This visual essay takes readers through Dubai’s World Expo 2020. Since their beginning at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, World Expositions have reproduced the world order in physical form. Today the accelerating challenges of climate change and migration is putting new pressure on the system of nation states that forms the backbone to this world order. I came to Dubai’s World Expo to see what signs I could find that nation states were ready to take on these global challenges and think in novel ways about human connection and cooperation. Rather than green shoots of new thinking, the pavilions stuck to worn tropes about technology and the future.