Exploring Climate Dystopia

Author and humanitarian Arthur C. Clarke left us with many wonderful ideas by which to live, including this one: “I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

This is perhaps the only good possible argument for optimism, i.e., that it actually does make a difference in the outcome.  As Emerson had put it 100 years earlier, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

But what happens if all this goes wrong, and we wind up with effects of climate change that are, as many predict, utterly catastrophic?  What happens in the case of hellacious droughts, food and water shortages, wildfires, and hundreds of millions of refugees, driven from their homes by rising sea levels?

Well, what would happen in the case of an alien invasion, a full-scale nuclear conflagration, or the impact of an incoming asteroid?  Martial law. Our lives would be instantly–and probably forever–governed by people with stars on their epaulettes.

Here’s an article that explores this, suggesting that it might be well to plan for the worst. Interesting stuff.