After five heatwaves this summer and all the attendant wildfires, it is clear to most people that climate change has well and truly arrived. This summer will go down in the popular memory like 1976 – and it won’t be the last like this.
I am possibly half-way through my probable lifespan. At a broad guess, I am probably going to be checking out around 2065-2070 and to be honest I can’t see life on this planet getting a great deal better during that time. In fact, I see it being considerably worse.
The seventh edition of the IPCC’s Assessment Report is being worked on at the moment, but the sixth version makes clear that even with massive reductions in emissions, we are going to face some severe challenges for the rest of the 21st century – and probably beyond. To be honest, I don’t see us doing those massive reductions. We have stopped a 5 degree scenario, but I think there’s a strong chance we’ll have gone to a global mean temperature of 2 to 3 degrees above the pre-industrial average by 2100. I’ll be too dead for it to impact me, but I worry about Generation Alpha and especially the just-arriving Generation Beta.
Let me be clear, I do not think this will destroy humanity; I think we will do enough to avert that, but it’s going to be a very rough time.
This has influenced my writing. In the future of Space Freighter Tulyar, we are in what is called the Crisis Century by later historians. Major events of the period include:
- The disintegration of the United States into several nations, some more democratic than others.
- Russia’s similar collapse.
- China becoming a democracy, but still an assertive one globally. Taiwan becomes a fully independent state and holds that name.
- Widespread climate wars and refugee flows more generally.
- Antibiotic resistance becomes widespread and Covid-19 is just the first of the pandemics.
- The colonisation of the solar system and the first steps into interstellar travel with the sub-light generation ships using cryogenics.
- The human population declines to about six billion at the end of the century.
My 21st century ends with “The Exchange” in 2099, which is discussed in Generation Ship – a fascist governor in attempt to save ‘white people’ initiates a medium-level nuclear war. The result is that humanity itself comes close to extinction, not just from the nuclear winter, but the other effects of the disruptions to the global economy and the panic that ensues.
Ultimately, humanity emerges from the Three-Year Winter and the Ten-Year-Struggle as a better species, to an extent. It’s certainly a less racist one. But it will take centuries for Terra, is it is now called to recover from the ravages of the Crisis Century.
Frankly, the fire has started, we now have to slow its spread and limit the damage. If you believe in a god, this emergency should feature regularly in your prayers.
Everyone will have to play their part – this isn’t something that just the rich can solve. We are fuelling the demand for the data centres and smart devices after all.
The sooner we act, the less difficult our choices will be. But they will not be easy regardless.
Adam Carpenter - Author 