We are spiraling toward a precarious future on a planetary scale, marked by imbalanced trends on four fronts: food, energy, poverty, and the environment. By 2050, 9 billion people will need food and energy sources—and the world’s poorest must have effective ways to avoid shrinking further into abject poverty. Compounding the challenge, all this must happen while reducing our environmental footprint. What if we could upgrade the most abundant organic material on earth to provide a solution for this grand challenge?