Our civilization runs on nineteen terawatts of power, an amount we could generate by covering as little as a half percent of Earth’s land surface in solar panels. We have the technological ability to scrub carbon dioxide from the air while generating carbon-free energy, which is to say climate change is a social and political problem, not a strictly technological problem. The trajectories for possible futures, however, are ill understood by the public. Whereas other contributors in this volume analyze energy, culture, authoritarianism, and political theology, this chapter educates readers on climatology and models alongside the materialist critique of political economy. Key terms include Earth energy imbalance, radiative forcing, integrated assessment models, and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. With an overview of climate sciences spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, this chapter explores our trajectories.