Georgina,
You made a bunch of tough topics easy to read once I understood the interweaving different threads in your essay. Very innovative approach.
If I understood your message, your description of Utopia, however, sits not at all well with me. While you definitely bring justice to a set of deserving issues, I feel you may have given up on humanity.
In Grace's time, I get the feeling that the human mind and spirit had been lost for a long time: there exists a final design of the sanctuary and it could be moved anywhere in the universe; All the science and technology being used was developed and available for a long time; humankind has found peace of sorts, but I can't tell if Grace is really really happy or even if the concept of happiness is one anyone harbors anymore. Is Grace and the sanctuary the goal of the Anthropocene?
I miss the imagination, the ingenuity, the adventure that makes us humans a unique species. We have a spark that always (at least till today) has found a way not just to aid in our survival but also that ensures that we thrive: Our near-daily inventiveness and imagination-induced ingenuity is what defines us as human. The horse age doesn't end for us when horses die out, but ends because we cannot wait to think up and make real new modes of transportation. We don't limit ourselves to land, we see water and the air as pathways to new places.
In Grace's world, Nature's evolutionary characteristic that even created humanity, also appears to be long dead. Ecosystems used to move to new places because instability is inherent to nature and all its creations. Maybe, even all evolution is no more.
If I am understanding correctly what you mean to convey, I would not be happy in Grace's shoes.
The problems you address must be solved by us, and now. In my way of thinking, this is the challenge of the 21st century for humanity: Build your utopia but without curbing human imagination, desire and longing to make things even better.
If you have a moment, please read my essay for my thoughts on how we can build your utopia but it will be varied and dramatically different in too many ways to define.
Thanks for making me think.