The Scenario

The plan is actually quite simple. By now, everyone knows that climate change will make much of the world uninhabitable. Huge storms will cause catastrophes including loss of infrastructure, migration and massive deaths. Food will become scare -- over half of the arable land on the planet has already been destroyed.

The richest of the planet, the one percent, have a plan. It is probably not a conspiracy but rather a shared implicit logic that grows out of preserving self-interest.  More and more the lines of that logic are becoming clear.

Massive amounts of money are poured into arms and the military needed in order to control the unrest and wars that erupt as a result of changing conditions.

Because of the disruption of climate change as well as the wars that result, close to 90% of the world’s population will disappear. (Many scientists agree on this percentage.) That will leave just enough people to assure the infrastructure (food, industry, security) that would allow the very rich to continue in their lifestyle. In fact the 90% who will disappear are, in any case, dispensable within the current economic structures.

Massive restrictions on freedom and powerful military deployment will be needed to make sure that the  population remains faithful to their job of producing enough to keeping the workers in the economy alive and satisfied as well as, especially, to maintain the lifestyle of the very rich.

Should the planet swing entirely out of control, a last-ditch emergency plan would be to set up on another planet. The proposed one-way expedition to Mars is a trial balloon in that direction, an avant-guard who will work out the details of establishing a human colony elsewhere. Ultimately this would, once again, imply the transfer of a very small group (0.1% of the 10 % that remain, along with enough people to work to keep them in comfort). In a sense, society will continue to be normal in the sense that there will be approximately the same propositions of super-rich, middle class and poor. In that sense, everyone will continue to find their place though the scale will be reduced.  Those who retire into self-sufficiency, who provide for their own food sustainably will be inundated with hungry outsiders or raided by armed looters.

Am I exaggerating?  Am I retreating into science fiction? Not entirely. This is a scenario that could be realized within the next fifty years, that is to say, within the lifetime of many of those already living on the planet. What is needed is a massive, global upheaval. I am pretty sure that, at some point, it will come. However, I am also sure that the super-rich will be ready with their (massive) security precautions in place.

There is of course an alternative, a difficult one but one that is quite realizable. As long as we continue to contribute to the destruction of the planet required by the growing inequality between the super-rich and those entirely abandoned by the world economy, the logic described above will surely work its way forward. Fiddling with the current economic and political structures have repeatedly demonstrated little or no changes in the patterns.  Why is it that most people in the world, who are very aware of the general lines of this process, continue to follow their daily routines. We accept the political and economic processes with resignation and believe that the imperfections will be dealt with by those who hold public office?  What could be more insane?