“As we consider how various cultures of energy relate to global warming, we can see differing visions of the human future already sparking into conflict. Climate wars and drought-driven fighting threaten civic stability from Raqqa to the Chukchi Sea. Approaching the existential problem of learning to live in the Anthropocene in terms of both the political structures of energy production and the mediating forces of social energetics, I argue for the value of philosophical contemplation, or more substantially learning to die, as a necessary practice of interrupting what Greek philosopher Heraclitus called “the compulsion of strife.”