WHEN THE STORMS CAME TO STAY ONLY ONE WAY OUT REMAINED

(A speculative fiction based on current events and trends.)

It’s tough. But we have proven you can get used to anything. Well, almost anything. We eat, we try to sleep. We can still talk, sometimes we even joke. But life is not what it was. It’s tough.

We’re relatively cool here compared to the others but temperatures are steadily rising year on year. It’s getting harder and harder to sleep without the AC being on constantly right through the night. And the sand gets into everything, your food, each household surface and your clothes. It comes flying in from the south on winds that are increasing steadily in strength.

New York is nothing like what it was. We are hunkered down here, just barely surviving these conditions. What was once a thriving street scene has all but died. Not that the people have gone, there are hundreds of thousands more, but for most of the day and night, the whole population tends to keep off the street if they possibly can.

There was no keeping the migrants out when it came to the most extreme conditions being faced by them. Constant temperatures of over 50°C, 122 °F made life intolerable for them and they came in such numbers and such desperation that there was no stopping them. After every method was used, including mass white-painting of roofs across the warming world, there was no other option but to migrate. Migrate or die.

It wasn’t an easy process for residents of any city or suburb here. The migrants couldn’t be let die and the vast majority were no trouble save they had no English and had no chance in what was already a devastated job market. For years only those with specialised training had had any chance. With their salaries they could isolate themselves to some degree from the problems besetting the rest of us.

The minority who came who had the least ability to find an income were those who kept the streets empty most times of the day and night. They and those who were long-time residents and long unable to achieve any kind of living wage used any method available to them to survive. The social welfare net had collapsed due to the collapse in world trade and the income tax gained from it and those employed in companies now gone bankrupt.

Sometimes you think you’ll reach breaking point, especially when you eat something such as bread and your teeth grate on the sand in it. It feels as if it’s all getting too much to bear. We live on a knife-edge, just barely getting through our days. The things we took for granted have been taken from us and the irritations and discomforts only seem to increase.

It was twenty short years ago that the changes sped up toward the crisis point we now have. Some of us had heard that temperatures were becoming unbearable, especially in the Middle East but the number of us that saw the way things were moving were few and among the politicians, you’d think they were living with blinkers on their eyes and earplugs constantly in their ears.

The deserts began to expand. A searing heat was being experienced more often and across ever more nations. In other regions flash floods became commonplace and vast storms that lasted for days devastated normal life for millions. Economies began to collapse as major corporations moved out retrenching back to the cooler north. This stopgap policy rendered them only temporary relief however as year by year the conditions causing the ruination of the south inexorably came north.

It was the strengthening of the winds that we began to experience that should have warned us and the increase in tornadoes and hurricanes that came with them. Some said these were only temporary phenomena and that these conditions wouldn’t last. Time proved them wrong, however. It is this ever-strengthening wind that brings us our sand delivery each day. It is whipped up into the troposphere and gets deposited on us courtesy of the increasing number of cyclones creating sand storms back home.

In my tiny apartment, I now have a family from Nigeria staying with me. Down the hall, there is another from Kuwait. All through our apartment block there are many, all sheltering here after the unlivable conditions they encountered back where they came from. Kuwait was the very first country declared unfit for habitation when the average temperature reached 55 degrees. Nigeria was well on the way as were most other nations right across the hot spot band which stretched across the world and expanded daily.

Managing to feed everyone is tough, but since there is virtually nothing else to spend the meagre basic income we get from the government on, we get by. All rent has been suspended temporarily by law and will most likely it’s a law never to be repealed.

As far as I know, there is not a single economy worldwide left unaffected. The Sahara was not the only desert to expand, the Gobi also along with the Arabian massively encroaching on every area at their edges. The north was not spared either. Furnace Creek in Death Valley beat its previous record high of 56.7 °C, 134 °F with a reading of 63.8 °C, 147 °F on July 10th 2033, the 110th anniversary of its initial record-breaking count. This time no human took the count, a modified General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

The Russian economy survived the changes that have beset the rest of us better than most. With the continual warming of Russia’s vast frozen Siberian lands, its minerals became much more profitable to mine and at the same time ever more natural gas fields had been possible to exploit. In addition to these developments, an even greater benefit was that more and more of Siberia’s land became suitable for agriculture. A million Russians have migrated north to take advantage of the increased possibilities for gainful employment. Along with these, a million climate refugees from China and further south were welcomed as two million square miles in Siberia became available for farming and the exploitation of countless mineral deposits along with oil and gas fields.

It seems Russia was blessed all round when it comes to the vagaries of climate change. Meanwhile, as Russia benefited from the changes I’ve just spoken of, water levels everywhere were rising. This again benefited Russia and hurt its chief but fast descending economic competitor, the USA. Russia, having only three major cities on its coastlines, was largely unaffected whereas the USA has ten major cities susceptible to rising water levels. Already trillions of dollars have had to be expended creating defences against rising tides.

By 2033 the Arctic sea ice largely blocking Russian sea navigation for most of the year had gone, the Northern Sea Route became open all year round and Russia became the breadbasket for the world. And not only bread of course. Ninety per cent of all fuel gradually became sourced in Russia while the southern countries who had previously held a large percentage of the market became virtually uninhabitable.

You must excuse me now. I have my nightly Russian language course in a few minutes time. My ambition is to emigrate there as soon as I possibly can. It is clearly going to be the last possible fully habitable nation on the planet with the best possible future for its people and those who seek employment there. And of course, there is the potential to be part of the Moon Migration if Russian citizenship is denied. With China, this has become a major secondary choice with the terraforming technology developed in China now in full swing there.

A new chapter in humankind’s long history has begun. With any luck, we will all have learned well the lessons of the past and the new planets we have identified as habitable will be colonised from Moonbase within the next 15 to 25 years as planned. As the USA, UK and Europe decline, Russia and China are working hard to provide an effective escape route for our species to escape what is estimated to be a death sentence for all life on the planet within the next 50 years. We left the necessary changes to save ourselves too late in the day. The myopic focus on creating ever greater profits meant that politicians turned a blind eye to the disaster awaiting us all. The climate changes now underway have been recognised as unstoppable by all major scientific authorities. Our only hope is the final migration of humankind and the only hope for this lies now not in the West but in Eurasia.

We screwed it up royally this time. Let us pray we have more sense than to do so once again if we are provided with a second chance. We could have done what was needed if only we had been evolved enough to make the right decisions… long before the storms came to stay...

COPOUT 26: THE LATEST IN A VERY LONG LINE

COP26 is the latest pretence that the policies to protect the planet’s environment and stave off climate change, that should have been put in place fifty and more years ago, will be enacted now at the very last possible moment.

When governments call on ever more economic growth and need the taxes and employment that come from that growth to build the infrastructure and other requirements of their populations to keep getting elected, where is the incentive to tell people to consume less, spend less, recycle, refurbish and repair rather than endlessly buy new?

This is why we hear of endless, largely meaningless and toothless projects that have come to little or nothing so far in the so-called determination of governments to make fundamental changes to protect the planet from catastrophic climate change.

Politicians are good at this sort of thing. They create formulations of words that will sound convincing but are next-door neighbours to outright lies and simply kick the issue of climate change further down the road for their successors to kick further in their turn. They do this for every other issue under the sun that requires some heat being taken by them or the risk of a downturn in their poll ratings and chances of reelection, so why not this issue too?

Asking people to do the most appropriate thing at this critical juncture is potential political suicide. Even hinting that people would be well advised to buy less stuff, make do with what they already have, repair and recycle and in general enjoy the simple things that give pleasure but don’t cost the earth.

Voluntary Simplicity is a thing. You may not have heard of it and certainly not living a Low Maintenance Lifestyle and most probably not the phrase ‘Live Simply So Others May Simply Live.

The book ‘To Have or to Be’, written by Erich Fromm, humanist philosopher and democratic socialist and published in 1976 was my introduction to the concepts above. He would I believe be quite amazed at how we have all been seduced into the ever more seductive world of materialist marketing since his death in 1980 and equally amazed at the naivety of many that politicians are sincere in wishing to reduce our addiction to the products seducing us.

Many have taken to wearing environmental blinkers, not least those who are unsurprisingly devoted to elevating their bottom line profits to the exclusion of all else. And who can blame them? If you were struggling to compete with those trying to grind you into the ground as a perceived enemy would your first thought be to increase your costs by going green? Or, if you had reached the pinnacle of success would your thoughts turn to seeking ways to go green rather than using those massive profits to expand even further? Okay, YOU might not, but how many business-heads do you think mirror your thoughts and conscience?

John Kerry, the so-called U.S. Envoy for Climate recently said that dealing with the effects of climate change need not require Americans to change their lifestyles. Doesn’t this remark show exactly how little will there is to change anything that might hurt any American politician’s chances at the ballot box? No doubt he has been swung on the notion that the problem of deriving near endless energy from nuclear fusion will be solved sometime soon. Unless he is banking on something like this I can’t imagine how he comes to the conclusion that the ultra-materialist waste-mongers of the USA can keep binging from here to infinity without any consequences being felt. Perhaps there is something in the theory that he is in fact some form of space lizard thinly disguised as a human being after all.

We are in a world of troubles. U.S. elites are at war with the other primary nation that has the expertise and manpower to turn climate change around in combination with themselves, China. Other national conflicts and disputes abound and this is even before resource psychosis hits where everyone and his dog demands that universal luxury goods as advertised so seductively be made available worldwide. Don’t think the mega-merchandisers aren’t working on that, be assured they certainly are. Dissatisfaction with the way you are and what you have is built into the selling model with every psychological button from kiddie power to your man or womanhood is being worked on round the clock.

Governments want to be popular. The politicians within those governments want to be re-elected. They need to provide the goodies their populations demand. Better infrastructure. Better services and facilities. More and better. All the time. These governments need to create jobs which means businesses must expand. The more they expand the more taxes governments get and the more goodies they can supply to get them re-elected. And so it goes round and round and round.

And we are meant to believe they are serious about passing laws that limit or reduce any of that? Really?

Greta Thunberg is spot on in calling what politicians do all the time of this subject as ‘smoke and mirrors’, so much ‘Blah, blah, blah’. She is 100% correct and most of her audience know it. But will anything change?

Would turkeys vote for Christmas?

COPOUT 26: THE LATEST IN A VERY LONG LINE

THE POTENTIALLY BLOODY BUT LONG-AWAITED END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

To those interested in geopolitics to any depth it had become the most important question of the day:

‘Why are the elites of the western world pushing for conflict against their economic rivals to such an extent that war could break out with the loss of millions of lives?’

The answer was obvious although it invoked an incredulous reaction in any who plumbed the full depth of the resulting consequences.

The answer, in short, was that no empire will tolerate its dissolution and those within its power structure will create an almost infinite number of reasons why it should continue, and fight to the death to protect it, no matter what the consequences may be.

So it was that the western empire went down fighting and went down fighting all the way.

Ultimately every device open to the West was used up to and including nuclear weapons. Propaganda had been of some small benefit to the cause. Sanctions and other financial barriers also. But none of the tactics and methodologies included in the above could stop the continuing economic rise of their rivals.

It was primarily the rise of Chinese economic growth and the resultant increase in its influence on an ever-increasing number of nations and indeed on the global zeitgeist that proved the unstoppable factor bringing the western empire of control and domination crashing down.

Day by day, the indicators of China’s rise became obvious. This rise was not in any single area, though of course, the economic sphere was most obvious. In terms of investment help for other nations, long-term agreements signed for trade and a diplomatic service that at once kept the western elites at bay and furthered China’s reputation and reach worldwide all played their part.

Russia too played an important role in standing up to what had become the mad beast of the West which had become enraged at the knowledge of its imminent death. Vladimir Putin had long held the line against the western elites who had sought to diminish and defame him as one of their primary barriers to their continued status as a largely unregulated world police force.

When the end came it came by degrees. Economic indicators across the western world turned downward. In tandem, it became obvious that a growing number of nations were declining invitations to align themselves with those of the West. These increasingly refused to parrot the talking points of western elites that they had previously accepted without question.

A particular indicator of the decline of the West came with the increasing rejection of the BBC and CNN as news broadcasters of choice. Those who controlled the selection of television news channels began to drop them in increasing numbers.

The West was rapidly going out of favour in preference to equivalents in the East. This rapidly transformed the global economic system with the dollar being dropped as the most favoured currency. A plethora of transfers began to be negotiated in local currencies instead. The dropping of the dollar in respect of the purchase of oil was the final blow.

The elites of the West were reeling from the multiple blows arriving from every quarter. This was when they became most dangerous and seriously contemplated the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a last vain attempt to maintain their position. These elites simply could not contemplate losing their pole position of world hegemon with all its patrician duties and responsibilities (as they saw it). They could envisage no situation whereby they could tolerate no longer controlling the world.

The collapse of the power by western elites which their economic dominance had afforded them left them in a position of a free fall in the esteem and respect they demanded as their right and had previously believed was theirs in perpetuity. They arrived then at the point of ultimate desperation.

The consequential nuclear attacks were devastating for all sides. Though short in terms of time period these attacks resulted in the loss of over one million lives on both sides before a semblance of good sense intervened. The West had played its last card and was now in an even worse state than before now being world pariah in perpetuity having irresponsibly made the first strike.

The western empire was now well and truly over. Its elites were utterly humiliated and in disgrace. There was no more fight left in them and they agreed to every stipulation now made against them in humble fashion. The long era of oppressive and exploitative domination by the elites of the West within an empire built of fear and coercion was finally over.

THE USE OF NUKES IS THREATENED - OUR NEW WORLD, 2030

(This is a speculative fiction based on present geopolitical realities. With the new NATO plan apparently ready to lower the threshold on the use of nuclear weapons and the regime in Kiev having just used a drone to attack a target in the Donbass I thought it was an appropriate time to repost this, first posted in January of this year.)

It is December 31st 2029. Tonight we celebrate the beginning of not only a new decade... but a new world. Two new worlds to be absolutely precise. We are full of trepidation, anxiety and some dread, but also some hope for a better future than our recent past.

The seemingly endless wars are over, at least for our sector, our Eurasia.

We hear little of the Americas now... less and less since the final conflagration.

Tonight there will be two separate celebrations though we know for our cousins in the southern American hemisphere they will certainly be muted. Geography finally defeated both them and us for it was clear in negotiations that the final agreement could not work as a patchwork of nations with no clear dividing line. A clear dividing line was ultimately seen to be the only viable option.

The USA along with the UK had pushed and pushed as our decade had worn on. After the infamous heretic president had been all but erased from our minds and virtually all history books except for a brief, apologetic paragraph, the USA begin to rebuild and restrengthen its alliances ready for the Ice Cold War that followed.

NATO pushed ever forward creating a path of fear for itself. It added to its forces within all its member states, providing them with the latest technology, all urged on by Biden, then later Harris. Russia pushed back diplomatically criticizing each new threat, but it could do nothing but protest and ready her military forces for every eventuality. That was until the Crimea attack which took place in the early hours of the morning of the 3rd of November 2023.

The multiple explosions taking out complete sections of the Kerch Bridge were said to be the work of Ukrainian special forces, but very few believed this. Everyone suspected it was in fact a U.S. task force, long in preparation, that had carried out this covert operation. Only satellite data or high-altitude surveillance could have provided the required data on the specific areas of weakness that had been hit. This could of course have been passed on to the Ukrainians but the general consensus was that this was a special op by U.S. forces from beginning to end.

Within minutes this attack was followed by multiple strikes on strategic targets in Sevastopol including a number of military craft.

An ultimatum from Kiev was transferred simultaneously by diplomatic cable to Moscow to coincide with the very first strikes. Surrender Crimea to Ukraine or this would only be the start of a much longer campaign. Moscow responded with a surgical strike on the Ukrainian Duma three minutes later. A secondary strike hit military targets near Lviv two minutes subsequently.

An ultimatum from Moscow was then fired back to Kiev. Crimea, as an integral part of Russian Federation territory being under attack, meant a state of war existed between the two nations. Kiev was to desist all belligerence immediately or many more Russian strikes would follow.

At this point, Washington became directly involved with a cabled threat to Moscow to desist in its aggression immediately. (At this point news was relayed of the Russian strikes across western mass media but nothing of the Ukrainian/U.S. strikes which had preceded them.

There was a pause at this point while Moscow debated possible strategies for the best way to proceed.

Meanwhile, several small flotillas of Ukrainian battle craft had eluded radar stations by extreme stealth in the Perekops'ka gulf region and were dispersing black-clad saboteurs to locations in Armiansk, Krasnoperekopsk and several small towns further south readying explosives for detonation. Other craft were attempting to breach the Russian border at several other points along the coast with varying degrees of success.

Moscow had ordered full alert as soon as the first attack upon the Kerch Bridge had taken place but at 03:45 a.m. this had taken some time to become fully operational.

Five minutes passed during which deliberations were held in Moscow, Kiev and Washington. Only two of the three had a fully mapped plan shared between them.

Now five units of Ukrainian saboteurs were in place and ordered to stand by. At 04:10 they were authorized to initiate the next stage of localized explosions.

A second ultimatum arrived in Moscow this time also from Washington. Give up Crimea or multiple strikes will be authorized on your bridge.

As this was received reports came in of explosions in and around infrastructure in the northwest of the peninsula. Moscow’s attention was being stretched and pressurized from multiple points. Several further targets with Ukraine were immediately reduced to rubble.

A strategic decision was then made. Some U.S. sensitive target MUST be hit in response to these threats. Surrender of Crimea and the base of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol would not and could not be contemplated.

Šiauliai Air Base, Šiauliai 77103, Lithuania was chosen along with NATO AWACS airbase at Geilenkirchen, Germany. Both were hit hard using upgraded Iskander M missiles launched from Kaliningrad.

Public reaction was building fast in areas hit within the Crimean peninsula and from vehicles trapped on the Kerch Bridge and from the motorway access roads.

New targets were listed for targeting depending on eventualities.

President Shoigu had immediately attempted to call President Harris as soon as hostilities began.

barely twenty minutes had passed in a flurry of activity on both sides before the hotline functioned.

The heated discussion is not known in verbatim form however, it came down to a stalemate where neither side could agree a path forward after Harris demanded Russia release Crimea back to Ukrainian control. Shoigu point blank refused.

Finally, a halt was called to all hostilities for two hours for the tenuous, fraught dialogue to resume after more strategic personnel were called in on the Russian side. The demand from the U.S. side remained as an ultimatum that would not be withdrawn.

Lavrov arrived just in time from Turkey where he had been in talks with the new government on its purchase of several upgraded defence systems. Hurriedly he was briefed and forward tactics intently discussed before the deadline for the renewed call.

Ukraine was to be given greater access to the peninsula under a new agreement that proposed certain undertakings which would allow Donetsk and Lugansk regions with Ukraine’s Donbass to have full autonomy. Under these circumstances, also including guarantees of security for the mutual security of those on Crimea through a co-governance agreement with Kiev. All of this to be thrashed out at a specially convened conference in Minsk.

The second hotline conversation became a conference call which eventuated in a begrudging acceptance of the proposed conference with major caveats regarding the use of further force at any time if deemed necessary by either U.S. or Ukrainian forces. Russia reserved the right to respond with equal or greater force if deemed necessary.

This then is how it all began.

(Though of course preceding events led up to these, but those are well known.)

The conference failed to reach agreement and talks dragged on interminably for many months thereafter. The three sides, plus input from France, Germany and Italy simply could not find common ground enough to link all expectations, demands, safeguards and treaties required to make peace either stable or long-lasting.

The perpetration by both sides of such violence, death and destruction that had occurred shocked all sides and all nations to the core. No nation felt safe. The genie had been let out of the bottle. How could anyone be assured now that anything approaching peace could ever be found and maintained? The situation was intolerable.

The next steps led us here and our long-anticipated end-of-decade moment at midnight which had gripped us all for months. We had this one last chance in a world now terminally broken between sides where no stable agreement had been possible and was seen clearly to be never possible at any future time.

China had stepped in early on in the ‘Final Settlement’. In a mirror image of the Berlin settlement at the end of The Great Patriotic War the world would be permanently divided into the Americas and western Europe and our Eurasia. The negotiations naturally were extremely prolonged, myriad details had to be discussed, national interests argued for and often given up and replaced by other concessions from the other side. The process took seven long years.

Seven years to divide a planet in two. To preserve the future peace and stability of one half as the U.S. zone of control (with European nations and Latin America in subservient roles) and the other, our Eurasia with China and Russia holding positions that in theory demarcated a partnership but with Chinese economic dominance a primary factor.

At the end of a bitter and violent struggle from the earliest days of humankind it appeared a final fix where geopolitical ambitions could be nullified and violent instincts inclined toward conquering, could be quarantined, had finally been arrived at.

It is 23:59 on the 31st of December 2029. I am standing in Red Square Moscow with my family around me and twenty-five thousand or so others also. Our hearts are pounding. We dare to hope through myriad emotions from fear to joy to grief and back again, our bodies shake involuntarily, the moment is too much for us with all its significance. Tears begin to well in our eyes then and roll down our cheeks as the first toll from the mighty Spasskaya Tower bell booms out from far above us.

The last chime tolls and it is finally midnight. Everyone is shouting and kissing one another, drinks in hand. It’s a new time, a new world and we have new hope in our hearts.

Above, the fireworks begin, rockets burst above us raining down showers of multicoloured light. It looks and feels a little like a battlefield as we shake with emotion again, hot tears of joy and pain fall uncontrollably as we exchange smiles, hugs and kisses with all around us... knowing with some goodwill and good fortune there will be no more battlefields, ever again.