around the globe. In the days that followed, shipping routes shifted, vessels recalculated their options, and the normally routine waters of the English Channel became the backdrop for a geopolitical standoff involving Russian oil sanctions, military force, and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

As I stood on the deck looking out across that sea of anchored ships, I was not simply watching maritime traffic. I was watching history.

Then this morning we entered the North Sea, and what I saw next filled me with an entirely different emotion.

As far as I could see, literally stretching to the horizon, were wind turbines. Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands.

The North Sea and surrounding northern European waters now contain more than 7,000 offshore wind turbines, making it the largest concentration of offshore wind energy on the planet. Some rise nearly 1,000 feet from the seabed to the tip of the blade, their foundations driven deep into the ocean floor, their blades longer than a football field. Together these wind farms generate enough electricity to power roughly 30 million homes every single day without a single barrel of oil being burned.

What struck me was not their size. It was the ingenuity behind them.

Human beings surveyed the ocean floor, designed the structures, manufactured the components, transported them across rough seas, drove massive foundations into the seabed, connected them through underwater electrical networks, and created a system capable of capturing invisible wind and transforming it into light, heat, refrigeration, hospitals, schools, businesses, and homes. Nations that have spent centuries competing with one another sat down together, agreed on a vision, and then actually built it. That kind of cooperation does not happen by accident. It requires patience, trust, shared sacrifice, and a willingness to think not in years but in generations.

As I stood there looking out across turbine after turbine disappearing into the horizon, I was not looking at machinery. I was looking at one of the largest expressions of human ingenuity, cooperation, and long term thinking I have ever witnessed.

In less than twenty-four hours I had seen two very different faces of humanity. One reflected our capacity for conflict. The other reflected our capacity for creation.

I know the challenges before us are immense, and every day brings fresh reasons to become discouraged. Yet as I looked out across that vast forest of turbines, I felt something I have been feeling more and more lately.

Hope.

Hope that the same species capable of creating conflict is also capable of creating solutions. Hope that if we can engineer something this vast and this consequential in the middle of the open ocean, perhaps we can find a way to solve the other great challenges before us.

The human mind is astonishing. And when pointed in the right direction, the human soul is even more remarkable.

With clarity,

Rich Christiansen

How To Repair Relationship With Adult Daughter Or Son: Ep 12 | Calm the Chaos with Rich Christiansen

In this episode of Calm The Chaos, I share the three pieces of advice I gave a grandmother and grandfather in Montana whose adult children had stopped speaking to them. These are simple things you can start today, even if your son or daughter isn’t speaking to you right now. The third one is the cheat code. Watch Here.